A QOL point to consider:

I have been awarded 2 weeks vacation in a single pay period (a 28 day window or 1/2 of a bid period), not over the summer but touching it. I'm converting that 2 weeks into 4 weeks off by selecting the entire pay period off via OCV, optional crew vacay. Next, I'll probably get a couple of days on either end without even trying thereby turning the time off into 5 weeks, all paid. Of course I'll try, and may even succeeded, to bid favorable choices in hopes of pushing that into six weeks, maybe. If all the stars align and I get very lucky with bidding I may even see close to 7 weeks (or I could trip trade, trip drop etc to try to do so). Senior guys can do this all day long and even stretch it up to 8. They also get 5 weeks of vacation(2 weeks = 4 weeks off) so they could do this twice a year plus use another week elsewhere, effectively working less than 8 months per year from this perspective. Not bad...