On Vacation, sort of...

Well, I took the next three days off. See, where I work we get 3 personal days in addition to the standard vacation days. These have to be used up by a certain time or you lose them - something I always come close to, to the point that HR called our Financial Analyst to let her know that I needed to take them or I would lose them. That certain time that they need to be used by is Friday. Since I figured they would be useful as close as to when I move as possible, I decided to use them on the last 3 possible days - wednesday, thursday, and friday.

So I have the next three days off. I plan on doing some sleeping and stuff, and also some more packing, although I only have a limited amount of stuff that I can still pack without needing. It looks like I probably won't actually be moving until July 10 or so, which gives me a couple days after settlement to paint before my carpet comes in and a few more days after that to do some other stuff (buy furniture, move the stuff I don't want the movers to move, ect). That's the plan, although plans change.

It will be nice to take some time off. I'm not really a big vacation time person - most of the time when I take vacation, it's a day around a holiday when I'm driving up to NJ to visit the 'rents. In the past, I've actually lost vacation time because I didn't take any and hit the point where I stopped accumulating. This was especially common when I worked nights for a year and a half - since I was the only person there, it was difficult to take off without making everyone else's life difficult.

And while I know I'll find plenty to occupy my time - making phone calls, packing, turning in my cable box, ect - I also always feel wasteful. I'm still used to my temping and student worker days, when a day off meant a day without pay. And while given the choice between a paid day off and a paid day of work, I would pick the former, if I had the option to, say, trade the day off for a day of work at time-and-a-half, or the option to sell the day off to someone else, I would - I value money much more than I value my time (which is why I worked five hours of overtime last night to fill in for a coworker who had a family emergency). Right now, I have enough time but not quite enough money to buy all the stuff I "need" for the house.