Wow, I forgot how exhausting cross-country skiing is!

[dreamshark]

I found my equipment and trundled over to the Hiawatha Golf Course. They hadn't bothered to groom a path, but there were some pretty good volunteer ski tracks. I skiied for all of 40 minutes and wore myself out so completely that I could barely move for the rest of the day. Oy. Kind of too bad, because the sun is out today and it might have been a nicer day to ski, but my legs haven't recovered from yesterday. I did go swimming at the Y, however.

I've got two weeks off from work, whether I like it or not. I'm not particularly thrilled with being forced to use my vacation to sit around the house for two weeks in the middle of the most depressing month of the year. I have no idea why the company thinks this is a good idea; they aren't really saving anything by it since they are forcing people to use PTO rather than making them take time off with no pay (as some companies are doing this year). They aren't even shutting down the building, since a small subset of people on hot projects are working random days throughout the shutdown period.

But anyway, here I am at home in December. So I'm trying to make the best of it by vowing to get out EVERY DAY and get some exercise. Since we had that big party to get ready for on the weekend, I didn't really start counting until Monday (technically the first vacation day). So far I'm 3 for 3. Not sure what to do about Christmas, though, since most everything is shut down. I wonder if the skating rink at Lake of the Isles will be open?

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

PTO on the books is a liability to the company; making you use it up takes that liability off the books.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I very much doubt that is the point. Because of the way the holidays are laid out in our regular year, we only have to use 3 days of PTO to turn the end of year holidays into a 2-week block, so it really wouldn't make that much difference. If they were worried about too much PTO on the books it would be far more effective to 1)have managers urge people to use PTO in the year it is accrued or 2)reduce the amount of PTO that people are allowed to carry over.

Besides, PTO on the books isn't really a problem unless the company is financially overextended (which Q is not). Unpaid PTO is really just an interest free loan from the employees, after all.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I'm getting three days off without pay this week, and I'm not sure how many next week. It's kind of a downer on the merriness of my Christmas.