Vacation Efficiency!

I'm feeling quite proud of myself right now.  I'm on day 2 of my working vacation and looking back at my day 1 accomplishments -- wow!

I think I mentioned before that my only real complaint about my new job is the low amount of vacation time.  And it's not really low (and actually, it's not my only real complaint, I also really wish we had an on-site gym).  I get 2 weeks vacation, and 2 weeks personal.  And eventually, if I use little enough personal time one year, it will roll over to vacation. 

But 2 weeks for someone whose family doesn't live nearby and who loves to travel overseas is just not a lot. 

For 2012, I am attempting to use ZERO vacation days before October, so that I can use the full 2 weeks in Oct and Nov to cover our trip to China (though I might have to tack on a few personal days too). 

Well, since we like to go to Mardi Gras in Mobile (my best friend and her family always go, as well as a bunch of her friends from our law school and some of her college friends), and since we also wanted to visit my husband's best friend who lives in Birmingham, it meant that I was going to find a way to make this trip without taking vacation. 

We had originally planned to fly to Birmingham on Wed. morning, then rent a car, and ditch it on Sunday at the Mobile airport.  But flights were expensive and I was hesitant to do that because it would have really sucked up a lot of my day Wednesday, time during which it would have been hard to work.

Hubby likes driving a lot, and we've done this drive once before, and we have a free rental car right now, so we decided to drive. 

Yesterday, we hit the road around 7 a.m. and got here to Birmingham around 5:45 p.m., with a few pit stops for gas and a sit-down lunch. 

I started working around 8 and worked basically all day.  I had my laptop, and even though I wasn't online, I was able to plow through so many emails and bills and records. 

It was insanely productive!

At work, though I don't love working this way, I tend to deal with whatever comes up each day.  I often have things I want to get done, but depending on what comes up during the day, sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't.  One of the things I frequently back-burner is reviewing records.  Often it's something that just has to be done eventually, no deadline or anything. 

Even though we're moving to paperless at work, I have a huge (over one foot) stack of paper sitting there at all times waiting for me to review. 

Yesterday, I got through inches.  I love it!  I was able to just type my notes in a Word doc as I went and turn pages as the miles passed.  I have trouble reading a book in a car, but for some reason, records review with pages and a laptop worked very well. 

It was a wonderfully productive day to be getting through stuff without handling emails and phone calls, and just my daily list of cases I want to check on. 

Maybe I should do working vacations more often!

Today, hubby, his best friend and his wife, are all hanging out in the living room, talking, drinking coffee, and I'm here in their study, eavesdropping and occasionally piping up in the conversation and working (but now blogging) away. 

Today all 4 of us will go for a late morning run, hubby and his friend will go pick up hubby's tails for the ball, and I'll work on emails and phone calls and the daily list of cases, but tomorrow, another car day, I'll get through some more records. 

It's just a nice change of pace and I love it.  Makes me feel like things are much more under control.  And my vacation days used remain at zero!