When last heard from, our intrepid blogger was wallowing in the misery of waiting for The Call. Sadly, not much has changed on that front…
A few months ago I looked at my calendar and realized that between April 2015 and February 2016, I had never been in town for more than 35 consecutive days. And for about half of that time, each trip was planned with excitement and trepidation as we purchased cancellation insurance just in case. Then I spent February and March at home (although February was super fun and exciting because my niecelettes and brother came to Portland for a visit). March, on the other hand, was miserable.
With no trips to look forward to, I found myself at home just wallowing in my misery. In fact, I was so miserable that I didn’t even have the mojo to work on the purge, which had become a neglected project because I was never home long enough to work on it.
I began to realize that my travels gave me distinct chunks of time to focus on. The time at home was spent planning and preparing and the trips themselves were wonderful distractions from the wait. So I started looking forward and began to fill up my travel schedule once again.
April was already going to be a fun month. My best friend lives 3,000 miles away and even though we talk almost every day, I haven’t seen her in waaaaaaay too long. But today she is flying to Seattle where I will drive up and meet her tomorrow morning. We will spend the day and night there before we drive home for a week together in Portland.
Then comes Passover. The original plan had been to go east to be with family. But then David pointed out that we had not been on a vacation alone together since our honeymoon to Australia in 2006. With time (hopefully) running out for such things, we changed our minds and decided that an adventure was called for. We tried to think of places to go that did not require an unreasonably long plane ride. But then the power of advertising paid off.
I received an email from Alaska Airlines announcing a fare sale. Turns out we could fly to Anchorage for $91 RT/person. Clearly the fates were saying that it was high time we hit Alaska. And since it has been on our list of places to go since pretty much forever, we jumped at the opportunity.
Now traveling on Passover is always an interesting proposition. But we rented a house with a full kitchen so we can cook for ourselves and we are planning on bringing matzah and other assorted Passover necessities with us. After all, with airfare that low, we can easily afford to check a bag.
May is also beginning to fill up. With a weekend trip to Chicago in the works to meet up with friends either followed or preceded by a trip to New York for some quality niecelette time. In June we are hoping to be able to make it to Virginia to see David’s brother, sister-in-law and the nieces. And July is just off the charts, with the annual trip to Lake Placid, followed a couple of weeks later by David’s brother’s wedding.
No word yet on August, but I really and truly hope that our travel window will have closed by then.