5 Week Vacation

[Giorgina Makara]

Im going to Mexico (yay!) for a week at the end of May, and I was wondering if my 2 res would be okay without me. They're about 9 months old. My mom said to leave them with my aunt and uncle, but I'm not expecting them to feed them or anything because I think they're afraid of reptiles. Anyway, I figured I would keep a couple leaves of romaine in the tank for them to nibble on. Will they be okay for a week? Is there anything I need to do?

Your turtle will be fine. Do you have a timer for the lights? I usually just feed the turts before I go and then the day I come back. Drop some anacharis or lettuce in the tank and I'm on my way. They probably enjoy the break from me oggling over them all the time!

But the turts I was going to give one of those automatic fish feeders a try. I haven't bought it yet but I was going to put their reptomin, broken up, into it and see if it works for them. That way they would get a few pellets a day. Then I could drop in some dandilions and kale in and that I figured would be enough.

Last year, I constantly kept leaving my home for 5 days each week for about 8 or 9 weeks. My turtles were fine, they were each fed the same amount of food before I left and then fed when I came back. They were always healthy and even grew a bit. I am sure they were happy to not see me. I say they'll be fine. If it'll make you feel better, you can just drop the Anacharis on the tank and they'll munch on that, when I left Romaine in the tub it made my water murky.

As far as the turtle, yes, they'll be fine. Just make sure you top off the water level, feed them a bit extra for a few days prior to leaving and they'll be fine. Getting a timer would help. Don't sweat it. They won't miss you. Your presence and interaction is an annoyance to them anyway. They'll be glad you're gone and they'll be making rude jokes about you while you are away, anyway, so it's best you leave to allow them to have their own little vacation.

whew - so glad to read this post. I'll be gone for two weeks in late summer and I don't have any reliable person to come by and feed the beasties. A few stems of anacharis in the tank - never would have thought of that. Worst case scenario, maybe Prince will get off his lazy turtle butt and eat some of the goldfish.

There are two worries when leaving turtles: power outage and evaporation. Turtles can go for weeks and months without pellets. Leave lots of greens and feeder fish for them to chase. Make sure the feeder fish has places to hide or else the turts will mmw them down in a couple of days.

As for power outages, most filters will re-start, but some like a power filter will not. Some older filters may not restart automatically and thus burn. You should verify that your filter will restart.

I have left turtles for two weeks and they were fine. But leaving them for more than two weeks is risky - evaporation and just good to have someone to check on them to see everything is running OK. Feeding is the least of your worries.

At a recent team meeting, the topic was happiness. Part of the talk revolved around un-plugging or getting away from the office. When I opened the floor for discussion, it was clear the group as a whole struggled with the idea of taking time away from the office. Full transparency: I also struggle with the idea of taking extended time off. Yes, this is a problem, and yes, the first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one. As a supervisor, I find myself seemingly nudging my team to take vacation time, and I get the same from my supervisor. Vacation requests are often a day or two here and there or an afternoon rather than anything extending beyond that like a two-week vacation.

As I write this, I am approving time sheets and looking at the unused hours of paid time-off for the people on my team. It is excessive. My campus will only pay out roughly 175 hours if I were to leave. I have well over 350 hours. On average, my team has over 250 banked. The lowest amount was 160 hours. That individual has only been on our team a year. We have a problem with getting away. Many campus recreation professionals fall into this same issue as we operate 340 plus days a year and typically 18 hours a day and weekends. Unlike our faculty colleagues, our summers may be our busiest times.

Unfortunately, this is a common issue for most on my team. It seems this is also a common issue in society in general. According to research from the U.S. Travel Association, over half of employees at U.S. companies did not use all of their allocated time off during a calendar year. Why is this?

We all generally believe they are the only one that understands the intricacies of doing the jobs we have. However, living with the idea that they might actually be out of the office for two weeks will force employees not only to train others how to do their job but also put it in writing. My hope is this will lead to some inherent improvements in areas as fresh eyes get to see systems and processes.

