I am in a bit of a pickle. I have been looking for a new job for almost 2 months. I will be leaving the country for 2 weeks on vacation, March 1st-15th. My plan was to line up a job, give resignation notice such that my final day is February 28th, go have a blast in Europe, and then return home to relocate to my new job. There are many points in play here that inform and/or complicate the situation:

* I have not yet received an offer for a new job.
* I have not notified my boss of my vacation plans.
* I only have 4 days of PTO.
* I am able dip into negative PTO (they will just deduct any balance from my final paycheck).
* My boss will be on vacation February 10th-20th. I don't want to ruin his vacation.
* I will need to use at least 1 of my PTO days for a final job interview.
* I cannot extend my resignation period by using PTO, or I cannot use PTO during my 2 weeks notice period (I will look at the exact wording of this policy tomorrow).
* I have worked here for 2.5 years and I have a great relationship with my manager.

Options
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I have come up with three options. The first two are risky because I would be giving a resignation notice without having a job offer. In the third, I avoid giving notice, but my behavior may give it away anyways!

### Leave and Cleave

Notify my boss on February 9th that my last day will be February 28th.

### Divide and Conquer

Notify my boss on February 20th that my last day will be March 22nd (do the math: 1 week, vacation, 1 week). My boss gets to enjoy his vacation, and I mine; I might even have a job offer by this point! This could optionally be extended to the end of March.

### Tight Lipped

Notify my boss ASAP that I am going on vacation. This option kind of hinders my ability to take yet another vacation day between now and March 1st for an interview. I may even end up tipping my hand. Even 30 days is not much notice for a 2 week vacation, and to add to that I might be putting in a resignation notice shortly after I get back. This one kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The Question
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Which of these options is the most logical? Are there other options that I haven't considered? I am aware that this could be seen as opinion-based, but I would really appreciate some other ideas and input. I have to say, writing this out as a question has already helped me a great deal. Being forced to describe the situation caused me to formulate my thoughts into some actually cohesive, tangible options.

I'm sorry if you consider this a duplicate. I have seen similar questions on here, but none that I felt described my same situation enough.