Definitely. A week in July, and a week in August. I dunno that we'll go anywhere, maybe just a camping trip in August, but I like taking a week just to do stuff around the house, too.

Generous vacation time is one of the few real perks of my job, so I use it to the hilt.

I took a week off in mid-May. In the middle of summer I just want to shut myself into my air-conditioned apartment and sweat.

But I'll be not working from mid-August or so onwards, given that the spawn is due to arrive at the start of September.

Nope, saving it all up for the honeymoon in October. Unless you count the back-and-forth from Illinois to Wisconsin for wedding planning as "trips."

Rather than one long week or two, I tend to take lots of three or four day weekends. Although last time I took a full week off it was pretty incredible how relaxing it was to get away for that long.

Yep, going to hawaii for my honeymoon next month.

When I was growing up, we never really took traveling vacations - we'd go camping or sailing or rock climbing or to visit my grandparents a few hours away. Every few years, we'd drive to Reno (about 5 hours away). So I guess my conception of vacation is different than the media's.

I might take a trip to Mexico in September to visit my Dad and stepmom.

That's about it.

the proportion of Americans who said they would take a vacation over the next six months has fallen to a 30-year low of just 39 percent.

When I was younger and more painfully earnest, my politics could be distilled to this formula:

Capitalism = Evil, Exploitative.

I got older. My priorities changed. I now use these formulas:

Capitalism = NO FUN.

Capitalism = A complete frickin' drag.

Already did! I'm a firm believer in vacations.

If I take time off for any reason, (holiday, vacation, sick) it's unpaid, so I'm careful. I do take one day off about every other month so I can get a bit of a break, go to doctor, or run errands.

Just yesterday, my boss decided that we needed to cut back on hours due to the economy, so I have decided to take off every other Friday until he changes his mind. Not looking forward to the cut in pay one little bit, but at least I still have a job.

The last two summers, I have taken a "classic" vacation, to NYC and Hawaii, respectively. This is the first time in my life I have done this.

I have always camped in the summer, and have gone up to the San Juans in August, frequently.

This summer, two trips to SF to install daughter in school there. That is it. Any disposable income will stay with her there also.

I get an insane amount of paid leave (minimum 30 days, plus bank holidays) and make sure I always take it all.

There is no way I can take a week long vacation, I just don't get the time. Long Weekends and tasks/errands/crisies eat it all up.

I have a crazy amount of leave already saved up (even though I've been here less than 6 months) and I took a week off at the end of May (although much of it was spent driving, but whatevs). I've got plans for a long weekend in October, a mini-vacation at the end of February (provided finances allow it) and an extended weekend trip next May.

People can pry my vacation time out of my cold dead hands. We even have a provision here that we can use a portion of our sick time as vacation leave, which is sweeeet.

By the way, I've been saving up this honeymoon time since last summer. I get 10 days of paid vacation, plus 20 hours of floating holiday. I'm taking 9 days all at once, which means I only took 1 week + my floating holidays last year.

I'm not actually sure how much vacation time I get. I think 3 or 4 weeks? I usually take about 3 weeks, but then occasionally take random days here and there. My boss doesn't care, as long as the work gets done. I'm a big believer in vacation time too. Americans work too much.

We've done this somewhere before. . . I get ten days, and while I can carry over, I can never carry more than ten days, or it stops accruing. It's wierd. And sick is sick. Five or six of those. And two floaters that also can't carry and have to be used. Oh, and it must be used in whole or half day incriments, not hourly, like for meeting service people or whatev.

We get two weeks, which is the whole bullshit combined sick & vacation days. The office itself closes only six days in the year, which is not even half the days the courts are closed. This is only the tip of the garbage heap of miserable human resources employee relations crap around here.

(As Gibby once said: I'm tired; I'm frustrated; I'm full of shit and I hate my fucking job)

Y'all will freak when you hear how much time I get, but bear in mind I get NO holidays off... not one. If I can't take a vacation day on Christmas day, I am here. New Year's Day, here I am.

That said, I get 6 weeks of vacation time, 8 personal days, and 6 or 7 bonus days a year.

And thank you for the song, crush!!

I think that's incredibly reasonable, BP, especially given that you have to work holidays.

