There are exactly 32 hours until our plane takes off for Punta Cana and we get to enjoy a week of doing SFA. Instead of feeling excited, I'm feeling panicky. Like full-on, Ativan-necessitating, pulling-out-my-hair-in-literal-handfuls panicky. The thought of being away from work, away from my BlackBerry and laptop, and away from the day-to-day grind for a full week should make me ecstatic. And I know my worries will disappear with the very first mojito I get my little sunburned mitts around. But in the meantime I feel kind of like I'm having something amputated.

Here's what I'm freaking out about, in no particular order:

-a client emergency will blow up and I won't be there to help fix things.
-my coworkers will realize the world continues turning quite nicely when I'm not around and I come back to find out my desk has been cleared out and I'm unemployed. At least I'll be unemployed with a nice tan.
-something SUPERDUPERIMPORTANT will happen and it'll be old news by the time I get back and I'll be totally out of the loop.
-I won't do a thorough-enough job briefing people that are looking after things and they'll hate me as they struggle to do their own work plus mine and I'll always be known as the jackass colleague.
-people will hate me in general for taking a week off and sabotage my projects.
-no one will care that I've gone away at all.
-some miniscule thing that I didn't do properly is going to rise to the surface and become a behemoth deal and I won't be there to defend myself.

These thoughts have all seriously been clouding my head all.week.long.

If there's a secret to going away on vacation and not stressing beforehand, someone please fill me in. I'm thisclose to packing my BlackBerry, which would be disastrous. I have 32 hours to get everything done and get into vacation mode. I hope to spend at least 14 of that sleeping. HALP!

I was inspired by Ellie's post: Ten Things I Can Do In Three Minutes. And by "inspired", I mean, I'm going to recreate the exact same post here because I can't come up with original ideas.

1. Make dinner.
The secret? Pre-washed bagged salad blend and pre-cooked chicken strips. Fire the chicken in the microwave for one minute, dump some salad on a plate, add a handful of olives/almonds/raisins/whatever's in the cupboard, a sprinkling of cheese and a few cherry tomatoes or avocado slices. Add the chicken and a splatter of oil or balsamic vinegar and that's all she wrote.

2. Manicure.
Unfortunately, it might not last much longer than three minutes without chipping, but Sally Hansen Insta-Dry makes painting one's nails freakishly fast. If your nails are clean and bare you can absolutely have them polished in three minutes.

3. Makeup.
Concealer, powder, blush, curl eyelashes, mascara, lipstick or gloss. It's pushing three minutes, but totally doable. Makeup used to take me more like 20 minutes to do so I'm happy to have streamlined that ordeal. It mostly has to do with the fact that I no longer care what I look like! Yay!

4. Eat a meal.
When I was a kid I couldn't wait to get mealtime over with because it was interrupting my playing. I know I'm supposed to do things like chew each bite 24 times and savour the taste of my food. I've tried it. Do you KNOW how long it takes to eat a plate of food with all that chewing? I don't have time for it. Down the hatch, K cya!

5. Make a phone call.
I hate talking on the phone, so the less time I'm on the horn the better. One thing I'm very bad about is leaving voicemail for people. I don't break the three-minute mark but I swear the voicemails I leave are longer than my actual conversations!

6. Get to Starbucks.
It's just around the corner! Luckily we got a lovely new coffeemaker for the wedding so my Starbucks investment is much smaller than it used to be. But it's still nice to know I can be ordering a tall skinny latte in just a few shakes of a lamb's tail.

7. Run .3 of a mile.
Nike+ tells me I average a nine-minute mile pace when I'm out for a longer run. If it's a 5K my pace is a bit faster.

8. Choose shoes.
Getting dressed takes me forever. If I don't have an outfit in mind the night before, I will go through at least five articles of clothing in the morning that don't make the cut. (This is why being able to do three-minute makeup is important.) Pretty often I have to try on a couple different pairs of shoes in the full-length mirror before I'm happy and ready to leave.

