Short Vacation Quotes

The only problem with politicians taking two week vacations every year is it’s about 50 weeks too short.


Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next - and disappear. That's why it's so important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives.

I think that when two people are able to weave that kind of invisible thread of understanding and sympathy between each other, that delicate web, they should not risk tearing it. It is too rare, and it lasts too short a time at best....

Life's too short" is repeated often enough to be a cliche, but this time it's true. You don't have enough time to be both unhappy and mediocre. It's not just pointless, it's painful. Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you ought to set up a life you don't need to escape from.

It's when I'm around some people that my entire vocabulary goes on vacation. Like now, when Dave's walking next to me wearing an old black singlet and board shorts and the tattoo of a bird on his wrist, every single word in my head except "no" and "huh" is lying somewhere on a beack getting a suntan

The need for frequent chemical vacations from intolerable selfhood and repulsive surroundings will undoubtedly remain. What is needed is a new drug which will relieve and console our suffering species without doing more harm in the long run than it does good in the short.

There can’t possibly be anything more beautiful than Seaside Beach at sunset.

Life's short. Eat dessert first, work less and vacation MORE!!

Don’t ever forget the things I taught you. Life’s too short, Adrian. It is too fucking short. Eat the cake, take the vacation, dance in the rain. And don’t do anything that’s going to break your heart. I’m just sorry that in this case, that thing was me.

Myself, I love the woods. I love the wild places. Ask me where I'd go for a vacation and it invariably involves the open country. Ask me where I'd live, however, and it would always be in the center, in the beating heart of a city.

This is exactly the sort of thing that makes traveling wonderful for me, the reason I defied everyone. The two of us together like we have always been, not saying anything, not doing anything special, just on vacation. I know nothing lasts, but even when you know that things are just about over, sometimes you can run back and take a little bit more and no one will notice.

people are like the tide. Some come into your life and bring things you’ll only need for a short time, and others will bring things you’ll carry forever. But some are just destined to disappear beneath the waves.

People frequently ask me why I work so hard - prolong hours, infrequent vacations, and never calling in sick or missing work for any other reason. The short answer is that work is indivisible from life itself.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? I have a friend at the gym who knew Jack LaLanne (Google him if the name is unfamiliar). Jack used to say it’s okay to take a day off from working out. But on that day, you’re not allowed to eat. That’s the short way of saying you’re not really allowed to get unfocused. Take a vacation. Gather yourself. But know that the only reason you’re here on this planet is to follow your star and do what the Muse tells you. It’s amazing how a good day’s work will get you right back to feeling like yourself.

As usual, Junko thought about Jack London's 'To Build a Fire.' It was the story of a man traveling alone through the snowy Alaskan interior and his attempts to light a fire. He would freeze to death unless he could make it catch. The sun was going down. Junko hadn't read much fiction, but that one short story she had read again and again, ever since her teacher had assigned it as an essay topic during summer vacation of her first year in high school. The scene of the story would always come vividly to mind as she read. She could feel the man's fear and hope and despair as if they were her own; she could sense the very pounding of his heart as he hovered on the brink of death. Most important of all, though, was the fact that the man was fundamentally longing for death. She knew that for sure. She couldn't explain how she knew, but she knew it from the start. Death was really what he wanted. He knew that it was the right ending for him. And yet he had to go on fighting with all his might. He had to fight against an overwhelming adversary in order to survive. What most shook Junko was this deep-rooted contradiction. The teacher ridiculed her view. 'Death is really what he wanted? That's a new one for me! And strange! Quite 'original,' I'd have to say.' He read her conclusion aloud before the class, and everybody laughed. But Junko knew. All of them were wrong. Otherwise how could the ending of the story be so quiet and beautiful?

Altogether, I had derived little benefit from being in Balbec, for which reason I was all the more determined to come back one day. I felt I had spent too short a time there.

That advocate is lionized throughout the whole forum, and fills all the place with a great crowd that stretches farther than he can be heard, yet he says: “When will vacation time come?

Tyler rolls out of bed, sniffs the armpits of yesterday's T-shirt, tosses it aside, gets another out of the drawer. His dad sometimes asks him why he sets his alarm so early -- it's summer vacation, after all -- and Tyler can't seem to make him understand that every day is important, especially those filled with warmth and sunlight and no particular responsibilities. It's as if there's some little voice deep inside him, warning him not to waste a minute, not a single one, because time is short.

One of the problems of the vacation is money, father.” “Oh, I shouldn’t worry about a thing like that at your age.” “You see, I’ve run rather short.” “Yes?” said my father without any sound of interest. “In fact I don’t quite know how I’m going to get through the next two months.” “Well, I’m the worst person to come to for advice. I’ve never been ‘short’ as you so painfully call it. And yet what else could you say? Hard up? Penurious? Distressed? Embarrassed? Stony-broke?” (Snuffle.) “On the rocks? In Queer Street? Let us say you are in Queer Street and leave it at that. Your grandfather once said to me, ‘Live within your means, but if you do get into difficulties, come to me. Don’t go to the Jews.

Mummyji, however, is stuck at Mughal-e-Azam. She has raised her daughter to be independent and liberal, because that was the cue she got from others around her. She thinks of the freedom she allows her daughter as a short vacation.

I see it like this - people are like the tide. Some come into your life and bring things you'll only need for a short time, and others will bring things you'll carry forever. But some are just destined to disappear beneath the waves.

suit. He was reading The Wall Street Journal. The lady across the table was probably Mrs. Dare, though all I could see of her were hot pink fingernails and the cover of Condé Nast Traveler. Why she’d be reading about vacations while she was on vacation, I wasn’t sure. Rachel stood at the porch railing and sighed. She wore Bermuda shorts and her Van Gogh T-shirt. (Yeah, Rachel was trying to teach me about art, but don’t get too impressed. I only remembered the dude’s name because he cut his ear off.)

How wonderful are islands! Islands in space, like this one I have come to, ringed about by miles of water, linked by no bridges, no cables, no telephones. An island from the world and the world's life. Islands in time, like this short vacation of mine. The past and the future are cut off; only the present remains. Existence in the present gives island living an extreme vividness and purity. One lives like a child or a saint in the immediacy of here and now. Every day, every act, is an island, washed by time and space, and has an island's completion. People, too, become like islands in such an atmosphere, self-contained, whole, serene; respecting other people's solitude, not intruding on their shores, standing back in reverence before the miracle of another individual.

The millions of vacationers who came here every year before Katrina were mostly unaware of this poverty. French Quarter tourists were rarely exposed to the reality beneath the Disneyland Gomorrah that is projected as 'N'Awlins,' a phrasing I have never heard a local use and a place, as far as I can tell, that I have never encountered despite my years in the city. The seemingly average, white, middle-class Americans whooped it up on Bourbon Street without any thought of the third-world lives of so many of the city's citizens that existed under their noses. The husband and wife, clad in khaki shorts, feather boa, and Mardi Gras beads well out of season, beheld a child tap-dancing on the street for money and clapped along to his beat without considering the obvious fact that this was an early school-day afternoon and that the child should be learning to read, not dancing for money. Somehow they did not see their own child beneath the dancer's black visage. Nor, perhaps, did they see the crumbling buildings where the city's poor live as they traveled by cab from the French Quarter to Commander's Palace. They were on vacation and this was not their problem.

I've never understood America,"said the king. "Neither do we, sir. You might say we have two governments, kind of overlapping. First we have the elected government. It's Democratic or Republican, doesn't make much difference, and then there's corporation government." "They get along together, these governments?" "Sometimes," said Tod. "I don't understand it myself. You see, the elected government pretends to be democratic, and actually it is autocratic. The corporation governments pretend to be autocratic and they're all the time accusing the others of socialism. They hate socialism." "So I have heard," said Pippin. "Well, here's the funny thing, sir. You take a big corporation in America, say like General Motors or Du Pont or U.S. Steel. The thing they're most afraid of is socialism, and at the same time they themselves are socialist states." The king sat bolt upright. "Please?" he said. "Well, just look at it, sir. They've got medical care for employees and their families and accident insurance and retirement pensions, paid vacations -- even vacation places -- and they're beginning to get guaranteed pay over the year. The employees have representation in pretty nearly everything, even the color they paint the factories. As a matter of fact, they've got socialism that makes the USSR look silly. Our corporations make the U.S. Government seem like an absolute monarchy. Why, if the U.S. government tried to do one-tenth of what General Motors does, General Motors would go into armed revolt. It's what you might call a paradox sir.

