Dilemna

Just to disprove Keiths post about life being simple I thought I better put my thoughts in print:

On Friday Nat came home with the news that she's been offered a 6 month sabbatical. Obviously I'm still in the middle of my PhD, we're now homeowners and well there are a lot more factors to consider.
Firstly, this is a great chance to finally take the trip that we missed out on a few years ago. Nats career is going somewhere and the chances of us having spare time that coincides in the future is unlikely. In order to ensure a trip in the future the ideal time would be at the end of my PhD. This would mean her quitting her job, which to be honest wouldn't make financial sense and may leave us in a bit of a pickle. Work is low for her at the minute, dangerously low in fact. Her boss pointed out that she shouldn't sit up and wave to upper management that she doesn't have anything to do for obvious reasons. Taking a break now would secure her job in 6 months time when they DO have contracts starting. Not doing so may lead to something a little more disastrous. Her boss told her that they'd have to be in a bad state to start losing graduates like her. Well, they have 12 projects on, 10 of which are 99% complete and the other two are small. They're at that stage.
Now for my side of things; I don't want to quit my PhD, but then again I don't want to pass on the opportunity of taking a trip as who knows when the chance might arise again. Hopefully my supervisor can sort it so that I can take a 6 month break. If she can't I'll be forced to rethink things. I think I'd feel really bad about letting her down but then again I don't think that in itself is a good enough reason to discount doing so. I could leave with an Mphil and I'd only have wasted 6 months of her and my time.
Financially we're set for the trip, I've got cash from my Beetle turned submarine and the fact that we've only recently realised we are no longer students means we've accidently been saving.
Speaking to various people has been interesting, everyone sits clearly on either one side of the fence or the other. Talking to my parents over the weekend the same is true.

I didn't join the gym this weekend for obvious reasons (I might be off on a trip in less than a month). Instead, I worked my way through an extensive cocktail menu in the sun and then spent Sunday wandering around Cheedale. This evening I had a brief session down at the works which confirmed my suspicions that I'm managing my injury well and as a reward its recovering. Today was the second session without tape and (ignoring the fact that I'm still in easy ville) it was the also the second session during which I felt not real pain.