Feast or famine. That’s how Ryan and I describe the popularity of the cardio equipment at our gym. There are either a ton of people running on the treadmills or peddling away on the ellipticals or absolutely no one is using the machines.
Today the gym was d-e-a-d.
I figured it must be some kind of a holiday weekend or something, so when I got home and looked at my calendar and saw that Monday is Columbus Day it all made sense again.
I’m assuming those who are lucky enough to have Monday off work are capitalizing on the situation and taking a four-day vacation. Or people were just sleepy today!
Speaking of holidays, I remember receiving my college’s academic calendar when I was a freshman at UCF. I went through my planner, marking off which days we had off from school. When I stumbled upon Casimir Pulaski Day, I was surprised to see that we didn’t have it off!
When I asked one of my professors about it, she looked at me like I was a total nut job. (I totally felt like Dupree from You, Me and Dupree asking about Columbus Day.)
Apparently the special day honoring this Polish commander is only recognized as a holiday in Illinois where I grew up! (Sadly, I’m not sure most Illinois students have Pulaski Day off from school any more, either.)
Speaking of holidays, this will be the first year that Ryan doesn’t have the best holiday vacation policy ever. At his previous job, his company gave the employees the week before Christmas through New Year’s Day off from work (two weeks!), and that was on top of their previously allotted vacation time. Unreal, right?
And that was officially the longest tangent ever.
Breakfast
What a yummy creation!
I made a delicious batch of Greek yogurt pancakes by blending the following ingredients with an immersion blender:
- 1 cup old fashioned oats
- One 6-ounce cup strawberry banana Chobani Greek yogurt
- 1 tablespoon coconut oil
- 1 egg white
The texture wasn’t fluffy like typical pancakes, but more doughy and thick.
As I was blending the ingredients, the batter was super thick, so I was unsure how the pancakes would turn out, but I was pleasantly surprised. I’m sure the texture of the pancakes isn’t for everyone since they’re not super fluffy, but both Ryan and I liked them a lot!
For those of you who have avoided making my pumpkin protein pancakes or banana bread protein pancakes because they include cottage cheese (which I promise you cannot taste), I’ve heard back from readers who have substituted Greek yogurt for the cottage cheese and said that it worked perfectly.
Time to be productive!
Question of the Afternoon
- What is the vacation policy like at your work? Good? Bad?
At my previous three jobs, it seemed standard to have around 12 days off every year. My last job gave employees 12 days off a year, but then you also had four sick days. You could not use sick days for “personal” reasons which I thought was silly. I felt like it encouraged employees to be dishonest about being sick since, if you never actually got sick during the year and didn’t use your four sick days, you would just lose four free days off from work at the end of the year.
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I was reading all of the comments, and it seems like a lot of your readers have nice vacation plans! I have the standard holidays off plus 2 floating holidays (adds up to 8 holidays paid off). I also then get 4 weeks (or 16 days) of paid time off. This would count as sick time if we need it. The best part is that we cannot use our PTO for anything less than 8 hours. So if we need ot take a half day off for something, it is automatically free! I love it and will never complain.
My job is great with vacation and sick days. For your first three years you get 10 vacation days and then it goes up to 15 for years 4 and 5 and continues to rise as you get more years. You can carry over 30 vacation days a year too!! As for sick days you get 1 a month (12 a year) and they continue to carry over until you leave. Pretty awesome!
Oh yeah, we used to get the week of Xmas/New Years off too but we haven’t gotten that in a couple years now…
We have a pretty great vacation policy at my work (hospital). We start with 3 weeks of vacation and at 4 years, 10 years, 20 years, and 30 years you add a week of vacation. I’m at 7 years, so I have 4 weeks off per year. We also get paid for 7 holidays, or you can save the hours of it & use it as vacation time later (which I always do). We also earn sick time, although, I don’t remember the numbers for that because we only get to use it if off sick/injured for over 2 days.
Those pancakes look great! I’ll definitely have to try them sometime!
At my company, as a hourly employee we had 10 days of vacation and 5 days of PTO (sick or personal hours). Now that i’m salaried, I have the same policy, but when i’m sick, I don’t have to use PTO or vacation!! WOOT! Unfortunately I had to take them up on that 2.5 days last week 🙁 Also, once you hit your 5 year, 10 year, 20 year etc anniversary, you get another 5 days of vacation added to your yearly time off! Oh and we get paid days off for holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Labor Day & Memorial Day.
I get over 6 hours of vacay every two weeks plus like 4 or 5 hours of sick leave every two weeks…there aren’t many perks of a career in education, but vaction is certainly the big one 🙂
oh and they never expire…you can pretty much have like 4000 hours without penalty 🙂
I don’t work currently (full time student) but when I went to school in Michigan we actually got the opening day of deer season off. It was called Deer Day and I never realized that not everyone got it off until I moved.
I made your banana bread protein pancakes and they were amazing! going to try the pumpkin ones this weekend.
In NY we celebrate Pulaski Day on the first Sunday of October, so we have the day off anyway.
Don’t be sad – Casimir Pulaski Day is still alive and well in the Chi!!!