...We could have given you two some time to yourselves." I laugh one, short, humorless burst. "What could I have said, could you vacate the apartments for a while so Percy and I can engage in illicit activities?" "Not illegal." "They are where I come from." I shake my head staring down at my feet. "I couldn't have. I've been struck too many times." "Then maybe I should have said it to you sooner. You needn't hide around us," he says. "I'm sorry you ever felt you had to, and that the world make you feel as though you had to.

After that I was free to enjoy the rest of my unforgettable vacation, and now that I had seen the life of the stars up close, I was cured once and for all of my delusions of fame.

The sad truth is, John and I and the kids only took Route 66 once on our trips to Disneyland. Our family, like the rest of America, succumbed to the lure of faster highways, more direct routes, higher speed limits. We forgot about taking the slow way. It makes you wonder if something inside us knows that our lives are going to pass faster than we could ever realize. So we run around like chickens about to lose our heads. Which makes our little two- or three-week vacations with our families more important than ever... As for the time that elapsed between those vacations, that’s another thing altogether. It seems to have all passed breathlessly, like some extended whisper of days, months, years, decades. (pp.39-40)

Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next—and disappear. That’s why it’s important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives.

Your footwear tends to run on the exceedingly tall side. You know we all know you're short, right? It's not, like a secret." "Hush." "I like that you're tiny. I like that I could carry you around in my pocket." I shove his arm with my shoulder. "I said hush." "And if we ever vacation together, you can sit on my lap to save airfare." I shove him harder, and he laughs.

Well, to make a long story short, I had this long talk with my baseball coach. And I started reading about depression. I learned that it can be serious. You shouldn’t ignore it. Talking about it can help. So can a long trip.

Was it possible that I—short, too full-figured, wearing glasses, I diligent but not intelligent, I who pretended to be cultured, informed, when I wasn’t—could have believed that he would like me even just for the length of a vacation?

At the beginning of summer vacation, Jeanette Nord sent me a letter inviting me to come and stay at her house for a week. She had enclosed a snapshot of her and the kittens, now cats. Ma said she couldn’t understand why I didn’t take the Nords up on their offer. I couldn’t quite understand it, either; I just didn’t want to. I preferred to spend my summer days watching TV or sitting out on the porch reading movie magazines and thick paperback romances with the top of my shorts unsnapped for comfort.

Maybe that’s what happens on vacation. You leave all your stuff behind, all the baggage, and for a short period of time, you can forge an entirely new identify. Keeping only the best parts of yourself and adding new facets, like trying on a costume for size.

Early in the summer of 1980, shortly after his son turned three, A. and the boy spent a week together in the country, in a house owned by friends who were off on vacation. A. noticed that Superman was playing in a local theater and decided to take the boy, on the off-chance that he would be able to sit through it. For the first half of the film, the boy was calm, working his way through a bin of popcorn, whispering his questions as A. had instructed him to do, and taking the business of exploding planets, rocket ships, and outer space without much fuss. But then something happened. Superman began to fly, and all at once the boy lost his composure. His mouth dropped open, he stood up in his seat, spilled his popcorn, pointed at the screen, and began to shout: "Look! Look! He's flying!

You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next—and disappear. That’s why it’s important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible

If God were always visible, humans could not exist at all. “No one can see Me and live,” says God. “If we continue to hear the voice of God, we will die,” say the Israelites at Sinai. But if God is always invisible, hidden, imperceptible, then what difference does His existence make? It will always be as if He were not there. The answer to this dilemma is holiness. Holiness represents those points in space and time where God becomes vivid, tangible, a felt presence. Holiness is a break in the self-sufficiency of the material world, where infinity enters space and eternity enters time. In relation to time, it is Shabbat. In relation to space, it is the Tabernacle. These, in the Torah, are the epicentres of the sacred. We can now understand what makes them holy. Shabbat is the time when humans cease, for a day, to be creators and become conscious of themselves as creations. The Tabernacle is the space in which humans cease to be masters – “fill the earth and subdue it” – and become servants. Just as God had to practise self-restraint to make space for the finite, so human beings have to practise self-restraint to make space for the infinite. The holy, in short, is where human beings renounce their independence and self-sufficiency, the very things that are the mark of their humanity, and for a moment acknowledge their utter dependence on He who spoke and brought the universe into being. The universe is the space God makes for man. The holy is the space man makes for God. The secular is the emptiness created by God to be filled by a finite universe. The holy is the emptiness in time and space vacated by humans so that it can be filled by the infinite presence of God.

Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next—and disappear. That’s why it’s important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives. William James first wrote about the curious warping and foreshortening of psychological time in his Principles of Psychology in 1890: “In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollections of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous and long-drawn-out,” he wrote. “But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse.” Life seems to speed up as we get older because life gets less memorable as we get older. “If to remember is to be human, then remembering more means being more human,” said Ed.

Though Wilder blamed her family’s departure from Kansas on “blasted politicians” ordering white squatters to vacate Osage lands, no such edict was issued over Rutland Township during the Ingallses’ tenure there. Quite the reverse is true: only white intruders in what was known as the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma were removed to make way for the displaced Osages arriving from Kansas. (Wilder mistakenly believed that her family’s cabin was located forty—rather than the actual fourteen—miles from Independence, an error that placed the fictional Ingalls family in the area affected by the removal order.) Rather, Charles Ingalls’s decision to abandon his claim was almost certainly financial, for Gustaf Gustafson did indeed default on his mortgage. The exception: Unlike their fictional counterparts, the historical Ingalls family’s decision to leave Wisconsin and settle in Kansas was not a straightforward one. Instead it was the eventual result of a series of land transactions that began in the spring of 1868, when Charles Ingalls sold his Wisconsin property to Gustaf Gustafson and shortly thereafter purchased 80 acres in Chariton County, Missouri, sight unseen. No one has been able to pinpoint with any certainty when (or even whether) the Ingalls family actually resided on that land; a scanty paper trail makes it appear that they actually zigzagged from Kansas to Missouri and back again between May of 1868 and February of 1870. What is certain is that by late February of 1870 Charles Ingalls had returned the title to his Chariton County acreage to the Missouri land dealer, and so for simplicity’s sake I have chosen to follow Laura Ingalls Wilder’s lead, contradicting history by streamlining events to more closely mirror the opening chapter of Little House on the Prairie, and setting this novel in 1870, a year in which the Ingalls family’s presence in Kansas is firmly documented.

Zenosyne. It's actually just after you're born that life flashes before your eyes. Entire aeons are lived in those first few months when you feel inseparable from the world itself, with nothing to do but watch it passing by. At first, time is only felt vicariously, as something that happens to other people. You get used to living in the moment, because there's nowhere else to go. But soon enough, life begins to move, and you learn to move with it. And you take it for granted that you're a different person every year, Upgraded with a different body...a different future. You run around so fast, the world around you seems to stand still. Until a summer vacation can stretch on for an eternity. You feel time moving forward, learning its rhythm, but now and then it skips a beat, as if your birthday arrives one day earlier every year. We should consider the idea that youth is not actually wasted on the young. That their dramas are no more grand than they should be. That their emotions make perfect sense, once you adjust for inflation. For someone going through adolescence, life feels epic and tragic simply because it is: every kink in your day could easily warp the arc of your story. Because each year is worth a little less than the last. And with each birthday we circle back, and cross the same point around the sun. We wish each other many happy returns. But soon you feel the circle begin to tighten, and you realize it's a spiral, and you're already halfway through. As more of your day repeats itself, you begin to cast off deadweight, and feel the steady pull toward your center of gravity, the ballast of memories you hold onto, until it all seems to move under its own inertia. So even when you sit still, it feels like you're running somewhere. And even if tomorrow you will run a little faster, and stretch your arms a little farther, you'll still feel the seconds slipping away as you drift around the bend. Life is short. And life is long. But not in that order.

Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert talks about this phenomenon in his 2006 book, Stumbling on Happiness. “The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real,” he writes. “The frontal lobe—the last part of the human brain to evolve, the slowest to mature, and the first to deteriorate in old age—is a time machine that allows each of us to vacate the present and experience the future before it happens.” This time travel into the future—otherwise known as anticipation—accounts for a big chunk of the happiness gleaned from any event. As you look forward to something good that is about to happen, you experience some of the same joy you would in the moment. The major difference is that the joy can last much longer. Consider that ritual of opening presents on Christmas morning. The reality of it seldom takes more than an hour, but the anticipation of seeing the presents under the tree can stretch out the joy for weeks. One study by several Dutch researchers, published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life in 2010, found that vacationers were happier than people who didn’t take holiday trips. That finding is hardly surprising. What is surprising is the timing of the happiness boost. It didn’t come after the vacations, with tourists bathing in their post-trip glow. It didn’t even come through that strongly during the trips, as the joy of travel mingled with the stress of travel: jet lag, stomach woes, and train conductors giving garbled instructions over the loudspeaker. The happiness boost came before the trips, stretching out for as much as two months beforehand as the holiday goers imagined their excursions. A vision of little umbrella-sporting drinks can create the happiness rush of a mini vacation even in the midst of a rainy commute. On some level, people instinctively know this. In one study that Gilbert writes about, people were told they’d won a free dinner at a fancy French restaurant. When asked when they’d like to schedule the dinner, most people didn’t want to head over right then. They wanted to wait, on average, over a week—to savor the anticipation of their fine fare and to optimize their pleasure. The experiencing self seldom encounters pure bliss, but the anticipating self never has to go to the bathroom in the middle of a favorite band’s concert and is never cold from too much air conditioning in that theater showing the sequel to a favorite flick. Planning a few anchor events for a weekend guarantees you pleasure because—even if all goes wrong in the moment—you still will have derived some pleasure from the anticipation. I love spontaneity and embrace it when it happens, but I cannot bank my pleasure solely on it. If you wait until Saturday morning to make your plans for the weekend, you will spend a chunk of your Saturday working on such plans, rather than anticipating your fun. Hitting the weekend without a plan means you may not get to do what you want. You’ll use up energy in negotiations with other family members. You’ll start late and the museum will close when you’ve only been there an hour. Your favorite restaurant will be booked up—and even if, miraculously, you score a table, think of how much more you would have enjoyed the last few days knowing that you’d be eating those seared scallops on Saturday night!

Will had discovered, even before coming to the City, that his muse was, like all muses, an incredibly finicky and temperamental mistress. He'd had several good short stories over the years, a few of them bordering on brilliant, and some of them had even been published; but these gifts from his imaginary goddess of inspiration were, in truth, frustratingly infrequent. She would hang around and whisper in his ears for hours, or days, or weeks, and then suddenly go off on an extended vacation without informing Will of her whereabouts or when she planned to return.

I felt more at home in the army than I did in my house. (I feel more at home in my office now than I do at home, and I don't feel at home there. I get along better with the people there.) I don't think I ever had a good time at home on a furlough. I don't think I've ever had a good time on a vacation (I'm not sure I've ever had a good time anywhere); I find myself waiting for them to end. We have too many holidays. Birthdays and anniversaries come around too often. I'm always buying presents or writing out checks. The years are too short, the days are too long.

Naturally, it is too good to be true. Diamond's idea of helping you with your job is to lecture you on the obsolete and retrograde nature of salaried employment. He goes on at length, in his constricted nasal manner, about how, in our social history, jobs are an aberration, a flash in the pan. Human beings have been on earth for a million years, he claims (you think he's mistaken about that), but have only had jobs for the past five hundred years (that doesn't sound right, either), an inconsequential period, relatively speaking. People have always worked, he explains, but they have only held jobs with wages and employers and vacations and pink slips--for a very short time.

It was safe to say, standing as close to him as she was, that she was very aware of the rise of his aroused sensuality. Even if his hand had not been burning across her skin, the unapologetic hardness of his body pressing with erotic familiarity against hers would have told her how very much lost in his need for her he was. Gideon had to be the most sexual creature she had ever encountered. And yet, only a few short days ago, if she had been asked her opinion on that particular subject, she would have made suppositions that were quite the opposite. Was he telling her the truth when he said it was because of her? “I never lie, my beauty,” he murmured, reminding her of her own understandings about that. His lips against her hair, just beneath the back of her ear, were warm and smiling even as he kissed the thrillingly sensitive spot. “And even if I were just a dirty old man, Neliss,” he whispered like the warmth of sunshine in her ear, “it would never account for the tenderness you see in me even now.” He tightened his hold on her, drawing her so close that he burned hotly against her. “And you would have been in my bed, beneath the press of my body, open and inviting me in by now.” The raw observation and the aggressive heat of his body made her grasp, a mix between shocked sensibilities and excited delight. Legna looked up into his famished eyes, licking her lips with a hunger all her own. “If we do not find something to do, we will end up in bed together,” she reminded him with her heart pounding so obviously against his chest. “Yes. Perhaps without the intention of rousing until Jacob and Bella’s Beltane wedding,” he mused, the pleasure of the speculation quite evident in his expression. It was an attractive thought to Legna as well, especially as his mouth dipped beneath her hair to continue to tease the sensitive skin of her neck. But just the same, she took matters into her own hand, so to speak, and teleported out of his grasp, reappearing all the way on the other side of the room. Finding his arms so abruptly vacated, Gideon gave her an eloquent look. She was going to pay for her little trick one day, and his eyes promised it to her as thoroughly as a worded threat.

His cell-phone rang. Dominic fumbled for it on the nightstand next to the couch, the dim lights not helping his endeavour. He had piercing, generic, banal fluorescent lights on his face all the time at work and at University, it was so bad it made him loathe even natural sunlight. Lucky this apartment’s living room light had a dimmer. He flipped open his phone and said hello. ‘Hey Dom, how you doin’?’ a voice boomed. It was Ben. They proceeded to talk about the upcoming exams, which were deceptively close as it was week 10 at the moment. Yes, they would be alright. Yes, they would meet up afterwards. No, he hadn’t studied more than Ben had. As he clapped the phone closed after the genial conversation reached its natural nadir, he had forgotten most of what had been said

Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next—and disappear. That’s why it’s important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives. William James first wrote about the curious warping and foreshortening of psychological time in his Principles of Psychology in 1890: “In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day.

When his support team on the surface finally called down to him on September 14, the day his experiment was scheduled to wrap up, it was only August 20 in his journal. He thought only a month had gone by. His experience of time’s passage had compressed by a factor of two. Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next—and disappear. That’s why it’s important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives.

Were you happy when you painted these pictures?’ asked Mr. Rochester presently. ‘I was absorbed, sir: yes, and I was happy. To paint them, in short, was to enjoy one of the keenest pleasures I have ever known.’ ‘That is not saying much. Your pleasures, by your own account, have been few; but I daresay you did exist in a kind of artist’s dreamland while you blent and arranged these strange tints. Did you sit at them long each day?’ ‘I had nothing else to do, because it was the vacation, and I sat at them from morning till noon, and from noon till night: the length of the midsummer days favoured my inclination to apply.’ ‘And you felt self-satisfied with the result of your ardent labours?’ ‘Far from it. I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and my handiwork: in each case I had imagined something which I was quite powerless to realise.

Do you condemn the kids for not having been blessed with I.Q.s of 120? Can you condemn the kids? Can you condemn anyone? Can you condemn the colleges that give all you need to pass a board of education examination? Do you condemn the board of education for not making the exams stiffer, for not boosting the requirements, for not raising salaries, for not trying to attract better teachers, for not making sure their teachers are better equipped to teach? Or do you condemn the meatheads all over the world who drift into the teaching profession drift into it because it offers a certain amount of paycheck every month security ,vacation-every summer luxury, or a certain amount of power , or a certain easy road when the other more difficult roads are full of ruts? Oh he’d seen the meatheads, all right; he’d seen them in every education class he’d ever attended. The simpering female idiots who smiled and agreed with the instructor, who imparted vast knowledge gleaned from profound observations made while sitting at the back of the classroom in some ideal high school in some ideal neighborhood while an ideal teacher taught ideal students. Or the men who were perhaps the worst, the men who sometimes seemed a little embarrassed, over having chosen the easy road, the road the security, the men who sometimes made a joke about the women not realizing they themselves were poured from the same streaming cauldron of horse manure. Had Rick been one of these men? He did not believe so…. He had wanted to teach, had honestly wanted to teach. He had not considered the security or the two-month vacation, or the short tours. He had simply wanted to teach, and he had considred taeaching a worth-while profession. He had, in fact, considered it the worthiest profession. He had held no illusions about his own capabilities. He could not paint, or write, or compose, or sculpt, or philopshize deeply, or design tall buildings. He could contribute nothing to the world creatively and this had been a disappointment to him until he’d realized he could be a big creator by teaching. For here were minds to be sculptured, here were ideas to be painted, here were lives to shape. To spend his allotted time on earth as a bank teller or an insurance salesman would have seemed an utter waste to Rick. Women, he had reflected had no such problem. Creation had been given to them as a gift and a woman was self-sufficient within her own creative shell. A man needed more which perhaps was one reason why a woman could never understand a man’s concern for the job he had to do.

