SassyBlonde

People, I know it's not news to anybody, but it's damn hot outside. Hot, hot, hot.

This kind of heat saps my initiative and turns me into a giant slug, not that I've been that far off from that anyway lately. No one is outside if they can help it-- my street is normally teeming with people on any sunny day, but not a soul passes by unless they have no other choice, and then they look positively miserable. Even the cats are lethargic-- they basically manage to stagger a few steps to another relatively cool spot in the house and then sprawl out and pant for a while. No amount of coaxing will interest them and even kitty treats get only a half-interested eye. This lethargy isn't doing me any favors, because I have insane amounts of work to do. And against my better judgment, I struck a blow for my goal to be less connected when I got my new toy up there.

Following suit, I have been perfectly content to sit in the La-Z-Boy and fiddle with my new Crackberry. Yeah, there's a reason for that name. I seriously stayed up waaaaaaay past my bedtime customizing and downloading and syncing and playing around (hence the iPhone looking screen going on over there.)

Lately I've been getting more and more overwhelmed with the amount of information I have to process and the amount of work I'm responsible for, and it's getting to the point that I kind of feel like I need to disconnect from the unnecessary technical insanity that seems to be assaulting me. It's kind of twisted that I've been so busy that I haven't even had time to finish all the pending entries I've started to write here-- this used to be as connected as I got in the course of a week and now it's emails and coding and meetings and shows. Learning to say no has never been a strong point with me, but it's rapidly going from a choice to a necessity.

And why is it that I find it so hard to let people help me with what I need a hand with? Frankenberry's going to laugh at this, I think, because we spent an incredible amount of time on Sunday night talking about the possibility of his becoming my boss for one of our projects, and one of his main concerns was getting me out from under the weight of all the work that's gotten piled on top of my head. To which I responded cagily and and with more reserve than I should have: next time I will nod and smile and say thank you and yes, we should let someone else handle that and swallow my fears that someone else handling it will make more work for me, because I can't even handle the amount of work I have now and it's a risk I'll have to take.

All of that is to say this: I need a vacation. I heard it from Frankenberry Sunday night, I heard it from my other boss today, and I woke up from my nap with the clear realization that they're both right and I'm trying to make it happen. The problem is, I've been consumed by work for so long that I think I've forgotten how to take a vacation.

So here's my question: If you had five uninterrupted days and a very tiny bit of cash to spend, where would you go? What would you do?