I'm not officially taking any time off for 'the holidays.' I'm still new to this 'Paid Time Off' concept, and haven't learned to take advantage of it properly. But my boss has learned to take advantage of me, so even though I have at least another week of vacation time coming to me, I can't take his or next week off, because everyone else is. Worse, my boss said specifically I can't work from home during this time, because "somebody needs to be in the office in case something comes up." Since nobody will be working, and none of our business is actually conducted in the United States, I don't know what she's talking about. I think she just wants to utz me because she's caught me trying to work form home before when I was supposed to be in the office.

Of course, I'm still gonna work from home next week. Assuming nothing weird happens, no one should know: everybody in my department has next week off for the most part. But then there's the wild card. One of my coworkers had this week scheduled off, but she's been in the office every day so far. I don't know what that's about. And my boss has officially been on vacation for 48 hours but I've still received several emails from her. Why the hell would you schedule vacation time, which has to be done well in advance, and then work through it? What is wrong with these people?! I would seriously hate the humiliation of being caught working out of the office by somebody who is supposed to be out of the office who came into the office for some reaon.

So I have to be ready to drop everything and rush into the office if I sense the jig is up. That's fine, my office is near the midtown Home Depot, so I always need an excuse to go up there. It's not just my usual laziness either, I have a legitimate need to be home for the next week. See, people keep sending us stuff and no one's here to catch the UPS guy. How much does that suck? For years I worked from home all the time and now when I actually need to have a bunch of big items shipped to my house, I'm never there! Plus I think we're starting to alienate the delivery guy, for the last batch he stated "The receiver has moved. UPS attempting to locate receiver to complete delivery, no delivery was made; package returned to sender."

A lot has gone on since my last post, but little of it seems of interest to me as far as posting goes. I did go on another "12 Pubs of Christmas" pub crawl. Nothing like a whole bunch of repetitive drinking to take your mind off repetitive sanding, painting, or bleeding air from leaky radiators. The crawl was fun but seemed to go by too quickly. We started a little late and missed the first few bars. I was still pretty much shitfaced by the time we got to The Scratcher, so don't you worry bout lil old me. The odd thing was that, like last year, I was not in the least hung over the next day, nor was I particularly tired. And, also like last year, I was again hung over from the night before the pub crawl, after having been out to Enid's for Francis' birthday. Yes, two years running now, hanging out at one bar and drinking half what I would drink the following night leaves me feeling nauseous and achy. Maybe it's all the walking you do on a pub crawl that staves off the hangover. Maybe it's mind over matter.

Last week also saw the first visit from a plumber to our happy home, ostensibly to repair a leaky radiator and install the clothes dryer (gas line, vent excavation, connections, etc). The price he quoted for the installation would pretty much bankrupt us, but I didn't see any other choice if we actually wanted to use the damn thing. Upon calling back yesterday, I was told it was now a "3 day job" and could not proceed until next week. So I told them to just come in and run the gas line, I'd install it myself, and figure out how to put the vent in, too. So in order to save some dough, I will gladly compromise the safety of the occupants of this house! And their cats.