Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Vacations are a lot of work

Something I noticed when I was working as a software developer was that anyone who took vacation time always worked a lot of extra hours both before and after they were away. Unpaid overtime, of course. The concept of "Paid Time Off" is pretty much bullshit.

Even with my easy-going lifestyle, the same thing is happening. In less than 24 hours I leave for a two week trip to Peru. I've been running around like a mad woman for a full week taking care of all the things that will fall apart without me. I already started a list of things to do immediately upon my return.

This morning I woke up at 3 AM with my head swimming full of forgotten tasks. After two hours of wishing for more sleep, I finally just got up and started taking care of more stuff. I added two major items to today's to-do list before 6 AM.

When I get to Peru, I will be completely cut off from my responsibilities here. If things fall apart, they fall apart. I won't know until I get back to Seattle. But it's almost guaranteed that everything will run totally smoothly. It always does.

It's hard to say if it's our inflated sense of self-importance or our unfair lack of faith in others that makes us think the world will stop turning just because we leave town for a couple of weeks.

Raw food dish of the week - Falafel Wraps

Despite the fact that the recipe called for cumin and I didn't have any, the falafel was actually quite good. The texture was close to perfect. It didn't go too well with the rest of the wrap though. Too bland. Probably because of the lack of cumin.



Wrap: romaine lettuce leaves

Falafel: soaked almonds, cilantro, parsley, tahini, lemon juice, olive oil, Celtic sea salt, water

Toppings: cucumber, red bell pepper, roma tomatoes

1 comment:

ab said...

Safe travels....full of envy.