I’ve been ‘on vacation’ for two weeks and it’s been nice to relax. I wasn’t able to unplug entirely, but did keep the work to a minimum. I checked email each day to delete junk and reply only if it seemed urgent, then closed Outlook and returned to vacation. Only visited the office once for about an hour to make a minor fix on the SQLSaturday website. I did end up breaking into my vacation for a two day business meeting – not the best timing, but needed to be done and was worth the time. Even that didn’t seem as painful as it might have.

I didn’t get as much done around the house as I had hoped, but crossed off a few things and not unhappy with that at all. I started writing on my book project and have found Panera a good place for that; free refills, free wireless, power, and enough noise that individual conversations don’t stand out. Much better than Starbucks for work, and it seems I’m not the only one that thinks so, Panera seems to be busy all the time.

On the shopping side we picked up a HP65451E Photosmart Plus printer mainly because it had built in wireless, and the initial set up was not bad at all. Right now I don’t have a home server, so printing anything has required going to kick my main home PC out of sleep first. Under a $100 for the convenience of printing as needed, and we put it closer to the family area instead of in my home office.

We also added a Keurig coffee machine at home after getting a pretty good price at Costco. We’ve had one at the office for over a year and it’s nice, the one for home is noticeably quieter. Not that the old model was bad, but it was noticeable when you brewed a cup. Because we got it at Costco we also got the drop in coffee filter so we can use ‘regular’ coffee and that works fine, though I’m not sure I would have dropped $15 on it separately!

Some years it seems like a relief when the holidays are over, this year seemed to be over all too fast. Good family time! I’ll be on slow this week, starting with a couple half days and then back to normal later in the week.