Planning is half the fun. Or something like that

A coworker's on vacation through next week, and I'm pretty sure everyone at work is passive-aggressively expressing their feelings every time one of those out-of-office replies comes back when we e-mail him.

See that whiny child? Waaa. Yes. My thoughts exactly.

I want a vacation. But I'm taking my mini-vacation in October, because if I take it before half the year is over, I feel like I have nothing but a long, slow death 'til I get a new, shiny stack of vacation days next year. You don't get that kind of foresight without the hard work of many years in therapy and taking antidepressants.

Just kidding.

But since it's warm and sunny, and since we like torturing ourselves, we started to think about where we'll go in October last night as we were reading in bed.

"Hey, it's only four months away," he said, book in hand. All he needed was a pair of drugstore glasses to complete the vision I have of us in 30 years.

"No. May-June-July-August-September-"

"Oh, crap. I skipped August and September."

"Yeah, I don't care for them either," I said.

"Where should we go? Europe?" He laughed at himself.

"Right."

"Canada?"

"No passports."

"New York?"

"Too far away."

"Iowa?"

"What?" That got me to put my book down. "How about Minnesota? We could go to Ikea!"

"How about Appleton?" Ikea hater.

"How about we just go to the park."

"OK."

And that's how we saved hundreds on vacation bills.

(And, no, that's not me in the photo. That'd be my mama.)