Days Off

If you always thought it would be cool to hail a cab by whistling through your fingers, you were right - and you owe it to yourself to learn this essential life-skill before another unfulfilled whistle-less day passes. Fortunately, I can teach you how to do it in four easy steps, none of which involve providing information about your banking account.

It's the first day of snowboarding season, and nothing, not even shirt-sleeve warm weather, a constant depressing drizzle of rain, near-zero visibility due to fog, and an unfortunate lack of snow can stop us from hitting the slopes. And by hitting, I mean literally hitting. Hard.

In a last warm spell before winter chills the ocean, I pack up the camping gear and head back to the beach for one more surfing trip. Although I initially only fear the few remaining creepy campground people in my vicinity, a far more sinister development - no decent waves to ride - proves even more troubling.

A pleasant autumn walk around town takes a grim and ghoulish turn.

My friend Jen is moving across the country soon, so in preparation, we hold a yard sale. She needs to divest herself of some of her dead mom's former possessions, and I'm trying to unload some items I just haven't used recently, like my adhesive glow-in-the-dark stars and my Avenging Unicorn Play Set. As the day gets longer, we grow increasingly desperate to get rid of every single item we can. Bonus: see if you can catch the  math error.

With a new surfboard in tow, we set off for a last camping trip to the beach. But nothing, neither the season nor a short ride atop a breaking wave, lasts long.

There's nothing like having your birthday fall on your day off. But when your day off falls on a weekday, there's also no one around to come out and play. The sludgy, fertile ribbon of oil-slicked green trickling through Our Nation's Capital beckons.

A few mid-week days off afford the opportunity for a surfing getaway. Unfortunately, surfing and carrying a camera - or for that matter, carrying a camera and surfboard while trying to open a door - prove vexingly difficult.

It's 6 AM Sunday morning, and my 24-hour shift at the firehouse is at an end. Coffee cuts through the grogginess a bit, but what really gets me moving is knowing that in 48 hours I'll be back here and on duty again. Time is bleeding out of the world. First, the drive...

It's a race to see who can start their vacation first... and beat the rest of the family to the best bedroom in the rented house.

After hundreds hours of painstaking labor, Bob lowers his intricate remote-controlled sailboat into the ocean.