Vacation was excellent (many rolls of film are being developed as I type) and it really made me aware that we need to take time like this more often. (Yeah, same story, I know.) A week into our time away it dawned on me that I've never taken this much time (two weeks) away for a vacation as an adult. That's sad.
Greece is a lovely country, but there are quite a few cultural adjustments. For instance, the attitude toward animals. We knew going over there would be strays, but nothing like we saw. The number of strays (dogs and cats) in Athens was shocking. But IMO even worse was the number in smaller towns -- you expect that in big cities no matter where you are. Apparently -- we asked a number of people about it -- it's considered cruel and unnatural to spay or neuter an animal. And in fact plans to do so by consciencious vets are met with outright hostility.
Another thing I've noticed since I've been back -- I really didn't miss hearing about all the latest news, software, etc. I can be quite a junkie when it comes to the usual open-source, software, news, forum haunts that are out there, but it's such a timesuck. I'm going to try to limit my reading in the coming weeks -- we'll see how that works.
And of course, when I got back there was lots of disturbing news about work. Oh well. Lots of fun work awaits -- I should be able to get iterators out within the week and one of the list members has come up with some great ideas for SPOPS and object linking features. I also hope to have time to look into this Reefknot stuff a little more...
(Originally posted elsewhere)