Strategic vacation planning

One of the side benefits of ridiculous deadlines, unrealistic client demands and pressure cooker 14 hour days, is getting an extra day off during summer long weekends.

Where the statutory holiday is on the Monday, this means we get the previous Friday off as well.

Thanks to some strategic vacation planning, I'm tacked four days of annual leave on to August 4th's civic holiday. The result is that I'm getting ready for 10 consecutive days off.

Here's the scary part.

I have nothing planned for these days, except for some vague notion that I'll do "house stuff".

It's not like me not to plan -- especially for something as serious as vacation time -- so I'm starting to get a little nervous about it.

I always go somewhere.

Even though I'm heading to Ottawa at the end of the month and have a much bigger trip to Thailand and Cambodia planned for the fall, it seems almost wasteful not to go anywhere.

But part of me feels a real need to refuel.

I think it would be good to stop and stare for awhile. To explore my own city. Read more books. Reorganize my closet. Sleep late and hang out in cafes.

Then there are the practical tasks -- changing my kitchen counters, looking for a new sofa, ordering new blinds.

I'll see where I net out. The siren song of Expedia.com is louder than all practicality.