I’m on my second-to-last day of holidays and the itch to write a to do list is driving me nuts.  I was going to wait until Monday, but instead I thought I’d throw out a “not to do” list (see below) just to satisfy my hankering.

My three week’s of vacation has been quiet, which is good.  I got back into meditation, I read a couple of fiction books, which I haven’t done for a very long time, we went for a few days to the mainland and saw family and friends.  We played a little golf, did some “tourist in your home town” kind of things, and we spent a lot of time just sitting in our little backyard haven.  We set up the backyard to be just that; we created a nice garden, built a little patio with some comfortable patio furniture, all to give ourselves a space when the weather is nice to sit and relax.  And it has come together quite beautifully.  So I would say, all in all, it has been a good and restful vacation.

It’s not to say that I’m going to be overwhelmed with students come Monday.  They will trickle back, actually, because many of them are still on vacation themselves, or are planning to start back in September which is a couple of weeks away.  Instead I will be working hard on scoring several television shows, which I very much enjoy doing, although it’s quite time consuming.  I have a website where you can listen to some of those compositions I’ve written over the years…it’s called Moonstone Productions.

But before I get back to work, here are two lists based on my holiday reflections:

7 Things NOT To Do When You’re On Holidays

1. Quit counting down!  Only two weeks left, only one week left…I mean, you’re on holidays, how dumb is that??

2. Email is a curse.

3. Stop reading weird things to keep you from being bored.  Like the obituary column in the paper.  You’re not in there yet.

4. Impatience is meant for when you are in a hurry, not on holidays.

5. Avoid mirrors and reflective store windows at all times.  Just in case you’re getting fat.

6. Don’t upload your photos to Facebook until AFTER your vacation.  Yeah, what are the chances of that??

7. Don’t answer the phone when you see it’s from THAT number.  That’ll ruin a holiday state-of-mind quicker than anything.  In fact, turn your phone off altogether.

7 Signs My Holidays Have Had An Effect

1. Driving to my golf game yesterday, I was singing along with my iPod playlist in the car at the top of my lungs.  With the top down.  People could see me.

2. It’s now exactly 11:18am and I’m still in my pajamas.

3. The house is a mess.

4. There was an embarrassing amount of empty wine bottles when we took everything into the recycling depot for a refund the other day.

5. I can almost recite the dialogue from every episode of Downton Abbey, I’ve been watching them so much.

6. I broke Rule #5 of things NOT to do.  Ugh.

7. I have no idea what day it is.  Oh yeah, it’s the second-to-last day of my holidays 🙁  Back to reality…

IJ