I can't believe that I'm already planning out 2010 vacation time, but here I am...carefully mapping out my vacation days over a year, trying to figure out how to make the most of them. And how NOT to spend them all in Canada, like this year. No offence, Canada, but I can get to London for the same cost as going home. Um....yeah.

So, that being said, I do need to kiss the soil of my Motherland at least one time next year. We don't know what we're going to do about our postponed wedding, but I do know that I'll be in Ottawa at the end of May and that K wants to be there for the CHEO BBQ in June, so there's a good possibility that those weeks will be our Great Canadian Adventure for 2010. Other ideas we're tossing around:

NYC for a long Easter weekend at the beginning of April. This is all but a done deal. We've been dying to go back since March 2008.

Boston for a long weekend in the Fall. Boston is a city that I have wanted to go to for years, even long before I moved to the Rock, where it is one of the primary destinations for island feverish Rock-dwellers. I hear it's best in the Fall, so the Fall is when we'll probably go. The deals from here are phenomenal if you book early.

NYC in November so I can kick some marathon ass. This is totally up in the air and obviously totally dependant upon me actually training for a marathon. I have a friend here who is running the marathon in DC this November and who had some words of advice for me that made me believe that the training here isn't as impossible as I thought it might be. I'd still really love to do this and it's still very much in my plans.

All of those trips together will still leave me with a week of vacation days left. Hmmmm.

I live for vacations.

So, guess what I get to spend my evening with? Pencils, Tax Form 45X1123590277-A (and corresponding schedules A through Z) or something like that and a big calculator. Why? Because I made a whole $300 in Canada last year and Canada WANTS TO KNOW ALL ABOUT IT. Talk about overkill. Seriously. I would make more money running a lemonade stand in a prime location. If we owned a whole bunch of houses that made $300 per year, I can see why CRA would care. But we own one. We make X amount of dollars off of it in rent, which we offset by claiming the mortgage interest, maintenance fees, how much it cost us to put a dishwasher that holds wine glasses in...a whole bunch of stuff. And then we end up with our total income...$300 each. Give or take $2. And then we have to spend a few precious evenings working out all of the above (stated simply enough, but Form 45X1123593050277-A (or whatever) doesn't actually allow for things to be stated simply) into complicated equations and honestly...I would just about kill to have one of those H&R Block nerds knock on my door right now and offer to do it. I would even pay them the full $300, just to take this off my plate.

Every year, the Globe & Mail hosts a Canada Day photo contest, where readers can send in their photos of their favorite spots in Canada. This year, the contest was held on their website, and dozens were sent in, from all over, and some of them were absolutely gorgeous shots (and made me a big homesick for some of my favorite places). Here are my favorites.

Happy Canada Day.