I'm still leanin' toward drivin' out. I need an excuse to take a couple of weeks off.
I just found out that I'm now in a "use it or lose it" situation with regard to vacation. This really bugs me since I thought I was grandfathered into the "old" company plan where I never would lose vacation. I seem to have lots of it and need to use some of it.
Then you should use it.
Especially if your company "caps" your vacation accruals like mine does.
You accumulate a certain number of hours and then the accrual automatically stops, even though you are still working.
ecurbh and I are having serious doubts about being able to go to shootmoot... I just haven't wanted to say so yet. We really want to see all of you, and also make our side trip to OK to ride with Becky... but we just aren't so sure we can.
First we have the situation with ecurbh's new job. His job is going really well and is a good opportunity for him that we don't want to risk with time off requests... and he won't have a week or two paid vacation to burn yet in June.
Second is the farm sitter situation. After the headache and expense of having to fly in a farm sitter from OHIO for this last trip, it fatigues me to even think about finding animal care for an even longer trip in the near future.
Third is money... we want... no NEED to buy a horse trailer this spring. We NEED to go trail riding this summer, any one of these years might be Bay's last, and we've built all our plans on this hobby that is taking up all our time and money and worry. We'd easily burn up the cash for half that horse trailer in this trip.
So that's our situation. The situation isn't making it ~easy~ to go.