It's been a rough few weeks in particular. The stress of work and life has been a bit much for the past few months. Hell, the last few years or so haven't exactly been a picnic.
I'm starting to get a little snippy with people, and my work efficiency is falling off.
I need a real honest to god vacation so bad, it aint even funny. The last real vacation I had (not a 4 day road trip, or long weekend. An honest to god rest and relaxation vacation) was...
Umm...
Well I had a five day road trip in 2003 with a long weekend in Bryce canyon... But I'm not sure that qualifies...
The last real "more than 5 days not either working, looking for work, moving, driving, or visiting relatives" vacation I took was in 1997.
Yaknow how many days I took off TOTAL last year? Five, of which three were for the Gun Blogger Rendezvous
How about 2007? 2, and those were for the Gun Blogger Rendezvous as well.
2006? 7, but 4 of those were because I was so sick I couldn't stand, and two of them were on a road trip to Dallas.
I have 30 days of paid vacation time this year. It's August in two days. Yaknow how many days off I've taken off so far this year? 3, plus one for Jury Duty.
Yeah, I'm gonna be over my maximum carryover days this year, no doubt. They let me carry over five days, and in order to get down to that I'mna need to take a week at thanksgiving and two weeks at Christmas and New Years.
I'm just not generally a vacation sort of guy. The things I like to do are either competitive activities, things that almost kill you, or "absolutely nothing whatsoever". I haven't had the time or money for much of the first two in quite a while, and the third... Not hapnin so much lately.
So, the wife and I are actually going and taking a whole week plus a bit; and we're taking a real vacation, right around labor day.
We're going to the Gun Blogger Rendezvous IV in Reno from September 10th, through the 13th. Now that's fun, but that's not a vacation. But... We're driving up and back, since we don't want to deal with the hassle and risk of guns and airlines... and Reno is 60 miles from Tahoe....
So we decided to take the whole week before the GBR, and have a real vacation. On a lake. Actual deep water; which I grew up on, and lived on for more than half my life; and have been missing ever since I moved back to Arizona in 2003.
We managed to find a south Tahoe vacation rental cabin, in a small gated vacation community on the Nevada side, for considerably less than the cost of a hotel room (after the ridiculous -18% room tax alone- taxes and fees etc... about half the cost actually). I even managed to get a guy in their private marina rent me his boat for a couple days at WAY below regular rates (as in 80% below).
Can we afford it? Not really, no... but we'll make it work.
All up, we're getting five days of real vacation, with a house and a boat; at the off season rates plus discount (bad economy this year means fewer vacationers, means bigger discounts); for less than the cost of a hotel room in Tahoe alone would have been. Oh and no expensive hotel breakfasts and lunches... and we can eat in or out for dinner as we choose.
Now THAT, is a real vacation. Five weeks... can't wait.
