Well, that wasn’t so bad…

Wound up going home at about noon.  Tons of people were out for the day, some of the work I had to do couldn’t actually be done because people weren’t there, and my supervisor wasn’t any happier to be there than I was.  I still have about 4 extra hours from a late night last week.  So, I went home early.

Spent the afternoon playing video games, instead of working.

Did not have a restful weekend.

Did not sleep well Friday night…  Did not get to sleep in late Sunday morning…  And the heat made simply breathing exhausting…  I slept fine last night, but that wasn’t enough to make up for all of last week, plus the weekend.

And now I suspect that I’m a fool for showing up to work today.

The drive down was absolutely silent.  Didn’t see another car on the road.  Obviously lots of people had the day off.

The hospital’s parking lot is similarly deserted.  Hardly anyone here.

I was told, last week, that it was not an official holiday.  That I would not get holiday pay.  But my supervisor offered to let me take the day off and use some personal or vacation time on it.  I turned him down, because I don’t have much time accrued yet…

I think that was a stupid decision.

Memorial Day is one of those holidays, like Christmas, that just doesn’t mean what it used to.

Sure, there’ll be some parades…  And the President will visit a cemetery…  But nobody really thinks of fallen soldiers when you say Memorial Day anymore.

Folks think of gathering around the grill with friends, drinking a few beers, and enjoying the first real holiday of the summer.

I suppose that’s not so bad…  What better way to thank the ones who’ve given their lives for you, than to enjoy living your life?  At least it makes more sense than the commercial extravaganza that Christmas has become.

Yesterday was a pretty nice day.  Cool, overcast, not too hot.  There was a strange haze of smoke over the entire city – some drifting South from all those forest fires up in Canada.

I woke up around 8:00, and spent most of the day playing Dwarf Fortress.  Finished reading Heart Shaped Box.

Grilled some hot dogs, ate some baked beans, drank a beer or two.

Then we drove down to the waterfront and walked along the beach.  Chased some seagulls.  Listened to the surf.

All things considered, not a bad way to spend the day.

Monday is Memorial Day, which means I get a three-day weekend.

I’m looking forward to it, but not in the same way I used to look forward to time off.

Used to be I was desperate for any break from work.  Couldn’t wait to get out of the office.  Never wanted to go back in.  Didn’t want to spend any more time at work than absolutely necessary.

Now I’m looking forward to another day of rest.  I’m working more, and harder, and longer hours…  So I’m more tired than I used to be at the end of the day.  So I am certainly looking forward to a day off.

But I’m not desperate to get out of the office.  I’m not dreading coming in here every day.

As I’ve said before, I’m not a religious guy.  So I don’t really care whether it’s Easter or not…  Except that it gets me a day off from work and it’s a good excuse to break out the candy.

So, Happy Easter!

I’ve got the day off today, for Presidents Day.  Seems a little weird…

Presidents Day is one of those non-event holidays – the kind where there really isn’t much of a celebration.  There aren’t really any Presidents Day decorations out there.  You don’t see big parades or anything.  You don’t have a Presidents Day feast.  It’s just another day like any other…  Except that a lot of folks have the day off.

So, here I am…  Home with the day off…  And it doesn’t feel much like a holiday.

But it is.  And I’m certainly not going to complain about a day off from work.

Last day of vacation today…  Back to work tomorrow…  Can’t say I’m looking forward to it.

Sure, my vacation has been restful.  I’m probably as ready to deal with work as I’ll ever be.  But I still don’t want to go back.  It’s so nice to simply do what I want to, when I want to…  Instead of running around and fixing other people’s problems.

I didn’t really do much over the vacation…  Just sat around the house, slept in, read, and played video games.  But that was very nice.  It was great just not to have to worry about clients and backups and tape drives and power outages and whatever else.  A real load off my mind.

Both Christmas and New Year’s were pretty low-key around here.  We had a big ol’ feast on Christmas…  Opened the presents…  Watched Santa’s Slay…  The usual.  But it was all far more relaxed than usual.  We had a tiny little tree that wasn’t a pain in the ass to decorate…  We didn’t try to buy a metric crapton of presents for each-other…  We just took it easy this year.

So I got my nook.  I’ve been reading on it ever since.

Terri got her iPod Touch, though she actually got that a month or so before Christmas.

We also got a couple gifts for the both of us…  A Keurig coffee maker and a Samsung BD-P1590 Blu-Ray disc player.

The Keurig is very nice.  You just put in the k-cup, push a button, and you’ve got coffee.  Hot, fresh, predictable coffee.  Terri only drinks decaf…  I only drink caffeinated…  Which makes it inconvenient to brew a whole pot of coffee.  The “fix” was for Terri to get her coffee at Dunkin Donuts every morning, while I drank the stuff at work.  And on the weekends I’d usually drink energy drinks of some sort.  Not exactly economical.

Now we can both have whatever kind of coffee we want, at the push of a button, for significantly less than the cost of Dunkin Donuts or an energy drink.

The Samsung BD player is a replacement for our aging DVD player…  It still works, mostly, but it tries to eat the discs.  When you press the eject button you have mere moments before the tray slides back in.  You literally have to wrestle with the thing to insert or remove a disc.  And if you aren’t quick enough the disc gets jammed in the tray.

The Samsung BD player plays both DVDs and blu-ray discs…  But it can also stream stuff from Netflix, YouTube, and Pandora.  Terri’s been playing with Pandora lately…  And there might be some fun stuff on YouTube…  But Netflix playback is a godsend.

We used to use a laptop from work to watch Netflix stuff on our TV…  But that laptop was replaced with a netbook that just can’t stream Netflix smoothly.  I tried to throw together a box just to stream Netflix to our TV, but didn’t have enough quality parts to make it work well.  It was slow, choppy, and annoying.  So, for a while now, we haven’t been streaming anything from Netflix.

We were looking at the Roku as a possible solution to our problems…  But that would be yet another device sitting on the pile next to our TV…  And if we ever canceled Netflix the Roku would be completely useless.

The Samsung player does everything the Roku does…  Plus it replaces our DVD player…  And it can stream from Blockbuster if we ever switch to their service.