Saturday, 05 August 2000
.....
My sweetie has left me. Sure, it's only for 36 hours if all goes well, but still, I'm a newlywed, you know? And it could stretch to as much as three days!
Let me 'splain. It's ok, there's plenty of time, I don't have to sum up.
We were scheduled to take a week's vacation -- 9 days, really -- in Washington, D.C. (our nation's capitol). That's where my in-laws live. "What?" you ask, "a vacation with your in-laws? That doesn't sound so great."
Well, the fact is that I do genuinely like my in-laws, and they like me. So take your mother-in-law stereotypes and shove them out the window, bub.
Anyhoo, here we were, four weeks from going on our trip, when a Deadline loomed. Not just any Deadline, but a drop-dead, user acceptance test must pass or we lose our customer and millions of dollars and no other customers will ever buy our products deadline. That kind of deadline. The kind where the boss says "Niel, I have to ask you not to go on your vacation."
I told him to forget about it.
He came to me again a few weeks later. His boss was asking me not to go on my vacation.
I told him to forget about it.
No, not really. Because he offered me whatever I wanted not to go on my vacation. Money, more vacation days (to be used later), slave girls, a fabulous yacht, anything.
I played hard ball.
See, the thing is, I've been working hard -- we have a Deadline, after all -- and I really need a vacation. I explained all this to my boss, and he certainly understood. He had had to cancel his own vacation this week, after all. I offered a compromise: fly me to D.C. Monday night, and I'll work all weekend.
Much to my suprise, he not only agreed, he said that he'd fly me up Saturday -- tomorrow -- night if everything was going well. I leapt at the chance.
My wife, though, we're forgetting about her. She had to take these days off a long time ago, and she can't just change her vacation days. So she went as planned, this afternoon. And now I'm stuck without her until my flight arrives at Dulles at 8:58 pm tomorrow.
She's gone off and left me before, you know, for a day or two at a time, but those were planned solo trips. This time I was supposed to be with her. Instead I'm alone, at home, eating tater tots and surfing the web.
And counting the hours.
This is The Unbearable... oh, forget it. <http://monkeyfist.com/articles/620>