It’s that time of year again when I start suffering from a serious case of VOTB: Vacation on the Brain. Actually, such a thing does exist. I looked up “vacation brain” on Urban Dictionary. It defined it as “the 1-2 days before vacation when you can’t get much work done because your brain is already on vacation.” Only, I’m more than a month out from my first trip, and I’m already suffering. I’m busy planning. Busy day-dreaming. Busy thinking of some rest and relaxation and … oh, who am I fooling. Vacations are never restful and relaxing! Most of the time you come back more stressed out and exhausted than before you left.
Time for the factory-installed automobile dents
I think it is time, with all the modern and technologically-advanced features that come on new cars — backup cameras, side-curtain airbags, tush massagers — that we start requiring one more addition: the factory-installed dent. Don’t you think? Let’s make it standard on every new vehicle. Or better yet, right after you sign-off on the paperwork and hand the dealership a check, they should offer you a ball-peen hammer so you can go outside and ceremoniously put the first ding in your brand new auto. The inaugural ding.
Dread, panic and fear: That final week for over-caffeinated college grads
It’s that time of year again. When working on a college campus gives you a front row seat to all the excitement and worry and panic and dread that hangs over this collegiate land. The end of the semester. Exam week looms. Graduation sits perched on the horizon, taunting, haunting, teasing students. “Come and get me!” Some desperately want it. Others want it to go away. A few have been chasing it for so long, but still don’t have a clue how to bait the hook and catch it.
The home-sick, free vacation day
As a kid it was a free vacation day. An extra holiday. A get out of jail pass. A little slice of heaven. I’m talking about being sick. Or more importantly, being able to stay home when you were sick. It was just what the doctor ordered. Didn’t matter if it was mild sickness or dancing on death’s door, the minute your mother removed that thermometer from your mouth and uttered these words — “Nope, you’re not going to school” — it was party time!