beautiful addiction

In preparation for 2009, I’ve made a list of 109 things I want to accomplish and/or experience over the coming year.  Took me a few days to compile the list.  I wanted things that would be fun, challenging, some easy, some hard…so it was a little bit of effort.  But I’m glad the list is done and posted and I’m ready to start crossing things off!  Some of the the things will make our summer full of new road trips and day outings with friends.  Some things are more personal.  Some will get the creative part of me more active (reading, writing, photography).  I’m excited for the things I have planned.

We plan on having a decently frugal New Year’s Eve.  No fancy parties for us.  We’re having 4 friends over to our place.  I’m making a big crockpot full of my yummy chili and a few batches of cheese and black bean quesadillas to munch on.  We have more alcohol than we know what to do with (leftover from purchases throughout the year), so no need to buy anything except beer for the hubby.

We leave for Las Vegas next Monday!  A week with my brother, his wife, and my niece.  Hoping the weather is nicer there than it has been…they got a huge snowstorm last week!  It should be a rather cheap vacation, as we plan on doing some free sightseeing and only going out to dinner once (at The Pink Taco, an amazing Mexican restaurant in the Hard Rock hotel).  We’re staying at my brother’s house, so no need for a hotel.  And we decided to go to the grocery store when we get there to get groceries for the week and split costs with my brother.  I’ve got a decent amount of money saved up, and I’m expecting we won’t even use half of it.  Which means I’ll have a decent deposit into our emergency fund once we get home!

I’m ready for a new year.  A new start.  I know the shiny, glittery feeling of a new year will fade shortly after it hits…but it’s still a good feeling while it lasts.

So, I’m starting to look into where we wanna go on our next vacation.  Now, I realize we are broke.  But, we have $600 in travel credit for Northwest Airlines that has to be used by June of ‘09 otherwise it expires (due to our having to switch from Myrtle Beach to Las Vegas last week).

So, really…I’m trying to find the cheapest vacation possibility that I can.  $600 in flight credit for two people is not really that much, I’m finding.  And I’m wanting to go in March while I’m on break from college.  And I don’t know where to go.

I thought about maybe just going to Las Vegas again to visit my brother and his family.  But we’d have to get a hotel since they don’t have an extra room or anything, so we’d still be racking up a decent bill.

I thought about Myrtle Beach, but it’s cold there in March.  At least, colder than I want it to be.

And flights to Florida for March are SUPER expensive due to Spring Breakers.

So, I need ideas.  Something that is cheap airfare (and MUST be through Northwest) and cheap hotel and attractions.  For about 4-5 days (over a long weekend so Dave doesn’t have to use as many vacation days since he has weekend off).  Doesn’t even have to be all glitzy or anything.  I wouldn’t mind a mountain getaway or some cabin in the woods as long as the weather is decent and we can get out and see stuff.

Help, please.

Ok, pics are up.  Haven’t captioned anything yet, but you can still look!

Just as I was about to book our Dallas trip for $1500, I thought I’d check the Las Vegas prices one last time.  Good thing I did!  They had gone down drastically, so I ended up booking that instead.  Here’s hoping that the Imperial Palace is decent (hey, they have a Luau - bringing a little Hawaii to the mainland!) and we don’t have any problems.

We had to shorten our trip a little, and we really only have 4 full days there (arrive around 10pm on Monday night, flying home around 6am Saturday morning).  But we’ll have Tuesday-Friday for whatever we want to do.  Now to look and see what shows we want to see and what other activities there are that interest us.

Plus?  I’m going to try to get in touch with my brother who lives out there.  I have a niece I’ve never met.  Hoping we can all get together for dinner one night or something.

So, now that it only took me 7 straight hours of staring at Expedia and feeling like the world was hating me…we have our vacation booked.

Ok, so now we’re thinking Dallas because it looks like a lot of cheap and fun stuff to do and we’ve never been to Texas.

Other recent searches:

• The Poconos Mountains
• Denver, CO
• Los Angeles
• Seattle

I really need to figure out where we’re going, lol.

I wouldn’t mind a Colorado vacation (skiing could be fun, never done it) but we don’t have the proper attire!  So frustrating.

We also though, if nothing else, we could drive over to the other side of the state and stay at the B&B that we stayed at for our honeymoon, take some wine tours, and relax that way.  Everything is still up in the air.

I’ve been sitting here for 5 hours trying to rearrange our vacation.  Myrtle Beach is cancelled, got a full refund on our hotel and $300 flight credit for each of us (which can only be used with Northwest Airlines and no in conjunction with a flight+hotel booking, which means hotels will cost more because you get discounts for booking together.  Bastards.).  We really only lost $70 (which was the amount we paid for the cancellation services) so that’s not bad…but I’m thinking our flight credits will have to wait until I have more time to plan ahead for a vacation and save money on booking flight and hotel separately.

Las Vegas is looking out of the question…all the prices went up about $500 per person just since this morning when I started looking.

Hawaii is definitely out of the question (knew that before I started, really lol).

