If we could take a holiday

I think I'm finally sick of South Park, which is a mercy. I also think I'm getting into some sort of rhythm with my job - maybe because I've been getting bits and bobs of positive feedback and I'm a vain, vain person; maybe because I have to go to a conference for it in the Iberian peninsula at the tail end of the summer over a Thursday and Friday, so I can take some personal time on the Saturday and Sunday to lie on the beach, smoke hash and listen to fado. This fantasy has already become my happy place, or rather my bittersweet, moany place, fado being fado and Iberian hash being what it, also, is.

By way of vacation, that looks like all I get until the end of October when the F-word has his first school holidays and we head to Calabria and Sicily. There's the Pariyorker's wedding in Carcassone which I'm taking four days for in a couple of weeks, but that doesn't count as vacation because it's a wedding so I'll have to think logistically about it and spend at least one day brutally hungover.

I was talking to a co-worker last night from da land of England who was complaining about the paucity of vacations at our company - she's in her first year too and pissed that we only get 10 paid days off in that time, 20 in our second or something like that. I explained to her that in Canada two weeks off is the norm even for people who have been working in our types of job for years, and that we also didn't usually get to choose when we took our paid bank holidays (although I think that might be something special about our job, being all journalistic and shit, and news happening every day).

She looked at me and listened to the words, but you could tell she just wasn't taking them in. Finally she said that at least our company lets you take unpaid time off whenever you want it, and carried on talking about this and that, obviously as relieved conversationally to have gotten away from the realm of labour nonsense that is North America as I was professionally.