It's been so long since I'v written and the year is flying by. I think I picked up a bug last week from our department assistant who had been sick for three weeks. I came back from lunch on Wednesday and I was sitting at my desk, when all of sudden I just wanted to throw up. I was in the bathroom talking to our assistant and she said her symptoms started out the same way. I woke up with a headache, which didn't go away and my stomach was so quesy. The director of my department became very concerned about sick germs being spread, so she said I should go home.

I left and got home around 3 pm and slept till 6:3o am the next day. I didn't sleep the whole time, but I kept taking 2-3 hour naps. My stomach was quesy the whole day. I couldn't anything with oil and nothing would stay down. Finally I ate some yogurt and that seemed to be okay. I went to the work the next day, but my stomach was still quite quesy and I didn't really normal until Sunday.

Our poor assistant had no PTO to draw on when she was out of the office for 15 days, so she didn't get paid. Thankfully our company has a short-term disability policy so she'll be able to get paid once she fills out all this paperwork. That's the bad thing about getting sick and being on a PTO system. If you don't manage your PTO right and keep some in your bank, if you do become ill and you don't have any PTO left you won't get paid. And if you do have PTO and you become ill, they will use it first.

I like to carry over at least 10 days from PTO every year for illnesses, and it's not like I don't take any time off. I take over 10 days of vacation a year, and some years more and some years less, but never the full 20 days. Some people at work look at their PTO as 20 days of vacation which it's not if you think about it. On the PTO system your vacation and your sick time is something you have to manage. When I left my last job, I had about 30 days of PTO left and received 6 weeks worth of extra pay when I left. Talk about a nice little bonus of sorts.