I'm beginning to hate phone calls on the weekend. Mary Lou rang today to let me know Dad was back in the hospital briefly. Apparently, the motion from driving around in a golf cart while playing his 18 holes this week caused his incision to tear open and bleed. That's my old man, always bungee-jumping or windsurfing too soon after delicate surgerical procedures. Poor guy. I mean really, could you ever have imagined something as sedate as riding in a golf cart would be so dangerous? I have equal sympathy for Mary Lou who has the hard part of sitting and waiting. At any rate, all is well and he'll be home tomorrow.
Plans for travel are bubbling up in my brain. Every other hour or so I ask John if he wouldn't like to visit Minneapolis, or Rome, or Melbourne. John patiently answers my questions, but I'm not actually listening to him. I'm too busy making alternate plans already. I have entered the Mental Bermuda Triangle in which I charge off in all directions at once and never arrive anywhere. For this I blame my sudden reversal of fortune at work. Not only can I once again count on my paid vacation, but I can definitely use both my current set of free airline tickets (anywhere American Airlines flies except the good bits), and a Horizon Airlines agent pass good until May 31st. The catch with Horizon is they don't fly more than twice a day from the Bay Area, they only use tiny planes, and no matter where you want to go you must change planes in Boise. I could easily spend five hours getting to Seattle, a two hour direct flight. But hey, it's free, so I'm thinking of doing it anyway.
The truth is, I think we may be unable to afford the Santiago trip unless Dixie magically gets better and stops requiring expensive tests. If we aren't going to South America, can we afford a trip to Europe? Yes, but it's still not exactly cheap because I absolutely, positively refuse to sleep in crappy hotels anymore. I spend lots of time in my hotel room when I'm on vacation and I want it to be a pleasant experience. So, fine, Europe. But American doesn't fly to Rome or Oslo which is where I most want to go. And if the air's not free then I'm wasting my tickets which I earned by my hard work and dedication, darn it. Thus I sail off into the Mental Bermuda Triangle, getting nowhere fast but definitely enjoying the trip. I expect I'll get over this in about a week.
Two trips I know for sure we're going to make are a weekend in Las Vegas in June, and a week in Wisconsin doing genealogy research on John's family (and visiting the living members) in July or August. The jaunt to Las Vegas is for a women's volleyball tournament being held at the brand new Mandalay Bay which features its own beach. We are staying there because once again I'm tired of crappy hotels. Besides, I have a professional interest in personally checking out the new hotels. The trip to Milwaukee and beyond will be interesting as we plan to drive to some of the small townships where John's German ancestors settled in the mid 1800's. We'll be hitting the local archives, visiting graveyards, and enjoying a peaceful Midwestern summer in the country.
And I'm getting a new cement pig to replace Henry. But this time he's going in the garden where no one can steal him. Damned Californians. They just don't respect lawn ornaments round these parts.
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