Personal day!

I am a firm believer in taking advantage of the two personal days a year that are my "right". Some of my colleagues pride themselves on never missing a day of work, but I believe that the school where we work gives us personal days, mental health days and sick days for a reason - to be used. That said, I don't abuse sick days, and, knock on wood, I tend to be a fairly robust human being, so I never use up all of my sick days. In fact, at this point, they've probably accrued so that I could miss an entire month, if need by (fingers crossed that it won't happen!).

But personal days are different. They are guilt-free days that I happily take off. I normally use them for a random long weekend, but it felt GREAT to take this past Friday off. I had been feeling a bit sick, but a cold did not fully develop, so it seemed unethical to take a sick day. A personal day, however, was a totally different matter.

So, I put in the request on Wednesday night, got the okay, planned classes and on Thursday afternoon, I blissfully closed and locked the office, walking away from school for the weekend.

I must confess that I intended the personal day to also be a work day - the stacks of papers had piled up enough. Buuuttttt... It wasn't to be. I decided that the personal day would be truly personal. I enjoyed a leisurely walk with the dogs in the morning, then I went for a nice, slow, hilly run around mid-morning, followed up by an INTENSE massage. I rarely splurge on a massage, but someone recommended this cheap but clean place, so I've gone there twice. The deep-tissue experience was definitely intense but therapeutic. By the time early evening rolled around, I had baked this bread and made dinner, which was butternut squash raviolis with a sage and cream sauce. We washed dinner down with a Byron Pinot Noir. It was a far better bottle than we usually drink, but I think the massage and shopping left me feeling quite magnanimous.

Oh, yeah, did I mention that I went shopping?

I found this little number which I ended up wearing to the holiday party on Sunday night:

It was a fun dress to wear to a holiday party. Usually I stick to the comfort and familiarity of the LBD (I have one that is silk and another that is wool, so I can pretty much work them all year-long, if need be), but I loved the print and also the cut of this dress.

All in all, a successful personal day!