I am very fortunate to work for an agency that values the people. I have 2 weeks vaycay, 2 weeks personal, unlimited sick and 16 paid holidays. A lot of people would balk at that, but as you know Julie, being a marketing manager, you def earn those days off 😉
25 days off! its a little ridicuous actually- actually lost a few days this year since I didn’t have time to take them all before the year-end cut off!
I’ve been all over your oatmeal pancakes recently! My roomie has actually started making fun of me lol. Today I made some for lunch, but I used half a very ripe peach (skinned) instead of pumpkin/banana. YUM! I didn’t even need to add sweetner! I have a feeling these pancakes aren’t going anywhere anytime soon! The roomie can deal! 😉
haha I’ve actually heard of casimir pulaski day! I grew up in St. Louis, so we never had it and had never heard of it, but my roommate all through out college was from IL, along with many other girls in my sorority house, so they always made it a big deal.
I get 8 standard holidays and 1 floating holiday and then accrue 8.34 hours each payday, so it adds up to ~27 days a year
Hi Julie –
Wow, pretty wild to see Casimir Pulaski’s name. It has been a while (30 years), but I am a graduate of Pulaski High School in Milwaukee. Lots of Polish people on the south side of Milwaukee. Unfortunately I don’t remember ever getting a holiday off for him.
Thanks for the memory!!!
Lisa
P.S. I love, love, LOVE reading your blog and also seeing pictures of the awesome “Ms. Sadie.” You both rock!
The schools still get Pulaski day(not offices…) it totally freaked me out, having grown up in Oklahoma…people would have to figure out what to do with their kids that day…. Now they get like every other Friday(or another day in the week) or a half day every week…, it’s crazy!!!
I always wanted Casmir Pulaski day off! My cousins who lived in Cook County got it off but because I’m from Dupage County( l’m just barely out of Cook County, I drive across a bridge over 294 and I’m there!) we never got it off.
I only get off 10 days vacation. We also only get a one day buffer for Christmas, bummer. Side note, I am pretty sure Ryan use to work at the same company my dad does here in Marietta, GA. That company seriously has the best perks ever! So jealous.
Wowza, I’m obviously very lucky in New Zealand! I have 28 days holiday per year (that’s standard), plus sick leave, plus discretionary leave (ie for surgery or the like) plus ‘home leave’ – for if your kids are sick or you need to wait at home for a plumber etc. It’s freaking awesome. You all should move to NZ.
I get 10 vacation days, 6 sick days plus the week off between Christmas and New Years. Compared to the company I worked at before (where I only got 10 vacation days and 2 sick days) it seems like a lot of time off!
Every year I get 20 paid days of annual leave, 10 paid days of sick leave, 5 paid days off over Christmas and 11 paid days off for public holidays. I do pretty well to have 46 paid days off per year! but everything besides the 5 extra days at Christmas is standard for all full time employees in Australia 🙂
Like Jules above, when I was working full time (SAHM now) I would get the 4 weeks per year and 12 sick days as well as the public holidays.
The annual leave and sick leave carries over each year as well. So if you happen to break your leg or something you could take a few weeks off using sick leave etc.
Where I used to work we also had 4 days bereavement leave, 4 days compassionate leave and 4 days special leave which could be used if you had to take time off work that wasn’t in your control – like jury duty of something like that.
As a teacher, I’ve only ever really known what it’s like to live a year with all the school holidays. 12 weeks a year off with a few public holidays thrown in between plus sick leave, short leave and personal leave.
I feel a bit spoilt after checking out all the comments on here!
I’m definitely going to check out your greek-yoghurt pancakes now. They look delicious!
We don’t get CP day off anymore in my district – we do get Columbus Day though! We had an institute day today so no kiddos at school!
2 sick days, 1 personal day, 2 floating holidays.
womp womp.
I work at a college, I get two weeks off for xmas/new years, 10 vacation/10 sick days/4 personal a 3 day break for thanksgiving and standard holidays…oh and a 5 hour shorter work week during the summer. I am in awe of this although no one else thinks its that great (we get paid breadcrumbs) but coming from my last job that paid more and made us take our 10 vacation days in 5 day chunks instead of spliting them up and only giving us 5 of the 6 scheduled holidays off…I think anything is an upgrade! I will take less pay and less work..for now anyways!
My vacation policy isn’t bad at all. I have only been at my company for 7 months but we accrue 6.77 hours of Paid Time Off every 2 week pay period. So I have already accrued over 9 days! But we don’t have sick vs. vacation–it is all just PTO. We only get 10 days off per year, including Christmas Day, Thanksgiving Day, and New Year’s Day. I work in a hospital so I don’t get very many other days off, and we NEVER close for snow or anything. However, I feel lucky that it is my first holiday season and my boss is willing to give me a few days off to go visit my family in South Carolina (I’m from Baltimore).
My company gives us 3 vacation weeks and 3 discretionary days, in addition to 9 holidays. I’ll take it!
Better late then never…..I get 1 sick day per month, I now have 22 days of vacation a year (used to be 1 per month) and I also get two weeks in December and all major holidays plus a few others.
Can you use olive oil instead of coconut oil? All I have is olive oil 🙁 What are their benefits of coconut over olive?