Life is what happens while you're making other plans

My family and friends all know that I'm a planner. Although I realize that life does sometimes get in the way of my plans, there are numerous things - such as vacations - that I certainly do plan rather far in advance. Naturally, when I booked my end-of-April flight to Latvia at the very end of January, I could not have foreseen that an Icelandic volcano would throw global air travel into a tailspin right around the time of my planned and long-awaited Euro-vacation.

As the trip was inching closer, but trans-Atlantic flights were mostly still grounded and my airline (thanks, United!) issued a waiver for anyone traveling through my departure date, I decided to cancel my trip. Naturally, I had very much been looking forward to returning to Riga after a several year absence, but I decided that not knowing what may happen and the rather realistic prospect of flights being seriously delayed or even canceled was just not how I wished to spend my precious time off. Thus, I canceled the trip, got a full refund and told work I would not be taking my five days of vacation leave that particular week. Instead, I will take two random days off in the next two months, as well as three days off (combined with a weekend, of course) to visit family in the Midwest. I am looking forward to that *almost* as much as I'd been looking forward to my European trip.