For those of you who might be thinking that I have waaay too much time on my hands, know this: I've been on vacation for the past two weeks. The public service has the policy of being able to bank your vacation -- you get a certain number of weeks per year, and you can accumulate leave over time. It's a nice perk. Trouble is, it costs taxpayers money, because many civil servants, including some of the best, simply bank their vacation over time and then add it up as pre-retirement leave.  It has not been uncommon for people to be paid for three, six, nine or twelve months as they near retirement.  It's especially useful in times of illness.  My father was a case in point. When he was ill, his vacation leave helped assist us in taking care of his hospital bills.It's good for the worker, but not great for the service.  The person remains on the books, which means that their post is occupied even though they are not working in it.  That means that it's often difficult to replace them -- and believe it or not, the public service is suffering as much from a lack of employees as it is from a bloated payroll (more on that later).  So there's an official policy that keeps reminding us civil service that vacation leave is cumulative only up to a maximum of fifteen weeks.  For people who get three vacation weeks a year, that's five years' worth of vacation, but for people who get more than that it doesn't take long to accrue a lot of leave.  I entered my fifth incremental year last October with some 10 weeks' leave, and didn't know how I'd got it.  So I'm taking it this year -- two before Christmas, two right after, and two weeks right now.All that to say that I've been fooling with the blog.  I've fixed the comment issue in the upgrade, which is good.  On the other hand, I have had to abandon the theme I was using, which was a design I liked.  A lot.  I've got this one, which is by the same designer, but though it does the job, it doesn't feel right.  Not bold enough.  Not me enough.  I'm waiting for him to release the theme for 2.5 so I can play with it again -- but by that time I may have redesigned the entire site.So I say all that to say this:  this may be just too much pinkery for the moment.  But stick with me.  It'll all turn out well in the end.It's a mystery.