ticking away the moments that make up a dull day....

Although it was agreed with work several months ago and isn't really very far away at all, my time off still feels like something of an abstract concept to me. Quite a feat for a nine month break, you would think... but a combination of work's complete failure to announce it, to plan for my absence or to put anything into writing, together with the fact that I'll still be working all the way through to the distant end of January have served to make it all feel a bit remote and somehow not really real.

C. has been really busy at work too, but her time off starts in a mere 12 days time, so the prospect of a life without work is an awful lot closer to hand for her.  What's more, where I am due back at work in September 2010, she's not going to be working until January 2011... a break of longer than 12 months. That's a whole damn year.   I think she's starting to get used to the idea, and although she's not done with work yet, the time off is now close enough at hand that she's turning her mind towards what exactly the hell we're going to do with ourselves.  I've been introduced to the planner that she apparently uses to book her time at work and the trips that she takes to the various offices around Europe (and which I've never seen before.... I just tend to know that she's either here or she's not, and I generally have no idea what country of the world she's in from one day to the next...).  Next year's work planner is obviously fairly clear, so she's started using that to plot how we might spend our time.

No tickets have been booked yet, but the itinerary is going to look something like this:

January: Austria (we've got a skiing trip already booked)
February - April: Hong Kong -> New Zealand -> Australia -> San Francisco
May: East Africa (likely Namibia & Botswana)
June - July: Glastonbury & the cricket, but perhaps also a trip to Eygpt / Jordan.
August - September: Canada (I've a hankering to see the Rockies outside of winter.)

There are still some gaps in our chronology and we haven't booked any flights or anything practical like that.... but it's slowly starting to feel a bit more real and a lot more exciting.

Well that's the thought that I clung to during a dull day in the office, anyway.....

You'd imagine, wouldn't you, that in the 6 weeks or so between C. knocking off work in mid-December and me signing off at the end of January, I might get a taste of what life used to be like for the working man.... you know: coming home from work to a warm fire and my dinner on the table.  That kind of thing.

Apparently not.  It seems that C's time off is going to be quite similar for me -- initially at least -- to her time at work.  I have been informed asked if I mind if she spends a bit of time with her parents in France in January.

Of course not.  Why would I?

Dinner for one?