Christmas Sabbatical

Tis the season to be jolly. I agree with and endorse this concept. However, since I am a scrooge by nature, it takes a lot of effort for me to maintain any level of jolliness through the holidays.

The first step I take is to not work. I save vacation time, do shift trades and burn CTO, so that I will not have to work during the month of December. I usually pull it off, unless someone that I owe time to calls me for the payback. That rarely happens, as most of the people that I trade with know that I am not really available in December.

 Being off serves several purposes. First, it allows me time to get all of the crap that I dislike doing done at a leisurely pace. Shopping, wrapping, cards, decorating, lights, hauling all of the stuff down from the attic - it's all stuff I'd rather not do.  If I can handle it at my leisure, it's a lot more fun.

Take that John - first one with the lights up! Don't

give me that crap about throwing your back out

either!

Second, I don't have to put up with the traffic, increased call volume and tragedy that the holiday season brings at work. The less of that stuff that I have to deal with, the better. I'd rather be in the desert with the tortoises and tarantulas than with thousands of depraved shoppers, crashing their cars and burning up their houses. I'm just sayin'.

 One Happy Kid!

I enjoy the toy drives and the happiness that the season brings to children. It will be fun when we have grand kids and have them over on Christmas morning. In due time of course!

 Kids like fire engines almost as much as they do Christmas.

So, today starts my annual Christmas sabbatical, With any luck, I won't be back at work until after New Years. Trades and burning time is a small price to pay for some seasonal jolliness. A price that I am happily willing to pay.

Thanks for reading, 

A jolly Schmoe