Staycation

Even though I spent almost all of last week out of the office in New York (Sunday through Wednesday attending NRF, plus one extra day for snow cancellations), leaving only one day at work, I'm taking this week off. I'm not going anywhere, though; it's a stay-at-home vacation to relax and get caught up on things. The primary motivation is a familiar one: because the workload at my office really doesn't permit me to take much time off (the work is always still there when I get back) I always end up with so much leave piled up that I reach the cap after which I start losing leave, and I can't bear that. So I'm burning off a week's leave. (Actually only four days; I accidentally picked a week that has a state holiday in it.)

I'll probably dork around some of the time doing nothing very productive, playing games and the like. I also will probably get some progress on a few hobby things of minor importance:

• Writing the rest of my designs for the Seal of Beauty in Lusternia
  
• Building up a buffer of blog posts, since I'm down to just a few
  
• Getting CMUD working and making the final decision about where to develop my Rainbow system
  
• Doing some game prep for Uncreated for when we finish running Committee (or give up... I'm not sure if my group is enjoying it)
  
• Maybe making some progress on Rainbow
  
• Rebuilding the MAME system once I get the computer back from RMA
  
• Maybe starting on my second Lusternia character's next research project
  

But while I certainly would like to see some progress on a few of those things during the coming week, I'm not going to let myself feel pressured. This is an opportunity to burn off some of the stress that situations at work have been building up again (if it's not one thing, it's another!) so if I spend many hours just watching movies or banging on the simulated drums that's all time well spent too.