17 thoughts on “Question of the Day — Vacation”

  1. We’re going to the Cape for a week in August. We rented a little cottage right near the bike path and the beaches.
    We have guests coming for part of July 4 weekend, and we plan to go to NY the following weekend for my son’s birthday. We’re toying around with the idea of going to my uncle’s lake house in upstate NY for a long weekend, but we can’t quite work out the timing.

    Like

  2. This year’s WorldCon (the world science fiction convention) is in Orange County, in late August, across the street from Disneyland. Two vacations in one! We’ll be there for 10 days.

    Like

  3. We’re going to England for ten days in July. We’ve rented a folly tower at the edge of a village on the Exe estuary from Landmark Trust for a (friday to friday) week and then to London for the weekend. Tickets for Juliet Stevenson in The Seagull and Bryn Terfel at the Proms already bought.
    I’m still bringing my laptop and will work. I won’t have connectivity (Landmark Trust places don’t have any electronics, not even a phone), but I have Yochai Benkler’s Wealth of Networks in pdf and I’m going to figure out how to incorporate it into my course this fall. While I’m looking out on the estuary from the top of the folly tower, that is.
    But my children are grown.

    Like

  4. I hate to be cruel, but what makes for a good vacation is moving to a country that gives you lots of vacation time. This year I get six weeks (in the UK). The centrepiece will be a trip to Germany for the world cup.
    Of all the changes to my life after moving from the US to the UK, I think the increase in vacation time is the most pleasant one.

    Like

  5. arg to you, reuben. Even better than being a limey is being an academic. 3 months of vacation.
    Jim, what’s a folly tower?

    Like

  6. I get so jealous of academics vacation schedules.
    Our one non family related week this year was supposed to be NYC in early July, just got cancelled due to work… Since we left NYC I love going back in the summer when everyone else is fleeing.
    Since we live in a great year round weather place I even love the humidity and the heat.

    Like

  7. A folly is a building erected to be looked at, rather than lived in, often as the focus of a view. This one is a clock tower, described as “a very distant and poor relation of the campanile in St. Mark’s”. It’s four floors, one (small) room per floor, connected by a spiral staircase.

    Like

  8. Vacation? What’s that? At the beginning of July (yes, July) we are going to Florida, but the trip will largely be eaten up by visiting elderly relatives, some of whom are extremely unpleasant. I consider it an anti-vacation and am vaguely hoping that our plans will be cancelled by a hurricane. Then in August, we get to move again.
    We are hoping to go to England in October, when the husband will be presenting a paper at a conference in London, sans toddler, assuming that the trial overnight with the grandparents works out OK.

    Like

  9. Vacation? What’s that? My wife and I haven’t had a proper vacation in 18 years. And that was a 5 day trip to Savannah, Georgia. Since then we might have the opportunity to stay with relatives for a weekend, but those are just trips, not vacations, in my humble opinion. Due to my job, the trip to Biloxi we took last week was the first one in two years.

    Like

  10. Not really having one this year — just a few day or 2-day trips, plus the annual long weekend in the south east corner of Ohio with fundamentalist Christian, ultra-Republican, Marine Corps part of the in-law family. They’re my favourite in-laws, but I do slot in the latest PD James for that trip.
    Oddly enough, being a limey academic isn’t as good a deal as being a limey or an academic! (not a complaint, I’m a limey, but I’m an american academic).

    Like

  11. This year and last it’s all about conference-cum-vacations (India Dec. 2005). I’m not sure Labor Day weekend in Philly quite qualifies, but a conference in Trinidad in Oct. certainly does. As an untenured academic, we don’t exactly have the luxury of three months in the summer. Rather we have three months to crank out papers. I will do a bit of weekend type stuff: beach, bbqs, concert, etc.

    Like

  12. Leaving Illinois for Michigan next week, and then on to Ontario (for a long-planned Canada Day party with some old friends), and then back to Michigan, driving all the way, over a period of a week. Then, off to Washington state for a family reunion (flying and renting a car) for another week; a possible drive to Oregon and back included. Then, a flight back to Michigan, where we pick up our own car, drive back to Illinois, pack up the house in a week and a half, and move to Kansas, though I think for the first time in our lives we won’t be driving our own moving van.
    Somewhere in there, admist all the driving and family obligations, there will be something very much like a “vacation,” I’m sure, though we may not recgonize it at the time.

    Like

  13. We’re just back from a week in Spain, without the kids. It was the perfect mix of cultural things to do (museums, churches), and lots of time to sit around and eat good food and relax.

    Like

  14. Paris, with the kids, in early July, theoretically arranged around a meeting. I will not be working, but that’s ’cause it’s impossible with the kids. I, like the person in your link, enjoy and obsess about my work and do not regard leaving it as a boon of vacations. In fact, I find it vaguely disturbing when I don’t have access to my data to analyze, kind of like I was missing an arm or at least a finger.
    And, are there really academics who take the summer off, really off?
    bj

    Like

  15. To me, vacation is about family. I just got back from a family reunion in Mississippi. In July, we’ll spend our annual week with my family in the Outer Banks, and we’ll do a second beach week in Cape May with the in-laws in September.

    Like

  16. Family Vacations

    Directions, trail map, cam shot and condition and family activities information. Rediscover Inca ruins, hike Machu Picchu, explore Andean markets an…

    Like

Comments are closed.