this weekend has been just a laid back one at home, a little "project" cleaning here and there.. but mostly I have been for the last two weeks scouring over maps, websites for the temperature and fall foliage predictions for the time frame that we will be going to the east coast. I went to AAA office and got map and travel books, tour books and the price of a "Tour" was roughly $5000 to have someone else drive us around on a bus.. uh, no that is not the way we like to roll.. So I "borrowed" the travel routes, descriptions of where they were roughly in the neighborhood of and highlighted and researched my own map routes.. so we'll see how it goes but if nothing else, I'm saving $5000 for information!
ultimately, what was accomplished online was this weekend.. we nailed down the September vacation here in California with Gregs mom and dad who are visiting here Aug 27-Spt 10 and we're taking them for a week or whatever to the north of the state hitting San Francisco (Alcatraz) and then north to the Redwoods area of the Avenue of the Giants, Fern Canyon, Scotia etc.. so we have our first two nights booked with no plans to wear out the parents with long days on the road but taking in as much as we can along the way. The rest of the days are just as we arrive and where we are.. the file folder of information has been developed and the map highlighted. Gregs parents asked us to take them to the Redwoods and so we are doing that for sure, and they have limited "hiking" ability so no long walks for them.
The next thing we nailed down was our Christmas and Carlson wedding trip to Minnesota this year. I had asked earlier in the year for these dates off and was told to address it as it got closer. Well I had started to look at airfare and it was frightening the price of it. We had finally found really inexpensive flights for this time of year if we flew out of Vegas to Sioux Falls, but had to fly on Sunday Dec 22 to get the rate and then drive there. All other flights were in the $500. per round trip range. Shane made the decision that he would take a week off of work even though his boss might not see it that way.. He's not worried. So I sent a Thursday night email from home to my manager. He called me in the morning on Friday to let me know that he had to talk to his manager to see if it was possible to give me time off (two days) prior to Christmas (Wed 25th).. I waited on Friday with anticipation as to what the "top" manager would say but I had it kind of figured that it would be no but hopeful it could be yes.. at the lunch hour he called me back and said "no, I'm sorry that we can not give you any time off prior to Christmas, but that I could have the Thursday and Friday after Christmas and the week of new years off as I had requested. I was literally crushed and heard little of what else he had to say.. Now it would probably be Greg and Shane flying on Sunday, and me flying out on Christmas eve afternoon and dealing with the rush of others traveling to family events. I hung up, and THEN I was ticked and teary all at the same time..
Literally I lost my focus for the job at hand that I was doing and if I didn't have some deadlines to meet I would have probably just left the office for lunch.. but long story shorter... the manager called me back about one hour later and said that he had done some research (called to ask me if one of the shifts took Christmas eve off the previous year) for which the answer was yes, and then he had called his manager back and they decided that indeed I COULD HAVE the Monday and Tuesday before Christmas off... and then I really hardly heard anything else other than "I can't share that information with any of the other admins".. No problem I don't know any of them anyway and will keep it to my self (except for you)..
So Friday night we absolutely bought our tickets for Minnesota. Greg and I are going for two weeks and Shane will fly home the day after the wedding on a separate one way ticket from Sioux Falls..
Greg and I were wiped out after figuring this trip out so called it a night as it was late. This morning I did some cleaning and then sat with Greg (who is slow at this ticket process) and we eventually purchased two tickets to Boston MA for the week of Sept 28-Oct 7 to travel around and see fall colors, and explore the New England states and whatever else we can squeeze in.. This afternoon I made the first night reservation just north of Boston with our hotel reservation Choice hotels and saved some money there.. So we are now set (and broke) for a big year of traveling..
Well, time to get the chicken grilling outside.. see ya~!
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