9 days!

9 days!

It sounds like the title of a new movie, and maybe it will be, a movie about what the staff of a restaurant did while their place of employment was shut down.

That's right, Vintner's is shutting down for nine whole days, starting tomorrow. In case you're bad with calendar math, that includes a weekend. Do you know how long it has been since I had a weekend off? (Okay, about two weeks, but I was sick.)

We're open all year, Christmas being the only day we really close for a special occasion. Of course, we're closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays from January to March because there is no business to be had. But to be closed for nine straight days is something unheard of, something parents will tell their children about on snowy nights by the fire.

The reason? We're tired. The past two or three weeks have been long and hard work. Casey started working there making salads and desserts, and in his first week, put in 65 hours. Many people have been working double shift after double shift, when the single shifts were hard enough. We're sick of being there.

Yesterday, the day we first heard of this wonderful piece of news, we sat around and dreamed about what we would do, the places we would go with stars in our eyes. I'm thinking about going on a road trip with the new salad and dessert guy, who is pretty hot. The busboy is going home to see his family. Another wanted to go to the Keys. Still another said she would cure cancer. Then someone said that we'd all probably just stay home, sleep and watch TV the whole time, but even that sounded pretty good.

I walked around with a new bounce in my step yesterday, periodically jumping up and shrieking "Nine days! Nine days!" My co-workers might have thought I was crazy if they had not been busy with their own shrieking and jumping.

So this is my warning to you: I may be gallavanting, and may not have the time or the inclination to write about my gallavanting. For those of you who do not gallavant often, it's terribly time-consuming. But I will have my journal with me, one of the old kind that is made of paper, and should anything of interest occur, I will record it to later relate to you. If nothing of interest occurs, then I will make it up and later relate it to you. Or maybe I won't. It is, after all, my time off.

9 days!