He plunged into the foliage, and was swept into a humid, wet world of towering trees, animal chirps and thick ferns. After a few steps, he turned, and could barely make out the village. He walked a few more steps. He could see nothing now except for the thick trees and long ferns and grasses that surrounded him. He was enveloped into the confined space between trees, surrounded by the jungle heat and staccato chirps. He turned in the direction of the village, but could only see thick, dense trees. Hoping his sense of direction had not been muddled, he turned back around to the direction of the alleged ocean, and kept walking. Now the calls he heard sounded more and more strange. How far had he walked by now? The jungle, or rain forest, whatever it was, did not relent, and he kept on weaving into narrow gaps between the sturdy ferns and towering trees, pressing onwards. This continued for a seemingly oppressive amount of time, and he began to doubt his decision. To come to this place. To take a chance with his life, which was going in the right direction. Why couldn’t he be happy with the normal and mundane, he cursed, scolding his own stubbornness

Susannah smiled at them nervously, then looked up at the route-map. "Hello, Blaine." "HOWDY, SUSANNAH OF NEW YORK." Her heart was pounding, her armpits were damp, and here was something she had first discovered way back in the first grade: it was hard to begin. It was hard to stand up in front of the class and be first with your song, your joke, your report on how you spent your summer vacation ... or your riddle, for that matter. The one she had decided upon was one from Jake Chambers's crazed English essay, which he had recited to them almost verbatim during their long palaver after leaving the old people of River Crossing. The essay, titled "My Understanding of Truth," had contained two riddles, one of which Eddie had already used on Blaine. "SUSANNAH? ARE YOU THERE, L'IL COWGIRL?" Teasing again, but this time the teasing sounded light, good-natured. Good-humored. Blaine could be charming when he got what he wanted. Like certain spoiled children she had known. "Yes, Blaine, I am, and here is my riddle. What has four wheels and flies?" There was a peculiar click, as if Blaine were mimicking the sound of a man popping his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It was followed by a brief pause. When Blaine replied, most of the jocularity had gone out of his voice. "THE TOWN GARBAGE WAGON, OF COURSE. A CHILD'S RIDDLE. IF THE REST OF YOUR RIDDLES ARE NO BETTER, I WILL BE EXTREMELY SORRY I SAVED YOUR LIVES FOR EVEN A SHORT WHILE.

Max’s unflinching gaze never left that house. “What do you think’s going to happen?” Jules asked him quietly, “if you let yourself peel that giant S off your shirt and take a nap? If you let yourself spend an hour, an evening, screw it, a whole weekend doing nothing more than breaking and taking enjoyment from living in the moment? What’s going to happen, Max, if—after this is over—you give yourself permission to actually enjoy Gina’s company? To sit with her arms around you and let yourself be happy. You don’t have to be happy forever—just for that short amount of time.” Max didn’t say anything. So Jules went on. “And then maybe you could let yourself be happy again the next weekend. Not too happy,” he added quickly. “We wouldn’t want that. But just happy in a small way, because this amazing woman is part of your life, because she makes you smile and probably fucks like a dream and yeah—see? You are listening. Don’t kill me, I was just making sure you hadn’t checked out.” Max was giving him that look. “Are you done?” “Oh, sweetie, we have nowhere to go and hours til dawn. I’m just getting started.” Shit, Max said with his body language. But he didn’t stand up and walk away. He just sat there. Across the street, nothing moved. And then it still didn’t move. But once again, Max was back to watching it not move. Jules let the silence go for an entire minute and a half. “Just in case I didn’t make myself clear,” he said, “I believe with all my heart that you deserve—completely—whatever happiness you can grab. I don’t know what damage your father did to you but—” “I don’t know if I can do that,” Max interrupted. “You know, what you said. Just go home from work and . . .” Holy shit, Max was actually talking. About this. Or at least he had been talking. Jules waited for more, but Max just shook his head. “You know what happens when you work your ass off?” Jules finally asked, and then answered the question for him. “There’s no ass there the next time. So then you have to work off some other vital body part. You have to give yourself time to regrow, recharge. When was the last time you took a vacation? Was it nineteen ninety-one or ninety-two?” “You know damn well that I took a really long vacation just—” “No, sir, you did not. Hospitalization and recovery from a near-fatal gunshot wound is not a vacation,” Jules blasted him. “Didn’t you spend any of that time in ICU considering exactly why you made that stupid mistake that resulted in a bullet in your chest? Might it have been severe fatigue caused by asslessness, caused by working said ass off too many 24-7’s in a row?” Max sighed. Then nodded. “I know I fucked up. No doubt about that.” He was silent for a moment. “I’ve been doing that a lot lately.” He glanced over to where Jones was pretending to sleep, arm up and over his eyes. “I’ve been playing God too often, too. I don’t know, maybe I’m starting to believe my own spin, and it’s coming back to bite me.” “Not in the ass,” Jules said.

The overall U.S. homeownership rate increased from 64 percent in 1994 to a peak in 2004 with an all-time high of 69.2 percent. Real estate had become the leading business in America, more and more speculators invested money in the business. During 2006, 22 percent of homes purchased (1.65 million units) were for investment purposes, with an additional 14 percent (1.07 million units) purchased as vacation homes. These figures led Americans to believe that their economy was indeed booming. And when an economy is booming nobody is really interested in foreign affairs, certainly not in a million dead Iraqis. But then the grave reality dawned on the many struggling, working class Americans and immigrants, who were failing to pay back money they didn't have in the first place. Due to the rise in oil prices and the rise of interest rates, millions of disadvantaged Americans fell behind. By the time they drove back to their newly purchased suburban dream houses, there was not enough money in the kitty to pay the mortgage or elementary needs. Consequently, within a very short time, millions of houses were repossessed. Clearly, there was no one around who could afford to buy those newly repossessed houses. Consequently, the poor people of America became poorer than ever. Just as Wolfowitz's toppled Saddam, who dragged the American Empire down with him, the poor Americans, that were set to facilitate Wolfowitz's war, pulled down American capitalism as well as the American monetary and banking system. Greenspan's policy led an entire class to ruin, leaving America's financial system with a hole that now stands at a trillion dollars.

It's a stupendous day for Dr. Seuss fans, with the announcement of a new, previously unpublished picture book, What Pet Should I Get? , to be released on July 28th.  When Dr. Seuss (aka Ted Geisel) passed away in 1991 he left behind pages of text and sketches for book ideas and projects he had worked on over the years but hadn't completed before his death. Where were these hidden gems, you might ask?  Locked away in a safe? Buried in the backyard? Hidden behind a secret wall in his hat closet?  No.  Like many utterly ordinary people, Seuss had a box in his office filled with a paper trail of ideas and bursts of creativity--only in this case, it was a veryspecial box of creative bits and pieces... Who knew, when his wife, Audrey Geisel, packed away that box shortly after Seuss' death, that when she opened it up over two decades later, she would discover the complete manuscript and illustrations for What Pet Should I Get? . I'm envisioning a ray of bright green and blue and red sunshine beaming down on that moment...  In point of fact, the brilliant colors of Seuss' stories came later in the evolution of his books, so color is being added to the black and white sketches of What Pet Should I Get? by Seuss' former art director, Cathy Goldsmith, who worked with him on the last book he published before his death, Oh, The Places You'll Go!   I can't even imagine the goosebumps Goldsmith must have felt to see and hold never-before-seen Seuss artwork... So while we have to wait until the sun is beating down and summer vacation is nearing an end before we can get our hands on a brand new Dr. Seuss story, can also look forward to hearing about what else was found in that treasure trove of Seussy goodness--two more stories are promised as a result of the findings.