As you move up, they may move into your roll or leave to step into a similar role, and they should be ready to do that. Make this a true win-win by giving your employees the opportunity to learn something new. With a plan in place, anxiety about leaving the office for extended periods should be less.

In the months leading up to the trip, I began planning ahead. Although my manager didn't expect me to work double-time before the trip, I knew the only way to not make that a reality would be to be as organized as possible and add a little bit more to each day leading up to our departure.

The first step was working backwards to create a realistic, yet reasonable timeline. I laid out all my upcoming deadlines, both for articles and projects, and split them into three categories: I can do in advance before leaving, I can push back until my return, I can delegate to other people on my team.

As the departure date neared, my manager and I communicated regularly about what I had coming up, what I anticipated happening while I was gone, and how I planned to tackle my assignments before I packed my bags and left the country. This list changed from meeting to meeting as so much of my list depended on other people, and it required both of us to be somewhat flexible.

Speaking of that to-do list, I revised it right after I went through my email. By looking at the priorities I had lined up for my return and checking those against the editorial calendar and my new inbox action items, I quickly put a plan in place for my first few days back. I should note that I found it helpful to ease back into things by returning mid-week. Just when I started to feel overwhelmed, the weekend arrived to save me. Then, that following Monday was back to business as usual.

So many feedings obviously produces a lot of starter discard. Luckily, you can use the discard from your starter at any time to make quick discard recipes like this tangy lemon poppyseed loaf or starter discard scones.

Yes, scrape the dark liquid or flour off the top into the compost and keep the starter below that in the jar, then feed it as usual. However, if you see signs of mold (white fuzzy, pink, or red), I would toss the entire starter and create a new one.

You can store your gluten-free starter in the fridge in the exact same way as a starter containing gluten. The same principles of fermentation apply: Colder temperatures reduce fermentation activity, and a home fridge is cold enough to keep a gluten-free starter on pause for up to three weeks.

The idea of an eight-day vacation as the ideal amount of time you should set aside for a trip has been thrown around for years following research a few years back from the Journal of Happiness Studies. Apparently, eight days is enough time for you to acclimate to travel and relax a bit, away from your day-to-day responsibilities.

What does that even mean? Sure, the more time you spend in a place, the more likely you are to wrap your head around transportation there, local customs, or the best places to get a cheap glass of wine.

Your Accommodations: Most often, I recommend sites like Booking.com and Hotels.com for your accommodation needs. Both offer loyalty programs to cut down your costs per day, and now offer listings that are more of the home or condo rental variety, which is great.

My favorite Airbnb alternative these days is Vrbo. Seeking even more wallet-friendly accommodations to reduce your cost per night? Try Hostelworld. Their picks are heavily vetted and reviewed to offer you a safe experience on a budget.

First problem, I have a big family vacation/holiday the week of Sept 25th. We've been planning it for months and I've had the PTO request for the week off approved a long time ago, too. Unless there's no alternative, I do NOT want to work that week. I checked company policy & I'm allowed to take PTO during my notice period.

Second problem, I have some company stock vesting on Wed Oct 4. If I finish my 2 weeks notice before then, I forfeit a very large amount of money. (I don't plan to take a break between jobs, so I'd be fine working up to Fri Oct 6th and starting a the new place on Mon Oct 9.)

Give 3 weeks notice this Monday (sept 18), so I'll have 2 working weeks of transition time + the week of vacation in the middle. However, I'm concerned that my manager will say something like "oh dont worry about the vacation, this can be your two weeks notice & it'll be 1 working week" and then I'd lose the stock since my last day would be Sept 29th. (I'm NOT worried that they'll fire me or anything; I just think my manager would be trying to be nice by giving me an extra week off).

Give 2 weeks notice next Friday (Sept 22) before I leave for the vacation. The first vacation week would be my first week's notice but I wouldn't work, and then I'd have 1 working week for transitions, etc. However I don't want to leave with bad feelings, and there's definitely some stuff I'd have to transition/knowledge transfer before I leave. How bad is it to do this? Is this "done" or is it considered super nasty?

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