You might as well take the rest of the week off

Hey, let’s face it. You’re not going to get any work done today. Or tomorrow. You might as well take the rest of the week off.

Christmas is over, and for all intents and purposes, so is your work week. Most of us got yesterday off, which in essence makes today a Monday.

Since even normal Mondays aren’t ever very productive, you can pretty much write today off now. Add the fact that today’s a virtual Monday after a holiday, and you’ll be lucky if you can even delete all your junk e-mails.

But today’s not a normal first day back after a day off. It’s the day after Christmas, which means you’ll spend more time in conversations about what you found under the tree than in actual work-related discussions.

Depending on what you got, you might be daydreaming about putting your presents to use instead of answering phone messages. You’d rather be out sighting in that new rifle, giving that new winter coat a serious test-run, squeezing stuff with your new Leatherman, or using your new GPS to figure out how far it is from your recliner to Cabela’s. And if you got anything related to waterfowl or small game hunting, forget about getting anything done at work today. Instead of working, you’ll just be sitting there staring at your computer screen, wishing you were outside putting that new gear to use.

So if you stay home today, that makes tomorrow the figurative Monday. You’ll have even more e-mail to sift through and more phone messages to listen to, and since you weren’t at work today, you’ll have to spend whatever time you have left at the water cooler, telling everybody what you spent today playing with.

And depending on where you like to hunt ducks, today might be the last day of your season. Some areas run into January, but the goose season closes in the Pacific Flyway tonight. Get that last hunt in today. Play with your new toys tomorrow, and take the kids out for rabbits on the weekend.

If you’re running low on sick days, you better start practicing your cough.