It may seem paradoxical to claim that stress, a physiological mechanism vital to life, is a cause of illness. To resolve this apparent contradiction, we must differentiate between acute stress and chronic stress. Acute stress is the immediate, short-term body response to threat. Chronic stress is activation of the stress mechanisms over long periods of time when a person is exposed to stressors that cannot be escaped either because she does not recognize them or because she has no control over them. Discharges of nervous system, hormonal output and immune changes constitute the flight-or-fight reactions that help us survive immediate danger. These biological responses are adaptive in the emergencies for which nature designed them. But the same stress responses, triggered chronically and without resolution, produce harm and even permanent damage. Chronically high cortisol levels destroy tissue. Chronically elevated adrenalin levels raise the blood pressure and damage the heart. There is extensive documentation of the inhibiting effect of chronic stress on the immune system. In one study, the activity of immune cells called natural killer (NK) cells were compared in two groups: spousal caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s disease, and age- and health-matched controls. NK cells are front-line troops in the fight against infections and against cancer, having the capacity to attack invading micro-organisms and to destroy cells with malignant mutations. The NK cell functioning of the caregivers was significantly suppressed, even in those whose spouses had died as long as three years previously. The caregivers who reported lower levels of social support also showed the greatest depression in immune activity — just as the loneliest medical students had the most impaired immune systems under the stress of examinations. Another study of caregivers assessed the efficacy of immunization against influenza. In this study 80 per cent among the non-stressed control group developed immunity against the virus, but only 20 per cent of the Alzheimer caregivers were able to do so. The stress of unremitting caregiving inhibited the immune system and left people susceptible to influenza. Research has also shown stress-related delays in tissue repair. The wounds of Alzheimer caregivers took an average of nine days longer to heal than those of controls. Higher levels of stress cause higher cortisol output via the HPA axis, and cortisol inhibits the activity of the inflammatory cells involved in wound healing. Dental students had a wound deliberately inflicted on their hard palates while they were facing immunology exams and again during vacation. In all of them the wound healed more quickly in the summer. Under stress, their white blood cells produced less of a substance essential to healing. The oft-observed relationship between stress, impaired immunity and illness has given rise to the concept of “diseases of adaptation,” a phrase of Hans Selye’s. The flight-or-fight response, it is argued, was indispensable in an era when early human beings had to confront a natural world of predators and other dangers. In civilized society, however, the flight-fight reaction is triggered in situations where it is neither necessary nor helpful, since we no longer face the same mortal threats to existence. The body’s physiological stress mechanisms are often triggered inappropriately, leading to disease. There is another way to look at it. The flight-or-fight alarm reaction exists today for the same purpose evolution originally assigned to it: to enable us to survive. What has happened is that we have lost touch with the gut feelings designed to be our warning system. The body mounts a stress response, but the mind is unaware of the threat. We keep ourselves in physiologically stressful situations, with only a dim awareness of distress or no awareness at all.

It wasn't only my friends who suffered from female rivalry. I remember when I was just sixteen years old, during spring vacation, being whisked off to an early lunch by my best friend's brother, only to discover, to my astonishment and hurt, that she was expecting some college boys to drop by and didn't want me there to compete with her. When I started college at Sarah Lawrence, I soon noticed that while some of my classmates were indeed true friends, others seemed to resent that I had a boyfriend. It didn't help that Sarah Lawrence, a former girls' school, included very few straight men among its student body--an early lesson in how competing for items in short supply often brings out the worst in women. In graduate school, the stakes got higher, and the competition got stiffer, a trend that continued when I went on to vie for a limited number of academic jobs. I always had friends and colleagues with whom I could have trusted my life--but I also found women who seemed to view not only me but all other female academics as their rivals. This sense of rivalry became more painful when I divorced my first husband. Many of my friends I depended on for comfort and support suddenly began to view me as a threat. Some took me out to lunch to get the dirt, then dropped me soon after. I think they found it disturbing that I left my unhappy marriage while they were still committed to theirs. For other women, the threat seemed more immediate--twice I was told in no uncertain terms that I had better stay away from someone's husband, despite my protests that I would no more go after a friend's husband than I would stay friends with a woman who went after mine. Thankfully, I also had some true friends who remained loyal and supportive during one of the most difficult times of my life. To this day I trust them implicitly, with the kind of faith you reserve for people who have proved themselves under fire. But I've also never forgotten the shock and disappointment of discovering how quickly those other friendships turned to rivalries.

The story really is short. Nine pages, about a boy who was born with a pair of wings. All his life, people tell him that this means he should try to fly. He’s afraid to. When he finally does, jumps off a two-story roof, he falls. He breaks his legs and wings. He never gets them reset. As he recovers, the bone heals in its misshapen form. Finally, people stop telling him that he must’ve been born to fly. Finally, he’s happy. When Alex comes back out, I’m crying. He asks me what’s wrong. I say, “I don’t know. It just speaks to me.” He thinks I’m making a joke and chuckles along, but for once, I wasn’t referencing the gallery girl who tried to sell us a twenty-one-thousand-dollar bear sculpture. I was thinking about what Julian used to say about art. How it either makes you feel something or it doesn’t. When I read his story, I started crying for a reason I can’t totally explain, not even to Alex. When I was a kid, I used to have these panic attacks thinking about how I could never be anyone else. I couldn’t be my mom or my dad, and for my whole life, I’d have to walk around inside a body that kept me from ever truly knowing anyone else. It made me feel lonely, desolate, almost hopeless. When I told my parents about this, I expected them to know the feeling I was talking about, but they didn’t. “That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with feeling that way, though, sweetie!” Mom insisted. “Who else do you think about being?” my dad said with his particular blunt fascination. The fear lessened, but the feeling never went away. Every once in a while, I’d roll it back out, poke at it. Wonder how I could ever stop feeling lonely when no one could ever know me all the way. When I could never peer into someone else’s brain and see it all. And now I’m crying because reading this story makes me feel for the first time that I’m not in my body. Like there’s some bubble that stretches around me and Alex and makes it so we’re just two different colored globs in a lava lamp, mixing freely, dancing around each other, unhindered. I’m crying because I’m relieved. Because I will never again feel as alone as I did during those long nights as a kid. As long as I have him, I will never be alone again.

So…,” I began. Was it just a high school thing? Or worse, I imagined, is it just that I’m not and never will be a country girl? Is it that country girls have some wild sense of abandon that I wasn’t born with? A reckless side, a fun, adventurous side that makes them worthy of riding next to boys in pickups? Am I untouchable? Am I too prim? Too proper? I’m not! I’m really not! I’m fun and adventurous. Reckless, too! I have a pair of jeans: Anne Kleins! And I want to be Middle Seat Worthy. Please, Marlboro Man…please. I’ve never wanted anything this much. “So, um…why don’t you do it anymore?” I asked. “Bucket seats,” Marlboro Man answered, his hand still resting on my leg. Made sense. I settled in and relaxed a bit. But I had another question I’d been mulling over. “Mind if I ask you another question?” I said. “Go ahead,” he replied. I cleared my throat and sat up straight in my seat. “How come…how come it took you so long to call me?” I couldn’t help but grin. It was one of the most direct questions I’d ever asked him. He looked in my direction, then back toward the road. “You don’t have to tell me,” I said. And he didn’t. But I’d wondered more than a handful of times, and as long as he was coming clean about bucket seats and other important matters, I thought it would be a good time to ask him why four months had passed between the first night we’d met in the smoky bar and the night he’d finally called to invite me to dinner. I remembered being knocked over by his magnetism that night during Christmas vacation. What had he thought of me? Had he forgotten me instantly, then remembered me in a flash that April night after my brother’s wedding? Or had he intentionally waited four months to call? Was it some kind of country boy protocol I didn’t know about? I was a girl. I simply had to know. “I was…,” he began. “Well, I was dating someone else.” I’ll kill her with my bare hands. “Oh,” I said in return. It was all I could muster. “Plus, I was running a herd of cows in Nebraska and having to drive up there every week,” he continued. “I just wasn’t here enough to break things off with her in the right way…and I didn’t want to call you and ask you out until that was all resolved.” I repeated myself. “Oh.” What was her name? She’s dead to me. “I liked you, though,” he said, flashing me a smile. “I thought about you.” I couldn’t help but smile back. “You did?” I asked quietly, still wondering what the girl’s name was. I wouldn’t rest till I knew. “I did,” he said sweetly, stroking my leg with his hand. “You were different.” I stopped short of interrogating him further, of asking him to specify what he meant by “different.” And it didn’t take much imagination to figure it out. As he drove me around his familiar homeland, it was obvious what he would have considered “different” about me. I didn’t know anything about the country.

