Vacation Time – Installing Updates
About that missing post last week…yeah. My weekend got away from me and then before I knew it was happening, so did the rest of the week. It happens.
But this week…this week, I’m on vacation from the day job. And as I determined through a largely unscientific trial and error period, I do better with purposeful, scheduled vacations rather than the “anything goes” type. So I have a plan, and I’m excited to get started on it tomorrow. It’s gonna be a good week, methinks.
I really need to do some basic house upkeep, and I want to take a good chunk of time for writing, some for reading, and this time I even built in a short little afternoon out-of-town trip. Here’s the basic outline:
Monday: Write 1500 words and clean off the long counter in the kitchen (so I can find/use my crockpots again, and to make nightly maintenance/cleaning easier at the tea station). In the evening, crochet boot cuffs for a friend.
Tuesday: Write 1500 words and bake some goodies for Wednesday. Watch some youtube videos on replacing bathtub faucet washers. Think I might watch Smurfs: The Lost Village too (been wanting to do that, and it’s on Netflix). And in the evening, crochet a small Christmas gift.
Wednesday: Write 1500 words and go visit my grandma for tea and goodies in the afternoon (Just shy of 100 miles away – road trip! Back in time for dinner.).
Thursday: Write 1500 words, clean out the basement bathroom (don’t ask) and replace the toilet innards so it’s usable again. For evening, start a small knitted gift.
Friday: Write 1500 words and take apart the upstairs tub faucet to replace washers or whatever I need to do to stop the damn thing from dripping night and day, day and night (I can hear it in my office and every time I pass that room. It’s been driving me *insane* for months now, literally – it *has* to stop!). Finish knitted gift in the evening.
So, if everything goes well, I should end the week with 7500 new words written, a reorganized and more usable/easily maintainable kitchen counter, a nice visit with my grandma, and two bathrooms that function as they should again (and cost way less in water and personal sanity). Not to mention several crochet projects done and ready to pass along or wrap up for gifts, some comics caught up on and at least one movie I want to see, watched.
It’s going to be very, very cool. And all very doable in the time allotted (should be time to spare with most of it, though plumbing issues often take longer than they should, unfortunately), leaving me bits and pieces of time for reading comics & watching movies.
I’ve also been working on revamping my morning and nightly routines a little, and I’ll keep working on that (I’ll keep to my normal sleep/wake routines pretty much all week, with the exception of *not* getting up early on Tuesday). And we’ve been tweaking our eating habits a bit too – refining portion sizes and ratios, so we’ll keep working on that as well. But I’d be doing those anyways, so they don’t really count as “vacation” projects, aside from being able to tweak my routines without repercussions if they set me back a little timewise while I’m figuring things out.
I know this doesn’t sound very “vacation-y”, but it’s all things I really, really want to do and can’t ever seem to find the time for. So this is stress relief for me – fixing little everyday things that drive me nutty on a daily or almost-daily basis. Plus visiting my grandma in her small, quiet town, where I can pretty much guarantee at least one rousing game of Scrabble will take place along with our tea, cookies & scones. I might even load up some podcasts to listen to on the way and back, if I can figure out how without too much trouble.
Oh…and Thursday or Friday I’m gonna go talk to my tattoo artist about my next tattoo (to be scheduled around my birthday in January). I have two ideas to give him, so we’ll see which one he finds more appealing to work on first, and go from there. Something a bit less serious and more comic-ish this time. A fun birthday gift to myself.
So. Anyone else doing anything fun, exciting, or just plain productive this week?