Saturday, May 6, 2006

Nowhere To Go But Up (Outta Bed)

Beep! I can’t come to the phone right now. Well, I guess I could, but I’m not. I'm on vacation, taking a break from just about everything, including phones, feigned politeness, and toenail trimming.

Yup, a real, real vacation – I’m not getting away from it all – I’m getting all of it away from me. The travel industry and the fossil fuelists will hate me for this, but I’m going to share with you a few secrets about this wondrous thing, vacation. For safety's sake, I’m going to use a high-tech level of security known as whispering:

1)You don’t really have to go anywhere. Yes, the first thing everyone asks you about your vacation is "Where are you going?" or "Are you leaving in the next few minutes?" and you might get strange looks for answering "I can’t tell you" or "Whereever the aliens take me." But there’s a hidden payoff – if you tell your boss you’re not going anywhere, chances are he’ll think you either can’t afford it, or you're gonna be out somewhere interviewing your buns off. Either way, play it right and you've got a raise. Also, if your parents find out you stayed home, they’ll think something is wrong, and either send money (yay!) or come over to find out what’s up(uh-oh!). If they’re the latter type, you’ll need to tell them you work surreptitiously for the Department of Homeland Selective Security. If they’re Republicans, they’ll be proud. If they’re Democrats, they’ll be afraid. Either way, they’re gone.

2)Does anyone remember what the original, vintage goal of a vacation was? Was it:
a)Visit in-laws until your head explodes
iv)Hopscotch across Europe faster than Hitler
%)Have fun
Obviously it’s 4) – combine naps, food, and tv into a veritable orgy of idleness. ‘Orgy’ was not my preferred word there, but you’d be amazed how adding that word to a blog can increase the readership. On that note, I’d like to welcome all the new visitors. I certainly hope I see you here more often, especially when we pass the hat around after the homily.

3)You know, I had another point to make, but I may not have mentioned this - I'm on vacation, so you're on your own.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Annie,

I have been enjoying you over on Dave's blog, so I thought I'd come pay a visit over here. O.K., the word "orgy" didn't hurt either.

You're totally right about vacations. The other thing I learned about vacations, but hardly ever got to practise in "real life" is that one week is not enough. It always took 5 or 6 days to forget what I was worrying about back at the office and that was even before cell phones and the internet were invented. Really, there was a time. Then, there would be a day of blissful forgetting followed by a day of packing everything up again to go back home. Then, because anything good that had happened was driven out of my mind by the second day back..at latest..what's the point.

The two week vacation had the same timeline, except that there's another week between forgetting and packing, and what a wonderful thing that is.

Recently I'm prematurely (a little**) retired so I that whole system is unnecessary. But I wasn't needing a 3) anyway, so relax.

** a little prematurely, not a little retired

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