A stranger. Young, well-dressed, pale and visibly sweaty, as if he’d endured some great shock and needed a drink. West would have been tempted to pour him one, if not for the fact that he’d just pulled a small revolver from his pocket and was pointing it in his direction. The nose of the short barrel was shaking. Commotion erupted all around them as patrons became aware of the drawn pistol. Tables and chairs were vacated, and shouts could be heard among the growing uproar. “You self-serving bastard,” the stranger said unsteadily. “That could be either of us,” Severin remarked with a slight frown, setting down his drink. “Which one of us do you want to shoot?” The man didn’t seem to hear the question, his attention focused only on West. “You turned her against me, you lying, manipulative snake.” “It’s you, apparently,” Severin said to West. “Who is he? Did you sleep with his wife?” “I don’t know,” West said sullenly, knowing he should be frightened of an unhinged man aiming a pistol at him. But it took too much energy to care. “You forgot to cock the hammer,” he told the man, who immediately pulled it back. “Don’t encourage him, Ravenel,” Severin said. “We don’t know how good a shot he is. He might hit me by mistake.” He left his chair and began to approach the man, who stood a few feet away. “Who are you?” he asked. When there was no reply, he persisted, “Pardon? Your name, please?” “Edward Larson,” the young man snapped. “Stay back. If I’m to be hanged for shooting one of you, I’ll have nothing to lose by shooting both of you.” West stared at him intently. The devil knew how Larson had found him there, but clearly he was in a state. Probably in worse condition than anyone in the club except for West. He was clean-cut, boyishly handsome, and looked like he was probably very nice when he wasn’t half-crazed. There could be no doubt as to what had made him so wretched—he knew his wrongdoings had been exposed, and that he’d lost any hope of a future with Phoebe. Poor bastard. Picking up his glass, West muttered, “Go on and shoot.” Severin continued speaking to the distraught man. “My good fellow, no one could blame you for wanting to shoot Ravenel. Even I, his best friend, have been tempted to put an end to him on a multitude of occasions.” “You’re not my best friend,” West said, after taking a swallow of brandy. “You’re not even my third best friend.” “However,” Severin continued, his gaze trained on Larson’s gleaming face, “the momentary satisfaction of killing a Ravenel—although considerable—wouldn’t be worth prison and public hanging. It’s far better to let him live and watch him suffer. Look how miserable he is right now. Doesn’t that make you feel better about your own circumstances? I know it does me.” “Stop talking,” Larson snapped. As Severin had intended, Larson was distracted long enough for another man to come up behind him unnoticed. In a deft and well-practiced move, the man smoothly hooked an arm around Larson’s neck, grasped his wrist, and pushed the hand with the gun toward the floor. Even before West had a good look at the newcomer’s face, he recognized the smooth, dry voice with its cut-crystal tones, so elegantly commanding it could have belonged to the devil himself. “Finger off the trigger, Larson. Now.” It was Sebastian, the Duke of Kingston . . . Phoebe’s father. West lowered his forehead to the table and rested it there, while his inner demons all hastened to inform him they really would have preferred the bullet.

a resignation to 9-to-5 drudgery in exchange for (sometimes) relaxing weekends and the occasional keep-it-short-or-get-fired vacation.

Gotta go pee first." Nina veered to the toilets. Of course, Ellie knew the reason Nina had to go to the bathroom before they started their short walk to the restaurant- not to pee, but to touch up. Outside there was a whole new crop of people for Nina to present herself to. Ellie didn't mind Nina's preoccupation with her looks. Nina used her beauty like a talent. If her personal presentation looked like a piece of art, it was only natural that people would enjoy looking at her. Ellie made her way to Icky's by crossing the street and turning down Mabon Road. As Ellie walked, she prepared herself for lunch with Nina. She guessed, correctly, that people wondered why Nina kept her so close. Nina was a magnet. Men wanted to marry her, or at the very least, sleep with her. Women wanted to be like her and hoped a little of Nina's casual self-confidence would somehow transfer onto them. But Ellie, being a keen observer of human nature, knew exactly why Nina felt the need to have Ellie in her life. With Ellie, Nina talked and talked about herself and her life, never asking Ellie for her opinion or feedback. It was as close as Nina could possibly get to being by herself, which Ellie suspected she preferred over everyone else's company. Ellie supposed this should bother her, but somehow it didn't. She was amused by Nina's outrageous self-love, but Ellie also knew Nina's friendship forced Ellie into human interaction, which she knew was good for her. Nina was always inviting Ellie to openings or parties. They had even vacationed together in Cabo San Lucas one year.

Change of direction is the vacation, short or long, just enjoy it, no matter what the period is, and how many are with you.

Walking around her [Sasha's] classroom at Sidwell's parents' night that fall, I'd come across a short "What I Did on My Summer Vacation" essay she'd authored, hanging alongside those of her classmates on one of the walls. "I went to Rome and I met the Pope," Sasha had written. "He was missing part of his thumb." I could not tell you what Pope Benedict XVI's thumb looks like, whether some part of it isn't there. But we'd taken an observant, matter-of-fact-eight-year-old to Rome, Moscow, and Accra, and this is what she'd brought back. Her view of history was, at that point, waist-high.

I put on a suit, then changed into a jeans and a checked shirt, then thought 'to hell with it!' and got into my shorts and a black T-shirt with an inscription that said: 'My friend was clinically dead, but all he brought me from the next world was this T-shirt!' I might look like a German tourist, but at least I would retain the semblance of a holiday mood in front of Gesar.

In addition to the special privileges described in the previous section above, money and sympathy seem to be the things manipulative “autistics” try to obtain the most. It is not uncommon for someone to ask for money for some seemingly plausible purpose.   ◦         They anticipate being short on the electric bill this month and need a few extra dollars to make sure their power isn't cut off.   ◦         They need to get away and want to go on an overnight vacation but cannot afford a hotel room.   ◦         They need special lenses to shield their eyes from light because their eyes are photosensitive, but it will take them months to save up to get them.   They may even set up a PayPal account to make it easy for people to send them funds. People

a beautiful heart is worth more than all of the riches in the world those who think otherwise have truly experienced neither it will bring treasures into one's life that gems can't buy it is the wind that sets the sail a vacation that has no end goggles that give vision one that enables you to see color where others see dull the simplest things become the finer things and the finer things become that much more refined all of the world trembles before it because so few in this short life are able to obtain it and to be true to yourself is the only way to discover it.

a beautiful heart is worth more than all of the riches in the world those who think otherwise have truly experienced neither with it one can unearth treasures it is the gift that doesn't stop giving the wind that sets the sail for a journey that the soul embarks a vacation with no end putting on goggles which give vision to see color where others see dull simple things become finer things the finer things become that much more refined the world trembles before it so few in this short life are able to obtain it because to be true to oneself is the only way to discover it.

a beautiful heart is worth more than all of the riches in the world those who think otherwise have truly experienced neither there are treasures in life that gems can't buy it'll set you on a journey a vacation that has no end through it you will have vision one that enables you to see color where others see dull the simplest things become the finer things and the finer things become that much more refined all of the world trembles before it because so few in this short life are able to obtain it and to be true to yourself is the only way you can discover it.

a beautiful heart is worth more than all of the riches in the world those who think otherwise have truly experienced neither it will unearth treasures a gift that doesn't stop giving it is the wind that sets the sail a journey embarked a vacation that has no end goggles which give vision color where others see dull simple things become finer things the finer things become that much more refined the world trembles before it because so few in this short life are able to obtain it and to be true to oneself is the only way to discover it.

Forty percent of employed mothers lack sick days and vacation leave, and about 50 percent of employed mothers are unable to take time off to care for a sick child.21 Only about half of women receive any pay during maternity leave.22 These policies can have severe consequences; families with no access to paid family leave often go into debt and can fall into poverty.23 Part-time jobs with fluctuating schedules offer little chance to plan and often stop short of the forty-hour week that provides basic benefits.24 Too many work standards remain inflexible and unfair, often penalizing women with children. Too many talented women try their hardest to reach the top and bump up against systemic barriers. So many others pull back because they do not think they have a choice.

Live the dream for a bit. But keep your eyes open. And be careful. As you’ll see, many visitors came to Tangier for a short vacation and remained for life. It’s that kind of place.