9. Get a phone call from anyone.
The formula for this is based on the amount of time it takes me to get up from my desk at the office and either go to the loo or into the kitchen to make myself a coffee...because every time, when I come back to my desk, GUARANTEED the voicemail light is glowing red. I could sit there from 8:00AM to 6:00PM, get up for 30 seconds, come back and I'll have missed a call. Ridiculous.

10. Fall asleep.
Anytime, anywhere, out like a light instantly. If it takes me three minutes to fall asleep I start freaking out that I can't sleep. When it comes to falling asleep, I am a gold medalist. I am Shaun White Triple McTwisting the act of entering dreamland. Staying asleep, not so much.

I love my car. Currently I'm driving a 2007 Mazda 3 sedan. She's a girl. You know how cars look like girls or boys? No? That's just me? Anyway, I love my little girl. She is the fifth car I've owned, and thinking about that prompted me to post about my cars over the years.

Let's start at the beginning...

When I was 19 I had my first car: a 1989 Ford Taurus.



This car was a gift from my parents, mostly because they were happy that I had started going to class, obtained a quality summer job, and broken up with an idiot ex-boyfriend whom they despised. It was really a reward for good behaviour. It also ended up saving them money. If I'd been driving their vehicles, my insurance would have cost them more than the price of the car. When they bought me this car, it came with the old "Now you can learn RESPONSIBILITY! and pay your own insurance! What a fun life lesson!"

The Taurus felt like a very luxurious car. The seats were soft and cushy, the cruise control worked like a top and as grandmotherly as it appeared, it had lots of power. The air conditioning didn't work but no matter--windows were always down so everyone else could listen to Dr. Dre along with me. PS...that would be Dr. Dre ON TAPE because the car didn't have a CD player. Big pimpin' indeed.

Fun fact: I sold the car and it COMPLETELY ate shit later that same weekend. Perfectly timed move on my part.

Driving Infractions: 0
Accidents: 0
Incidents of running other parked cars and doing damage: 2

Moving on...next up was my 1995 Pontiac Sunfire.



I felt like a total negotiating badass when I bought this car because the owners wanted $5,500 and I talked the man down to $4,700. His wife was suuuuuuper pissed and kept huffing and saying things like "I think you can get more out of it" and then giving him the stink eye and flouncing into the garage, only to reappear five minutes later. This car gave me pretty much zero trouble. It had a CD player, so the Dr. Dre tapes were relegated to a box in the basement. I had many temper tantrums in this car and took lots of angry drives in it. Even looking at the photo of a similar car makes me feel a little nauseated.

Driving Infractions: 0
Accidents: 0
Incidents of running other parked cars and doing damage: 3

When I got my first "good job" I upgraded to the 2001 Saturn SC1.



This car was fully loaded with all the fixin's. Sunroof, power everything, you name it. It was cute and fun and had a little doggie door on the drivers' side. I loved how sporty it was, and good on gas. I loved that it was made of plastic and wouldn't rust. This car cost me lots of dollars and license points in speeding tickets.

My relationship with the Saturn ended abruptly when I was leaving work one night, innocently enough, driving along and BOOM! Got the big T-bone right up the side of 'er. To add insult to injury my car was totalled by a YELLOW FORD RANGER. Pfffft.

Driving Infractions: 5
Accidents: 2. One was more of a 'bump'.
Incidents of running other parked cars and doing damage: 1, but it was a DOOZY. Red paint shows up on eggplant Intrepids like whoa.

I replaced my Saturn with a 2005 Mazda 3...



Driving Infractions: 0
Accidents: 0
Incidents of running other parked cars and doing damage: 0

...which I upgraded to a 2007 Mazda 3 after a year when I had the opportunity to make the swap basically for free. Same colour, same style overall, but with a little spoiler. Because that makes it go faster.



Driving Infractions: 0
Accidents: 0
Incidents of running other parked cars and doing damage: 0. I have cleaned up my act!

I love my little 3. She is great on gas, cute, peppy, and feels safe and secure. She is fun to drive and easy to park. If I were shopping for a new car today, I'd head for Mazda first, for sure. And that's my vehicular history, summed up for your viewing pleasure.