A (Mostly) Quiet Three-Day Weekend at Home

How did I spend my three day weekend? I basically squandered it. I say that because I like to use holiday weekends to travel. Vacation allotments are meager enough in the US (compared to Europe especially) that I strive to maximize the value of every day of paid time off I get. Yet all I did this weekend is be a slug around home.

• Friday night we took it easy and stayed in. Though we did at least go out to eat at a favorite casual pizzeria.


• Saturday I barely left these four walls. The farthest I went was the mailbox. Disappointingly there was nothing worthwhile in it.


• Sunday I did basically nothing.


• Monday I did basically nothing— except for the hour I spent assisting local police as they discovered there's a dead guy in the condo next to mine.

What else could I have done? Three things:

1. Like I said at the top, my usual plan for holiday weekends is to travel somewhere. The MLK Day holiday comes at a not-great time of year for that, though. It's hot on the heels of Christmas and New Years, when we usually take a longer trip— like Australia a few weeks ago. Often we feel "traveled-out" and prefer time to relax.


2. If we don't travel we could at least do outdoorsy stuff locally. We love the outdoors and there are so many options within, say, a 45 minutes to 1 hour drive. But the weather sucks for it right now. It's not unseasonably cold like earlier this week but it's still gloomy, cool, and raining on and off.


3. Knowing that we weren't really going anywhere I set for myself a goal of doing some cleaning around the house. I managed to do about 30 minutes of cleaning on Sunday, but other than that procrastinated doing it until next weekend— when we have to do it because we're having a house party for our joint birthday celebration!

Well, the positive side of not doing, or barely doing, any of the above is that I relaxed. Relaxation doesn't suck. Resting up for the coming week at work has been pleasant. Though at the same time I know I need that rest because this coming week all hell is likely to break loose. Yes, I said that about last week... and last week was busy, just not hell-breaks-loose busy. Hell's walls held. And now this week is likely to be the one all hell breaks loose. 😣

Sore Ankle Still Sore

My ankle is still sore from the trip to Australia. It's been over two weeks since getting home and now almost 3 weeks since originally injuring it.

The first few days back home it was still sprained. Going up and down stairs in my house required slow, careful, and painful steps. After a few days that acute pain disappeared but there was a still a dull ache I'd notice when I thought about it. That pain is still there, and I feel stiffness when I do stairs or walk more than a short distance.

A few days ago I realized this sprain was bad enough it's not just going away on its own. Probably that's because I did myself no favors by hiking for 2 days after I injured it. Anyway, I started doing some self-guided physical therapy exercises over the weekend. These are things I remember learning from a skilled therapist when I had an ankle problem years ago, to rebuild strength and preserve range of motion. I'm confident I'll get back to 100%. I'm just not sure right now how long it will take. I mean, it could be a few weeks. Thankfully it's not the high season for hiking right now. Yay, crummy weather.

Australia Trip Retrospective: I Didn't Need the Boots

I like to do a retrospective after big trips like the one to Australia last month. It's to understand what worked well, so I can reinforce doing it on subsequent travel, plus what didn't go so well so I can do it better next time. Usually I do them sooner than 2½ weeks after getting home... but 2½ weeks was how long it took me to clear my backlog on the trip. I finished it yesterday.

Here are Five Things:

1) I didn't need the boots. One thing I always think about in retrospective is packing efficiency. Did I bring what I needed; and did I avoid the weight, bulk, (potential) expense, and hassle of overpacking? On this trip the answer is Yes to both. There was one bulky thing I packed and didn't need. That was my hiking boots. Bringing them was the right idea, though. I didn't know in advance whether conditions would warrant hiking boots. It turned out my hiking sandals were perfectly fine. At least bringing the hiking boots didn't have any cost. They didn't make the difference between needing to pack an extra bag or not, the size of the bags didn't slow us down, and they didn't take up space in a bag I could have used to pack something anywhere near as useful.

2) I didn't do any* work during the trip. I left my work laptop home and never missed it. This is important to me because I believe in vacation being about really getting away from work. [*] I did actually spend a few seconds here and there scanning work emails from my phone. I did that to delete obvious spam & unimportant automated messages from my inbox. That saved me from feeling snowed under on Tuesday morning, Jan. 2, when I otherwise would have returned to a queue of hundreds of unread emails.

3) The power adapters we brought worked exactly as I wanted. Recall I opted to buy & bring country-specific adapters, 3 of them, on this trip rather than an all-in-one, every-major-electrical-standard-in-the-world adapter. They were sturdy, compact, and— best of all— could be in 3 places at once. I'll do the same for subsequent international trips. Yes, we'll end up with a bunch of different power adapters, but it's not hard to toss them in a storage box at home for the next time we'll use them.

4) Flying up front was a great experience but I wouldn't choose to pay for it. On our flight home we caught a great upgrade, totally free, to United's Polaris class service. Part of the reason airlines offer upgrades is to entice customers to pay for premium service on future flights by showing them how nice it is. Definitely, it is nice. But the cost premium is anywhere from $1,500 to $4,000 more than economy, each way. It's nice but not that nice. Think about it as a hotel for the night. Normally you'd prefer to sleep in a bed in a hotel instead of sleeping in, say, your car. But if the hotel cost thousands of dollars per person per night— and for that it's not even the Four Seasons, it's the Holiday Inn— you'd be okay with sleeping in your car.

5) I'll say it again, coming home a day early to have a whole, easy day at home the last day of our vacation was superb. We enjoyed a bit of New Years Eve revelry with local friends on the 31st then had a perfect, be-a-slug-and-proud day on the 1st. Reserving a day for recovery is hard, though. It's hard because with limited time off from work there's such a temptation to book the trip "wall to wall", using each of my precious vacation days to be in-country. Balancing these opposing desires requires a conscious tradeoff every trip.