Nabokov famously never had a home. In the United States he and his wife, Vera, always rented. At Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he taught for a decade, they occupied homes vacated by professors on sabbatical. The Nabokovs ended their days in a small suite of rooms at the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland. When asked to explain his peripatetic life of exile, Nabokov said, “Nothing short of a replica of my childhood surroundings would have satisfied me.” His hero Pushkin was a wanderer, too, exiled from St. Petersburg by the czar for years at a time. Like Nabokov, “To the end of his life he remained deeply attached to what he considered his real home, the Lyceum, and to his former fellow students.

I pulled out the picture of my family and traced my thumb over my mother’s face. We were so happy. This was the year before we found out about her cancer. It was just before a family vacation and we were going to Hawaii. We were all matching in geeky flowered shirts and beige shorts. Our grins were cheesy, but our happiness and love for one another was evident. That was my favorite vacation. We had the most fun on that one. It was as if we all knew it was going to be our last vacation as a happy, healthy family.

If you want to observe the power of control up close in the workplace, look toward companies embracing a radical new philosophy called Results-Only Work Environment (or, ROWE, for short). In a ROWE company, all that matters is your results. When you show up to work and when you leave, when you take vacations, and how often you check e-mail are all irrelevant. They leave it to the employee to figure out whatever works best for getting the important things done. “No results, no job: It’s that simple,” as ROWE supporters like to say. If

It was another beautiful crisp, clear day, in what has always been considered picturesque Überlingen. The village was internationally known for its traditional beauty and was a popular vacation destination long before the war. As usual, there was just a hint of a breeze off the brilliantly blue lake and I could understand why so many Germans would come here for their urlaub or vacation. Having a little money left over from the last check sent by Mina, I found a nice room for the three of us, overlooking the lake at a classy resort hotel. For the next two days we lived quite comfortably in our new surroundings. In fact we even enjoyed a real hot bath, something that I had almost forgotten. As I soaked in the warm, sudsy water I could hear my children laughing and giggling in the next room, and longed for a time when the world would be at peace again. During the day we walked along the shore of the beautiful Bodensee, but in the back of my mind, I knew that this was nothing more than a horrible illusion and couldn’t last; besides I had to find work. In reality, the children and I would have to settle in somewhere so that we could find some sort of stability. It was also important that they enroll in a school again. That “somewhere” turned out to be a room in a house owned by two old ladies who took in boarders. The old house faced the railroad station and was quaint in the old world style. It fit right into the picture postcard appearance of romantic Überlingen. Erika, the younger of the two ladies, was very kind and helpful to me. There were also two other tenants, Mr. and Mrs. Koestoll. He was German and she seemed to be what could be considered a typical French housewife, who devoted her life to her German husband. Herr Koestoll, was old and feeble and they sustained themselves on a very small pension. In fact it was so bad that he couldn’t even afford shoes. However their happiness didn’t seem to depend on money. I grew very fond of them for the short time that we knew each other.

All of us have felt like getting away, just packing our bags and saying, “I’ve had enough! I can’t take anymore! I’ve got to get away.” It’s a normal, natural reaction. But it is not a good solution to any problem. We usually take our problems with us. We can go on vacation and enjoy a short respite. But when we return, the battles and burdens are still there. In fact, sometimes when we try to run away, we only make the problems worse. Why does the Lord allow us to go through windy storms and tempests? They help us grow and mature. If we keep running away, we are like children who never grow up. No, we don’t need the wings of a dove to fly away. We need the wings of an eagle. Isaiah 40:31 says, “Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles.” The eagle faces the storm, spreads his great wings, and allows the wind to lift him above the storm. Don’t run away. Run to the Lord, and let Him lift you high above the storm.

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Some years later, during a heart-to-heart chat, a friend of mine remarked that I have the propensity to disappear, when faced with hindrances. He advised me to face problems head-on, instead of avoiding confrontations and running away like a coward, much as I had with my dad, with you, and with Tony. This is a liability I’m learning to confront. And, it isn’t easy.               Thanks to my sister, Aria, I was able to make peace with my father, before he passed. For years, I had resented the way he treated us, during our Christmas vacation at Vaduz. I couldn’t bring myself to forgive the insults he flung at us. Although my mother did her best to assuage the damage, I fled as quickly and as far as I could. I had refused to meet with my dad unless he apologized; he refused to budge. During his final days, Aria and Ari begged me to return home, to pay my respects. It was then and there that we made peace. Before he took his final breath, he apologized and asked my forgiveness. When he finally accepted me for who I am, an immense relief flooded me. I came to the realization that our time on earth is short, and if either one of us had been less difficult, our years of estrangement could have been resolved long before.               Relief followed apprehension, for I knew he had died in peace; for this, I am eternally grateful.               What about you? How did you get on with your father? When we parted ways, you had unresolved issues with him, as I did with mine. Now that the ball is in your court, send me your chronicles.☺

Despite the early hour U.S. Attorney Joan Thurston looked resplendent in a charcoal gray business suit that seemed to have been tailored by the gods. Thurston was mid-forties and, in Loren’s view, excessively attractive. She had auburn hair, broad shoulders, tapered waist. She had two sons in their early teens. Her husband worked at Morgan Stanley in Manhattan. They lived in ritzy Short Hills with a vacation home on Long Beach Island. In short: Joan Thurston was what Loren wanted to be when she grew up.

provide. OPENING FOR BUSINESS* I will help clients _________. After hiring me, they will receive [core benefit + secondary benefit]. I will charge $xxx per hour or a flat rate of _____ per service. This rate is fair to the client and to me. My basic website will contain these elements: a. The core benefit that I provide for clients and what qualifies me to provide it (remember that qualifications may have nothing to do with education or certifications; Gary is qualified to book vacations with miles because he’s done it for himself many times) b. At least two stories of how others have been helped by the service (if you don’t have paying clients yet, do the work for free with someone you know) c. Pricing details (always be up front about fees; never make potential clients write or call to find out how much something costs) d. How to hire me immediately (this should be very easy) I will find clients through [word-of-mouth, Google, blogging, standing on the street corner, etc.]. I will have my first client on or before ____·[short deadline]. Welcome to consulting! You’re now in business.

If Glenn related to anything outside of music, it was animals. When he bicycled through the countryside near his parents’ lakeside vacation cottage outside of Toronto, he sang to the cows. His pets included rabbits, turtles, a fully functioning skunk, goldfish named Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Haydn, and a parakeet named Mozart. There was also a series of beloved dogs: a big Newfoundland named Buddy, an English setter named Sir Nickolson of Garelocheed—or Nick for short—and, later, Banquo, a collie. One of Glenn’s childhood dreams was to someday create a preserve for old, injured, and stray animals on Manitoulin Island, north of Toronto, where he wanted to live out his old age by himself, surrounded by animals.

Eric was listening to the managers, who were doing their old-school best to control the flow of information upward (the regurgitation and parsing technique works both ways, as any red-blooded middle manager worth his weight in plausible deniability knows full well). But Larry was listening to the engineers—not directly but via a smart little tool he had implemented called “snippets.” Snippets are like weekly status reports that cover a person’s most important activities for a week, but in a short, pithy format, so they can be written in just a few minutes or compiled (in a doc or draft email) as the week goes on. There is no set format, but a good set of snippets includes the most important activities and achievements of the week and quickly conveys what the person is working on right now, from cryptic (“SMB Framework,” “10% list”) to mundane (“completed quarterly performance reviews,” “started family vacation”). Like OKRs, they are shared with everyone. Snippets are posted on Moma, where anyone can see anyone else’s, and for years Larry received a weekly compendium of the snippets from engineering and product leads. That way he always could get at the truth.

For many of us, following Jesus in this world will not require literally dying. But it might require downsizing our lifestyle. It might mean taking vacation time to go on a short-term mission trip when we could be just relaxing. In any case, it's all about identifying with Jesus and saying, in light of the Great Salvation, "Jesus, I want to go where you're going and where you want to bring me.

I read somewhere that as much as 90% of the enjoyment we experience in life is experienced through anticipation. What that means is that we normally get more enjoyment out of the anticipation of upcoming events than we derive out of experiencing the actual events themselves. I don’t know if this is always true, but in 1991 I took my family on a vacation where I’d have to say that just about all of our enjoyment was experienced through the anticipation. Not that the vacation was horrible (which it was), but the anticipation of this vacation was incredible.

Is something wrong?” Ivey asked. Lillian picked up a file, stared at it, and put it back down. “You could say that. This morning I found an orderly and a nurse in a closet, and they weren’t looking for supplies. Dr. Harrison has taken an ill-timed vacation, since his wife threatened that if he didn’t come along she’d go by herself and not come back. So I’m short staffed again. And then there’s this desk. Who ever heard of a desk without drawers? It’s beautiful, but why do I feel like I’m Uhura on Star Trek? I’d like to strangle the designer.

