Bill's Bulletin Board
By Bill Rea

Some years ago, between the closing of the Garden of Eden and my birth, some smart person came up with the idea of a vacation.

That meant that a person employed in some form of servitude in exchange for money was expected to cease labours for a specified period, usually in weekly increments. The idea was to give that human beast of burden the chance to focus energies and attention of other matters, mainly of a recreational nature, and usually some distance from the routine domicile. The employers who signed the cheques were supposed to get a rested and relaxed servant in return, every ready to attack his or her duties with a new-found sense of vigour.

And usually, things work that way, at least as far as normal people are concerned.

But when it comes to abnormal people like myself, well vacation time can be one major, stressfully relaxing fidgeting session. Is any of this making sense?

As some of you may know, I spent most of last week on vacation, putting in almost a full day on the job last Friday (Aug. 10), then hustling home to finish loading the car and collect my wife, then rushing back to the office to do more work. I'll bet this still doesn't make any sense.

But finally, we were on our way, heading in the general direction of Muskoka, arriving at our destination before afternoon had officially switched to evening. Time to start relaxing.

Of course it all depends on what each of us considers relaxation. As my wife frequently observes (usually in a tone of lamentation), I seem most relaxed when I'm working. Thus I was able to get her up early this past Friday (Aug. 17) to sniff some of the fresh Muskokan air shortly after 5 a.m. so we could load the car and be off by 6, so I could be in the office (traffic permitting) by 9. Okay, that scheduling didn't quite work out as planned. We were were a little behind our time, not getting away until about 6:30, so it was a little after 9 before I made it to the office. Are you still trying to make sense of this?

"Ants toil while grasshoppers sing and play," someone once said in the movies, and I must be one of the ants.

Even while I'm on vacation, I keep thinking of work. I even called the office twice while I was away on my cell phone from Muskoka to make sure things were in order.

"Pardon me if I have to hang up in a hurry," I said on both occasions. "Beth'll kill me if she catches me making this call."

And for those of you who might be ready to accuse me of keeping things from my beloved, I fessed up to both calls within an hour of them being made.

Besides, we took and made a whole mess of family related calls while we were away, which is not supposed to be customary on vacation.

True, Beth made the usual call to her mother upon our arrival, assuring her we made it okay. Then we got a call from Beth's brother, who was bringing his wife and kids up for a couple of days, to apprise us of their travel progress. My sister-in-law brought her cell phone with her, and it went off with a certain amount of frequency. My brother was also on his way to spend a couple of days by the lake, and he called a couple of times too.

Add to that mix the fact that we had TV and radio. A radio report of a barn fire in Caledon prompted some concern, since the general location given on the air included the area of Beth's brother's dairy farm. That prompted another call, made with some sense of urgency, to make sure all was in order with my inlaws and the family operation. It was.

So we were never really out of touch with the rest of the world we were supposed to be getting away from. My daily trips to the local IGA for the Toronto newspapers didn't help much, either.

But despite my bad habit of fretting over the work that I'm not doing while on vacation, we did get a lot of stuff done.

My brother gave me one of those remote-controlled airplanes for Christmas last year, and my four-year-old nephew assisted me in my efforts to get it aloft. The result was a badly cut finger (mine), a great deal of egg on my face and the suspicion that my nephew was making some rather pithy observations about his uncle to another little kid, who's family was staying in the same establishment. I plan to re-read the manual.

Beth and I were also able to get in some golf (badly played), touring (Muskoka is a big place), a lot of swimming, a respectable amount of reading, a reprehensible amount of indulgence in food and drink and an appropriate amount of just doing nothing. I'll bet this is starting to make sense.

I think Beth has come to terms with the fact that I am never able to completely put work on the back burner, but the dear lady does recognize effort when she sees it. She even complimented me, stating I was more relaxed this year than I was on vacation last year. That was a little strange, because I thought I had done a pretty fair job of chilling out last year, but who am I to turn down praise.

Now I'll bet a lot of you are waiting for me to write something about how good it is to get back to work. Not!

I arrived at work a little late Friday morning, and was promptly told the email and Internet connections in the office were down. Most of the day's efforts were devoted to trying to correct that, with me spending part of my time crawling under desks to check various connections in an unholy mess of wires.

I think I need a vacation, except I know what I'd probably do with the time off if I got it.

Does this make any sense? Where is it written that this is supposed to make sense?