Was looking at New York City, but that’s another destination that I would like to have time to plan ahead of time and do some research so we don’t show up and have no idea what we’re doing (plus, we wouldn’t really need to fly…it’s only about an 11 hour drive).

So, I’m stuck.  I’m frustrated.  I hung up on the damn foreign Expedia rep earlier when I tried to book a flight-only itinerary but couldn’t since our flight out was NOT with Northwest.

I hate you Hurricane Hannah.  I really do.

Well, good ol’ Hannah is heading straight towards South Carolina and Mytle Beach and is planned to hit on Saturday, so I’m thinking that flying in Monday morning isn’t the brightest idea.  The governor is asking for a voluntary evacuation and everything.

So much for our week long vacation in Myrtle Beach next week for our 2 year wedding anniversary!

I’m about to cancel that trip and rebook somewhere else (Las Vegas? Hawaii? Ha, I’m dreaming on that one, but maybe I’ll get lucky!)

Should’ve known better than to book a vacation during hurricane season right down there in hurricane alley.

I’m so sad…

So, I thought people drove a bit crazy back in Michigan.  Even downtown Detroit traffic doesn’t compare to Chicago traffic!  Even Dave, who is USED to driving in heavy metro Detroit traffic, was shocked at the stuff driver’s do over here.  (No offense to you folks from Chicago…I’m just stating the differences!)

We’ll just be driving along and a car will swerve in between two vehicles where you wouldn’t even think there was room TO swerve in.  It’s like, they see where they wanna be and they just GO, with or without a blinker.  It’s nuts.  I don’t think I could drive here.  I’d be afraid of getting side swiped or cut off and I get a temper when people cut me off.  I found myself reaching over and laying on the horn when Dave was driving!

Dave said that when he was out working earlier, he was coming up on some train tracks and the lights started blinking red just as he was upon it, so he just drove across (making sure to look before hand).  He said that, like, 5 more cars followed him.  And they’ll do the same thing at red lights!  We sat at a light, and after it turned green about 3 or 4 more cars went through so we couldn’t go unless we wanted to brave the intersection!  It’s nuts.  Really.  I couldn’t do it.  I mean, I’m sure I’d get used to it, but it’s just shocking to me how ballsy these people are!

Also?  We had the gigantic pizza for dinner again.  We couldn’t help it.  I was burnt out on breakfast-type foods (we had IHOP one night, and then Denny’s the next) so we did pizza again.  Now I’m burnt out on breakfast foods AND pizza.  So tomorrow we’re going a place called Weber Grill Restaurant where they cook everything on Weber grills.  It’s supposed to be fairly good, and the prices don’t look too bad, especially if we split an appetizer and entree to keep costs down.

Oh!  Californication and Dexter come back on next month (September 28)!  I’m excited.

Ok.  I’m out.  G’night.

Dave got out of work early enough this evening that we were able to go out to dinner before 10pm!  All week so far he’s been working really late (nice overtime, though).  So we went to Denny’s and stuffed ourselves silly and came back to the hotel and decided to go down to the pool for a bit.  The night before we left for Chicago, Dave pulled a muscle in his back so it’s been bothering him all week.  We figured the hot tub would do him wonders.

So we’re down sitting in the hot tub, enjoying the relaxation of it all, and there’s an older lady swimming laps in the pool.  Some guy came down (her husband, I assume) and they exchanged words and she swam a few more laps.  Then she came into the hot tub for a minute before finally going over to where her clothes and towel were.  Now, I assumed she would just wrap up in the towel and head back to her hotel room.  No.  Not at all.

She kind of drapes the towel around her and I see her pull her bathing suit down and start putting on her bra and a tank top (her back was to us, it’s not like she was flashing us, thank goodness).  I lean over to Dave and I’m like, “Ok, she’s seriously changing right out here by the pool!  Why doesn’t she just go into the restroom right there?!”

So we start minding our own business and we decide to jump into the pool, which was FREEZING after being in the hot tub for so long.  Dave’s walking around with me in the pool, my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist.  I look over and granny pulls her bathing suit all the way OFF and continue to put on her underwear.  I’m seriously apalled at this point.  And she’s taking her sweet ol’ time, too.  Every time I tell Dave to look and see if she’s done so we can get out of the pool, he refuses.  So I’d quickly peek and catch her standing there in her granny panties like she’s in her own home, all nonchalant.  It was unnerving.  Finally, she finished dressing and left.

Seriously.  Seriously?!  WTF.  I’d tell her to get a room but it’s apparent that she has one and doesn’t care to use it!  She’d rather change in front of everyone down at the pool.  I feel exposed enough just showing up in my bikini!

The amazing pizza from last night that I was talking about:

And I went down to see if the pool was open (was supposed to be under refurbishment, but it’s open now, YAY!) and stopped in the weight room.  There are treadmills in there that have TVs on ‘em, which is way better than the ones at the college lol.  That means I can watch trashy TV while working out!  Kind of motivational, actually.  I usually get bored.