Two adults take a vacation to Disney World over a holiday weekend. While this would be a great start to a surely hilarious joke, it is the true story of my friend Julia and my true-life adventure for a fantastic, fun filled few days in Central Florida’s best-known theme park with an adorable rodent problem. It all started a few months ago when my college friend Julia emailed me about our annual trip. In the past we have met up in Pittsburgh (where we went to school) or in New York City (where she works and my family lives). This year, Julia offered a whole slew of options and at the bottom of her list was the most magical place of all – Walt Disney World. For some people, a trip to Disney would include cyanide pills, as they would without a doubt want to kill themselves rather than be stuck in the humid air, waiting on line for hours to watch animatronic children sing about what a small world it is, but for me, it was an adventure into happiness, a chance to relive my youth and be a child for a few days. So without hesitation, I agreed to Disney and started preparing to drink the proverbial Kool-Aid of the happiest place on earth! One of our main goals of this trip was to make sure that we kept it an adult vacation and Disney World seemed to have a whole world of activities and restaurants geared just for adults. In addition to the parks themselves, this resort destination has fantastic dining, great themed hotels and a whole variety of leisure activities and sports. From the research that I did, I learned that Labor Day week was actually a great time to...

The point of Labor Day weekend has always flummoxed me. Why do we need a holiday weekend at the end of August? Presumably we’ve been taking our vacations sometime over this period, and enjoying those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer. Yet apparently we need a break after all of that, a break that completely robs the week we now find ourselves in of any momentum. In school, we’d often start classes the week before Labor Day, only to immediately go into a 3-day weekend, completely throwing off class schedules right when they should be getting started. I’m not against holidays, and certainly not against the labor movement that this most recent holiday commemorates (unions helped put food on my table throughout my childhood). But there does seem to be a prevailing notion in our society that encourages us to take breaks more often than we need them. Advertising constantly encourages give ourselves a break, or have a treat. Self-help books and novels encourage us to find ourselves on vacations—to escape from the stress of our busy days. But how busy are our days, really? Certainly there are those out there who work 60 hours and more a week, who struggle through multiple jobs to support family or maintain a decent quality of living. But those people probably aren’t taking breaks—they can’t afford to. For the rest of us who work closer to 40 hours (or less) we probably tend to give ourselves too many breaks. Ok, I give myself too many breaks. I’ve never found it difficult to stop working and take it easy. It’s getting going again that is the real difficulty. There is nothing I have found that is more addictive than complacency—it’s really the root of all continuing bad habits....