I Can Almost Smell the Ocean

I bought my plane ticket to Mexico today!!!!! I'm getting closer to the beach by the minute. A friend from school is going with me and we've been checking ticket for months now. And for those same months we've been moaning and complaining about the high cost of the tickets. The lowest we found prior to today was about $460. We checked airline websites, travel websites, cheap ticket websites. You name it, we checked it. We even checked into out of our way flights through LA and Mexico City. We were getting discouraged, and a little stressed, since we're leaving in eight weeks. I don't know about you, but I have this fear that if I wait too long to book a flight no seats will be available. I don't know if this is a valid fear because I've never waited longer than six weeks prior to a trip to book a flight. Anyway, she and I were talking on the phone about something else entirely and Janie (my travel buddy) said she was going to call some travel agents to see if they could find us a deal. BTW - Have you tried to find an actual travel agent lately? They're practically extinct. So we got off the phone and out of curiosity I went to the US Airways website and plugged our info in. Lo and behold - round trip from Denver to Mazatlan (via Phoenix) $340. I called her back and she went to their website and then we spent about 45 minutes booking our flights at the same time. Her computer kept freezing and telling her weird things, but eventually we got it done. So now we're the proud owners of e-tickets with our seats already picked out and everything! I know that I could have booked both of us and had her just pay me back, but that wouldn't have been near as much fun. Of course, now we've both promised to not check anywhere again - we don't want to know that if we'd waited another ________ (insert time period here) we could have paid less. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss, you know.

Then we decided that since we have to be at DIA at the ungodly hour of 4 am, we should go up the night before and stay in a motel out near the airport. I took care of that. I booked us a room at the Sleep Inn - we can park the car there for the two weeks we'll be gone, spend the night, and use the shuttle service for just a few dollars more than what parking alone would cost if we were to drive up the morning of the flight. Plus I may actually get a few hours of sleep this way. Last year, I had hubby drive me up and drop me off. Since we had to leave at 2 in the morning to get there by 4 I was afraid I'd oversleep so I just stayed up all night. It was OK, but I was pretty much a zombie by the time I actually arrived at the resort and it took me a couple of days to recover. So this idea sounds much better. Plus, since I consider that my vacation actually starts when I leave home, then my vacation will actually start sooner!

Crazy day at work and tomorrow promises to be even more so. I keep telling myself, "You can get through these last few weeks - the end is in sight." Kind of like the Little Engine That Could. I wonder if the LETC had to resort to Xanax before he finally made it up that hill?

On the knitting front: I'm determined to actually finish something before I start anything else. The "guy" blanket is the closest to completion, so it got elected. If I can get in some decent knitting time, I should be able to have it done by the end of the week. That's my plan, anyway.
Of course, there's that whole "best laid plans" thing, but I'm hoping for the best.

Today's Silver Lining: Crazy days at work can possibly be viewed as job security.