Love Those Longer Days

I took the afternoon off work today.  I have the super-awesome problem of always hitting my maximum vacation accruals of 4 weeks (which means I have 4 weeks vacation time earned but not used yet).  Four weeks is the maximum that my company will "bank" for me, so once I hit 20 days in the "bank", I have to take a few days off that month, or else they won't give me the additional days I'll earn on the 1st of the next month.  Good problem to have, huh!  Although, that means I haven't been taking my allotted vacation days for a long time.  Anyways, this month I had to take 2.5 days off in order to get my vacation days "banked" next month and not lose any.  I already took a day off last Friday to go whale-watching.  I took the afternoon off today, and I'm scheduled to take next Friday off as well.

So what did I do for my afternoon off?  I had a haircut appointment at 2pm.  Can you believe that my last haircut was in early October, before I went to Wisconsin to visit Peppermint for her wedding?  I got so sick of how long my hair was, and how much longer it was taking me to shampoo, condition, dry, and style.  So I told Nikki to cut about 4 inches off.  It might have been more, I'm not sure...



When I got there at 2pm, Nikki was running WAY behind. She was finishing blow-dry on one client, while another was still waiting for a cut. She told me 20 minutes. So I went down the block to Starbucks and ate two mini-cupcakes, a peanut butter one and a carrot cake one. They were yummy, but I blame the calories on Nikki. If she wouldn't have been running behind, I wouldn't have ended up at Starbucks eating cupcakes. :p

Since I wasn't done with my haircut until 3pm, I called Todd. I was just going to go home originally, but Todd had to deploy software tonight for work, so his boss was letting everyone out at 3pm today. My haircut place is very close to Todd's work. So the delay meant that he was ready to leave, and so was I. I drove over and parked my car at his work, then the two of us went to the beach in his car. Yay, spontaneous beach trip! I LOVE spontaneous trips to the beach after work on a week night, because it's something we normally don't get to do. With the longer daylight, it means more fun after work. :)

At Seagrove Park in Del Mar.






We saw seagulls in formation a lot. I love it!






I shot these with my little Canon SD850 IS, the camera I always have with me in my purse. I love that it's small so I always have it. They say the best camera is the one you have with you! :)

After the beach we walked a few blocks up the hill to have an early dinner at Smashburger. I love these longer days.