The great Seattle snow-in; my grudging use of vacation hours
Last week, the normally temperate Seattle area suffered below-freezing temperatures, snow, and ice, for several days. It caused the public school systems to close down for the 2 days prior to Thanksgiving, and gave the majority of all people travelling in the area commutes of 5 hours on average Monday night. My local micro-news blog for West Seattle, dubbed it “the long walk home” as many people just abandonned their cars on streets and highways in order to get home.
This is the first time in decades anyone can remember snow in Seattle at such an early date. It doesn’t bode well for the rest of the year. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people discuss how cold and wet this year is going to be. Say it enough times and it becomes fact I guess!
So I stayed home for 2 days, after my 3+ hour commute home (which normally takes 20 minutes), after leaving “early” on Monday. Technically I left at 5, but I close the building and basically shoo’ed every person out of the building once word started trickling in of the horrible road conditions out in the world, so I ended up leaving earlier than I normally would have. I did quite a bit of work from home the next day (Tuesday), rescheduling jobs with clients, cancelling jobs, calling many employees to discuss their start times (and then again the lack there of) the next day. Repeat on Wednesday.
Overall, I had to eat up 9.5 hours of vacation time to make up the difference (again, not counting any missed OT for Tuesday, when I again would have been staying late to close the building). I hate that I had to dip into something I’m hoarding like the family jewels, to save up for a time I really really want to do an amazing trip. Instead, I did it to keep my paycheck at a reasonable level so that I can keep on track with debt payments this month.
What a waste. I miss my 9.5 hours of vacation time.
DebtMaven 
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