I'm a hugger if I know the person well. If not, I'm much more reserved. I'm fairly shy around people I don't know, so hugging is just an extension of that.

I'm not taking as much time off as I had planned for the holidays because a major project got pushed back (for reasons way beyond my control) about two months. Luckily, all the time I took off for my Greece trip drained my PTO hours enough that I can carry the remainder over. My manager, a good guy who also got caught up in the project madness, will lose PTO. We are allowed to carry an ungodly amount of PTO over (I'm bringing ~120 hours), which says sad things about the last time he had a break.

Brenda and I are in the same boat when it comes to PTO. They used to let us rollover 5 days to the next year, but they changed that policy about 7-8 years ago. I happened to be at a party with my cousin's husband (the company's CFO) a week after they announced the change in policy and asked him why the change, and he said it saved them $5m on the books, and it was either that or layoffs.

We can roll over up to the amount we get each year (which for me is 4 weeks). It is really easy to not take time off when you are the only person who does your job, and your job is supporting someone. They never want you to leave.

But do they take vacation? I think it's being a bad manager not to have a plan for absences, and not encourage employees totake their leave.

We can roll over up to 5 days, but we have to use them by March. So I usually treat myself to a long weekend in January no matter how busy we are.

PTO. I hope to have a job with PTO again. (She says, working remotely from home.)

I am a hugger. I try to be aware of people's boundaries and personal space issues, but I sometimes fail at that.

Technically we can't roll over unused vacation (we don't get sick days), but, like so many other of my company's policies, that doesn't fly in California.

Of course, we get so little it's not very hard to use up.

If I am in a group, say, of 5 or 6 people, I'm going to hug all of them or none of them (if they're coming to me for hugs). I am not usually a touchy/feely person, but I would hate to be the one person left off of someone's "hug list" during such an occurrence, I wouldn't think that person had boundary issues, having seen her/him hug everyone else in the group; I'd think they just really didn't like me.

You're absolutely right -- it would be notable in a group that small (although the truth this that I *don't* like some people). However, in a situation like tonight's dinner, there will be at least 30 people there, if not more, some of whom I barely know. Surely not everyone hugs everyone else when there's that many people. (Or, perhaps what I mean is, surely it's not *expected* that everyone hug everyone else, given the varying levels of knowing/not-knowing people.)

I often look like a jackass by comparison because The Boy accepts hugs from everyone who flings themselves at him with outstretched arms.

t edit And my boundary issues exist w/r/t other people -- I'm more comfortable with some people than others. I can't help being uncomfortable with, for instance Creepy Eyefucky Inappropriate Comment Guy, or Thinks It's Okay To Give Unasked-For Massages Guy. Them I don't want to hug -- their standard of behavior crosses my boundaries before hugs ever enter the equation. People who DON'T comment on my boobs out of the blue and who DON'T tell me they'd like to fuck my boyfriend are generally not violating my boundaries and therefore are welcome to a hug.

What should I have for lunch? All courtesy of Trader Joe's:

• Turkey and dressing sandwich
• California rolls
• Nicoise salad