Where is my vacation?

Right now, my family is here:

On Saturday, Alex is getting on a plane with friends and flying here:

Let’s see…where will I be?  Oh, yes, right here….

Don’t get me wrong, I love Tuscaloosa, but I’m going a little stir crazy here. 

Every time I get on Facebook, I see tons of vacation photos and drool.  So, since everyone I know is going or has gone on vacation, I have one question….where is my vacation?

While I was working last year, I had racked up some money in my savings…and quite a bit.  I’m not a good saver so I was EXTREMELY proud of this feat.  Although I knew I wouldn’t have a whole lot of time to vacation this summer, I thought I could use a little of it to take a quick “long weekend” trip to somewhere like this

 

and then put back the rest for an even bigger trip or purchase next summer (after I added more money throughout the year of course!).

Then, my beach dreams were derailed…I got that lovely pink slip and all that saved money is having to go toward living expenses :(.  Even though I am still getting pay checks (I know I at least get one more), knowing that I won’t be getting those monthly funds next year terrifies me!  Don’t get me wrong, I am very thankful that I had saved that money because it is going to help me tremendously, but I can’t help but be a little selfish and longingly dream of what could have been :(

Since I plan on subbing pretty much every day, I will have some money to live off of so I’m hoping that I don’t have to completely drain my savings, but we’ll see.

My father reminded me yesterday that even if I had a teaching job, I wouldn’t be vacationing but working on my PhD work and of course in my classroom.  Which is true, I have been swamped with my doctoral work this summer.  Now that I’m a full time student again, life is feeling a little like this cartoon

(By the way, if you’re a doctoral student, definitely check out phdcomics.com…it’s great!)

So while I sit here at my desk and knock out the rest of my assignments, I can’t help but wish I was sitting here instead…

 

*All images linked to their source