(oh and by "two weeks" I mean two working weeks, that is, ten days.)

For the past year I have worked PRN so I hardly work at all. My life is a vacation. I usually work once a week. I make my own schedule. If I need a week off, I do it.

When I worked full and part-time we accrued Personal Leave hours. You can use your hours as you wish.

A county hospital I worked at for years always had a summer leave program. You could take 1-3 months off in the summer, without pay, and keep your job. I always took the full three months.

About the summer vacation: Basically I refuse to pay airline prices at the moment. I have no FF miles. My husband and I are debating whether we want to drive to the Keys and waste tons of gas. We are going to St. Pete for baseball and Tampa for Bush Gardens and then to Orlando for Universal Studios. That may be it for our family vacation. The rest of the time we'll go to the beach, minor league baseball, our local water park, and other stuff around town. There is no shortage of things to do. Husband and I may go to St. Augustine to stay in a B&B for a couple nights, which is only an hour away.

What rainbaby said. 10 days vacation all year = there is no possible way I could ever take an entire week off. It sucks and I hate it. That's one of the reasons I didn't fly up to NYC this week, which I really probably should have done, given the continuing family crisis - if I miss this weekend (I have to work all weekend, probably 10+ hours each day) than I will lose two and a half comp days and I rely on my comp time to supplement the vacation time so that I can even take two or three days off here and there. I hate America.

For the three or four years I was telecommuting, vacations seemed a bit of a waste -- I was doing minimal work (that is, they had minimal work for me to do), and I could do it on my laptop, so a great deal of the time if I was traveling, I'd just bring the laptop, do a few hours of work, and not take official "vacation time." I ended up with over a month of accrued, unused vacation days at the end of that job.

For most of this year, I was working two jobs and going to school, which meant that coordinating when I could be away was not exactly easy. I did take a week off in the spring, though. And now I'm down to just one part-time job and a minimal class schedule, which means I'm working or in class only 4 days a week (about to go down to 3), so it's kind of like a semi-permanent semi-vacation. (Which is good, because at my current job, because it's part-time, I don't accrue vacation hours very quickly.)

I did just do a long (5-day) weekend and go up to Sonoma, though. Not sure I have plans for much other travel, given that I'm moving, though ikkyu has been throwing around some ideas.

So, in other words: My schedule is weird. :-) I do look forward, one day, to taking traditional one- or two-week vacations with travel and airplanes and everything.

Given that the fucking Blue Angels fly directly over our house at an altitude of approximately 100 feet several times a day over the course of one particular weekend, we've found it to be a good idea to get out of town the last week of July/first week of August (depending on where the weekend falls). This year we're renting the same cabin we got last year, over on Hood Canal, for some hiking and such with the dog.

I get two weeks a year, one of which I've already used to go visit my folks in California, and I don't know how much sick time. I can tell you that I have a lot of it available to me, since I rarely call in sick; usually I end up using it to take a three or four day weekend, since I don't get holidays off either.

I took a week off at the beginning of May; it was the first full week (not counting surgery/recovery) I've taken off for at least 2 or 3 years. I haven't taken 2 full weeks since I went to New Zealand in 2003, which was the only 2-week vacation (not counting periods of unemployment) I've had since leaving grad school in 1994. The rest of my vacations have been basically long weekends or an extra day or two around holidays.

The mister gets 3 weeks holidays, 3 weeks comp time and statutory holidays (10 or so, I think). He has about four weeks saved up for this summer and winter.

taking a week in August, and a week over thanksgiving. August to Michigan where the fam is, and then St. Martin in November. Woot.

And then I think i'll be wiped out of vacation time.

We'll be in Punta Cana, the Dominican Republic one week from tomorrow. The last time Mr. V and I vacationed was our honeymoon almost 6 years ago. He only gets two weeks (10 days) paid vacation; I get four weeks vacation, and four and a half "personal" days. But my store manager won't let you use any of those for sick days...they used to, but someone abused the system and now we all suffer.

As a kid we would vacation at my grandparents home in Maine, or my aunt and uncle's farm in Pennsylvania. What's kind of neat is that my sons love going to the farm now, too. Last year I left the older one to help out, and he wants to do that again this year. A working vacation is still different from being home, I guess.