Resting up Monday after Coming Home from New Zealand

[canyonwalker]

New Zealand Travelog #44
Back home - Mon, 22Apr 2024, 7pm

Today has a day of rest after returning from two weeks in New Zealand and before returning to work on Tuesday. ...Well, it's most of a day of rest. Our flight landed in San Francisco this morning around 6:45am, and we were home— as in walking through our front door— at 7:45am. The balance of the day has been for resting up & getting back into ordinary daily life.

Technically I could have made today a workday instead of taking it as another day of vacation. But, oh, there are so many reasons to have taken it off:

1. There was no guarantee that my flight would have landed on time for me to be home & ready to work by 8am.


2. As it was, I got no sleep on the flight. I knew that was a possibility when I planned. Rolling into a workday on literally zero sleep is not a plan for success.


3. My company offers an "unlimited" vacation policy, so why not take an extra day?


4. Compared even to coming home late one evening and working the next morning, having a day— or most of a day— to readjust after an overseas trip is awesome.

To my last point above, I've said to myself several times today, "Having this rest day is so awesome." What have I done today? A partial list:

• By 10am I realized I was going to need a nap to get through the day. I laid down for an hour. After an hour I realized an hour was not enough, so I added another 45 minutes.


• After my nap I went out for lunch to a favorite local taqueria. After two weeks of mostly disappointing food in New Zealand it was splendid comfort food.


• The weather was amazing Monday afternoon. It was like, "Summer is here!" Especially after 2 weeks of cool weather, overcast skies, and rain most days in New Zealand, it felt like I pulled a Rip Van Winkle and skipped a whole season.


• Driving on the left side of the road again was no challenge. Like I wrote about driving on the right, the change is more hand-eye coordination than muscle memory. Though today I signalled most of my lane changes by turning on my windshield wipers. 🤣


• I spent the afternoon catching up on financial stuff, paying bills, etc. This may sound like displeasurable activity but it was satisfy to get things squared away.


• I made dinner at home. Afterwards we went out for a long soak in the hot tub.


• We watched a bit of TV together


• I did no work. NONE.


• I went to bed at 10pm feeling like I'd had a satisfying, relaxing day— and rejuvenated to get back to work on Tuesday.

Update: the beautiful, near-summer weather at home on Monday (the almanac says it reached 81°!) disappeared almost immediately. By Tuesday temps didn't rise above mid-60s.