Random Day Off = Fun

Happy Thursday afternoon!

I thought I’d write a little about vacation days today. Next week will mark my one year anniversary at work, my first “real” job. I have been told that the number of PTO days I received was very “generous”, compared to other of my new-grad friends.

Still.. anything less than 30 seemed rough. Think about it – when you’re in college, you must have at least 80 days off from school. 1 week for spring break (5 days), 2-3 weeks for Christmas/winter break (10-15), 3 days for Thanksgiving (3), we had a 2 day fall break (2), a good 3 months for summer (60ish), and a few random holidays throughout. So the thought of going from 80+ days off, to less than a quarter of that… well, it’s an adjustment.

Being the Type A person that I am, I immediately started planning how to use my PTO days, and used them sparingly – only really for recognized holidays and travel. Luckily, I haven’t been sick in the past year, so no sick days were needed.

With my company, our PTO days expire at the end of September, which is roughly 2 weeks from now. According to my “PTO tracker” in the back of my planner, I still have 4 days unused. Wow! I was impressed with myself for being so careful, yet a little regret crept in for not using them all. There’s no saving or cashing in for unused PTO days; they just go to waste.

And so…. I decided to take today off. It was the first day I’ve taken off work for no real reason. It’s been fun so far!

Unfortunately, there was no sleeping in, as I had a 7:30am appointment at the Toyota dealer for Matrix’s big 75,000 mile service. Luckily, he passed with flying colors. I brought a bag armed with Rachael Ray magazines, some new books, and a snack of Quaker Oatmeal Squares to keep me nourished :)

After the car dealer, I headed to Hobby Lobby to stock up on supplies for some Christmas crafts/gifts, Panera to cash in on my free cookie (sign up for a MyPanera card if it’s available in your area!), and TJMaxx for… well, just to look around :)

At lunchtime, I met up with my Coordinated School Health colleagues at one of our local elementary schools for their Go, Slow, Whoa Kick-Off celebration. We had staff dressed up as Grapes (GO), Mac’n’Cheese (SLOW), and a stick of butter (WHOA), and got to talk to the kids and make sure everyone knew about the program.

I was impressed that most of the kids had already heard about the program from their teachers, and many could even identify/categorize the items on their lunch tray.

The fact that a super majority of kids were drinking chocolate milk instead of white milk didn’t surprise me, but still disappointed me. There were just a handful of skim-milk-drinking-kids – and I wanted to go hug them all. And then, for the kids who brought their lunches from home, they all had Kool-Aid or Capri-Sun pouches. What happened to a water bottle??

But overall, at least the kids were getting a balanced lunch, with all food groups represented. It’s better than I can say for my lunch (the Panera cookie….). I promise my dinner will be better, with lots of GO items!

Now we’re in the middle of a nice afternoon outside. The dogs are enjoying me being around, and have been sleeping out in the yard. I’ve enjoyed an episode of American Pickers, an old Julia Childs show, some cross-stitch, and of course catching up on blogging. Sorry there’s no exciting pictures for today.