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On Saturdays, we took long walks on Mount Carmel; we strolled through the old Arab section, mostly vacated by the original population and inhabited by many new immigrants. The notion of "old" sunk in here, as some roads, villages were ancient, not quaint, filthy and dilapidated. We visited old friends in the "maabarot," the make-shift, temporary colonies, on the outskirts of Haifa. My only aunt from Czernovitz, my Father's sister and her family were there for a short time. Of course, in time, people moved into permanent housing provided by the government.

Another factor contributing to a new associate’s willingness to work long hours is that it’s the price you pay to get interesting work with significant responsibility. Large firms just won’t entrust you with important matters before you’ve had a lot of quality experiences and exhibited a sufficient level of dedication. Frankly, to large firms the word “dedication” has just one, hidden meaning: “tremendous personal sacrifices.” Cruel as it seems, as a new associate you have to decide at some point what your priorities are: your career, or your personal and family life. If you choose your life outside of work, you’ll find yourself rejecting additional work, and your reluctance to accept it will brand you as “lacking dedication” – and your career will suffer accordingly. Clients also contribute directly to the massive hours new associates have to work, by making demands for legal services that require immediate attention. You may have a client, for instance, who needs you to move for a temporary restraining order (“TRO”) on its behalf. Or a client may ask you to substantially revise a brief shortly before a court deadline. With emergencies like these, you have to work hard, and you’ve got to work right now – and that can have a devastating effect on your personal and family life. You may be called upon at a moment’s notice to cancel evening or weekend social plans you might have made, vacations you’ve long anticipated, and even holiday celebrations. Life at a large firm means learning to accept these incidents as occupational risks.

Life doesn't have to be so damn hard. It really doesn't. Most people, my past self included, have spent too much time convincing themselves that life has to be hard, a resignation to 9-to-5 drudgery in exchange for (sometimes) relaxing weekends and the occasional keep-it-short-or-get-fired vacation.

If you want to observe the power of control up close in the workplace, look toward companies embracing a radical new philosophy called Results-Only Work Environment (or, ROWE, for short). In a ROWE company, all that matters is your results. When you show up to work and when you leave, when you take vacations, and how often you check e-mail are all irrelevant. They leave it to the employee to figure out whatever works best for getting the important things done. “No results, no job: It’s that simple,” as ROWE supporters like to say.

Stage Three: The Child Is Gone Oh, the drama of the empty nest. The anxiety. The apprehension. What will life be like? Will the two of you have anything to talk about once your children are gone? Will you have sex now that the presence of your children is no longer an excuse for not having sex? The day finally comes. Your child goes off to college. You wait for the melancholy. But before it strikes—before it even has time to strike—a shocking thing happens: Your child comes right back. The academic year in American colleges seems to consist of a series of short episodes of classroom attendance interrupted by long vacations. These vacations aren’t called “vacations,” they’re called “breaks” and “reading periods.” There are colleges that even have October breaks. Who ever heard of an October break? On a strictly per diem basis, your child could be staying at a nice Paris hotel for about what you’re paying in boarding expenses. In any event, four years quickly pass in this manner. Your children go. Your children come back. Their tuition is raised. But eventually college ends, and they’re gone for good. The nest is actually empty.

We all need routines and rituals to anchor us. You don’t have any right now,” Mark said. “I learned that in an online course. You need new rituals even if things change for a short period. That’s why people enjoy holiday cruises and vacation stays, because they can set up new patterns. At home people follow routines without thinking. But now why not use this time to take the path less traveled?” “In Singapore, finding a path with less people traveling means you are in the restricted army training area and somebody will shoot you!” Aunty Lee said with mock sulkiness. Mark laughed and planted a kiss on her forehead.

Jesus will come! Not “may come,” “might come,” or “possibly could come.” Jesus will come! His promised return is not a nebulous, vapid, cross-your-fingers aspiration. It is a concrete, guaranteed appearance of our Savior. Jesus validated his return by vacating his tomb. This was the conviction of the apostle Paul: If there’s no resurrection for Christ, everything we’ve told you is smoke and mirrors, and everything you’ve staked your life on is smoke and mirrors. . . . If all we get out of Christ is a little inspiration for a few short years, we’re a pretty sorry lot. But the truth is that Christ has been raised up, the first in a long legacy of those who are going to leave the cemeteries. (1 Cor. 15:14, 19–20 MSG)

The pamphlet compiled essays from those who work in queer spaces or study them academically, or both. One contributor, Joe Parslow, wrote an essay that refers to the critic José Esteban Muñoz’s paralleling of the word stage in the sense of a platform for performance with stage as a phase that queers are told to get over—as when parents contend it’s just a blip. In 2009, Muñoz wrote, ‘Today I write back from that stage that my mother and father hoped I would quickly vacate. Instead, I dwell on and in this stage.’ Parslow explains how he was inspired to think from the stage outward when he designed his own venue, Her Upstairs, one of those few places that opened against the wave of bar closures; it shut down after only a short spell. In his listing application for the RVT, Ben Walters offered another symbolic interpretation of the stage. When Pat and Breda McConnon took over the tavern in 1979, they made the decision to put an end to the messy tradition of bartenders serving drinks between the legs of the drag queens atop the curving bar. But rather than cancel the entertainment, they renovated the interior, removing that bar and installing a bespoke stage. Walters points out the meaningfulness of this move. Performing on the bar had meant that a drag queen could be swiftly cleared away and the performance denied at the sign of a police raid. The McConnons permanently ensconced queer performance in the materiality of the building. Their stage was not a phase.

Additionally, have them take a photo of the serial number on the HVAC unit, which will tell you how old it is before you make an offer.

I have seen many investors pass up great deals because the property needed a little rehab, or didn’t need enough rehab, or the numbers were .0001 percent off on their spreadsheet. Don’t pass up a great opportunity because you’re too rigid in your approach. It’s also important to keep in mind that what works in one market does not always work in another.

Investment firms are buying up more vacation homes, aiming to cash in on growing demand from tourists and remote workers. Most vacation rental homes are owned by small-time owners who list their properties on websites such as Airbnb Inc., but the number of financial firms investing in the sector is growing. New York-based investment firm Saluda Grade is launching a venture with short-term- rental operator AvantStay Inc. to buy about $500 million of homes, the companies said Tuesday. Saluda Grade said it is also looking to raise debt by selling mortgage bonds backed by its homes to investors, the first vacation-rental mortgage securitization, according to the company. Andes STR, a startup that buys and manages short-term rental homes on behalf of investors, also recently signed a deal with Chilean investment firm WEG Capital to buy roughly $80 million of properties in the U.S., Andes said. These investors are betting they can get higher returns if they rent out homes by the night instead of by the year. Low-interest rates have made it more attractive to borrow and Buy Traditional Rental Homes, inflating property prices and making it harder for new buyers to turn a profit. That has prompted some institutions and wealthy families to look in more obscure corners of the property market where competition is smaller, investment advisers say. Some are turning to investments in vacation homes, where demand has surged in many places during the pandemic as more people choose to work from remote locations and leisure travel heated up last year. “There’s a lot more yield available in the short-term market,” said Saluda Grade’s chief executive, Ryan Craft. It is the latest sign of how the pandemic is changing the way people work and live, and how real-estate investors are angling to find new ways to profit from these shifts. Saluda Grade is targeting homes within driving distance of major population centers, Mr. Craft said. His company will buy the homes and AvantStay will manage them for a fee. But while vacation-rental homes can offer higher returns, they also pose challenges to investors. Mortgages are usually more expensive and harder to get for short-term rentals than for owner-occupied homes, said Giri Devanur, CEO of reAlpha Tech Corp., a startup that wants to pool money from small-time investors to buy short-term-rental homes.

Busy During the Day? Set Automatic Trade Triggers If you work during the day and can’t watch the market, you can set “conditional orders” ahead of time with your broker. It can be a great way to catch a big breakout—even as you’re plugging away at your day job. And when you’re on vacation and can’t watch your stocks closely, you also can set conditional sell orders to lock in your gains or cut short any losses if the stock declines.

and then I spot him, crazy hot, I mean the most ridiculously handsomest sexiest man I’ve ever seen off screen, super cool, tall, broad shoulders, short dark hair and an aura of alpha sophistication.