Karma Hates Fake Sick Days...

I'm a strong advocate of the three-day weekend. Today is one of those Mondays which feels that it should belong to the weekend, not the anti-climactic start to the week. It was a beautiful weekend; yesterday was pure spring, in weather, temperature and mood. I got to drive with the windows down, letting the warm breeze in, listening to my music while the sun beat gently down. I like spring.

Don't think I'm fickle; I like winter too. I think we've established that. Yet to live in a place that has an obvious change in season is nice. I missed this during my L.A. years. Here, it's an obvious transition from winter to spring; there, it's obvious only to those who know their flowers and trees and the blooming patterns of each.

I had a nice weekend; the wine tasting was very nice. I like wine tastings because you get to try wines that there's no way you'd be able to afford normally. Well, at least people like me. Let's face it, if I spend more than $7 on a bottle of wine, I'm splurging. That's not to say I don't like nice wine but my budget doesn't allow for the luxury so I'm happy with my Sutter Home and Woodbridge for now though it is a happy day when Boujoulais goes on sale. My naughty little secret is that I adore french wine. Yes, I know, I'm British, I'm supposed to be anti-French. But....they make great wine. And bread. And cheese and their pastries are pretty nice too....So, uh, yeah, about that anti-French thing...

Just kidding. I really don't have anything against the French aside from that historical sense of nemesis they breed into us Brits as children. For now, it's little more than an acceptance that the French are rude. Now, if we ever go to war with them again because, say, Queen Elizabeth decides she wants to rule France too, we might have a problem.

So, aside from that, I got to be lazy. I laid down some ideas for my new novel but didn't get anything written. I ran out of time, which always seems to happen on weekends. Hence the fact that today would have been a great day to add to the weekend. However, I have this nagging sense of duty to my job and I have a ton of work to do. I've never been particularly good at faking sick days. This is not to say I haven't done it a few times but usually only when I know I'm not going to miss anything.

Of course, that sometimes backfires too. For example, two years ago, my good friend/coworker and I decided to go to Las Vegas for a weekend. As was our habit, one of us took a vacation day, the other took a sick day. It was my turn for the sick day. When we headed back to L.A. from Vegas, we got stuck in horrible traffic. The type where you just sit still for hours and get excited when the car in front of you rolls forward three feet. We discovered that the only way back to the city was closed off due to forest fires. We thus got to spend the night in lovely Hesperia, California. I had to fake yet another sick day while my friend had already planned on being off the next day anyway. Then there was the time I called in sick because I really, really wanted to work on a novel and I figured I'd use a mental health day. So I sat down to write and my computer monitor literally exploded. It had smoke pouring out of it and everything. On the other rare days where I've skived off work, they usually end up with me actually being sick which sort of takes away from the fun of a fake sick day.

I have since learned that I'm not destined to be a good fake-sick-day taker. Karma works against me.

Yet that's ok, really. I do have a lot of work to do. It's supposed to be another lovely spring day so I'll take a walk at lunch to enjoy it. Hopefully the day will go fast. If not, it'll go slow but it'll still be the same amount of time than if it went fast. It's just a matter of perception, I suppose.

Happy Monday.