Let the Vacation Begin!

We're sitting in the Anchorage airport waiting for our 1 AM flight to Portland. Rich is reading magazines and I am....well, you know...on the internet, of course. We brought some snacks with us--semi healthy--so we'd avoid the fast food nearby. I've been munching on cheese and toasted sesame flatbreads. I did have to stop at Starbucks for a venti black iced tea, though. You knew I would. The week flew by and I had such a good feeling that I was all caught up at work and had nothing hanging over my head. That is SO unusual. I have spent my life worrying about all the things I didn't get done before vacation, all the things that COULD happen while I was gone, all the things that someone will need or ask about that I forgot to handle. My desk and my office were even clean when I walked out the door. Now I have probably jinxed myself big time and something major will go wrong while I am out of town. It's been snowy and windy and several planes did not get in or out yesterday, though I know at least one finally did. Then we heard that Alaska Air had a system wide computer failure and lots of flights were cancelled altogether. Funny, I mentioned last night that I wasn't sure why we waited till Saturday to leave when we could have gone Friday after work. Good thing we didn't or we would have been in the mix with all the other poor souls whose flights were cancelled. Today was a beautiful clear and sunny day, perfect flying weather. We left on time and arrived in Anchorage at 8:30 PM. When we checked in in Unalaska, we realized that we were not seated together on the flight from Anchorage to Portland and, even worse, we're both in middle seats. Ugh. When we got to Anchorage, we stopped by the AK Air counter to see if there was an off chance that some different seats might now be available. The agent did find one window seat which I'll be sweet and give to Rich since he hates the middle even more than I do. She then told us that the person on the window next to me is traveling alone so we should seek her out and ask if she will trade her window seat for Rich's so we can sit together. It's still early but we will be stalking this poor person as soon as people start checking in. We know her name. I'm sure she will think we are a little bit weird. And I wonder if it's okay for AK Air to give out another passenger's name. I've been in social work too long and think that everything is more confidential than it really is, maybe. Our next order of business was to priceline a room in San Francisco for tomorrow night. We have learned the hard way that it's not always a good idea to priceline the first night before leaving home, just in case we have issues and don't get out. No refunds on priceline, no matter what. As I noted in my last post, we'd been looking for a room for the 2nd and 3rd nights but were not having much luck finding a bargain. In fact, we did finally get one and had to pay more than we wanted. Bummer. So tonight, after going through Security, we settled in with our snacks and laptop and Rich pricelined a 4 star hotel for $75 right off the bat. Now we are wishing we'd waited on the other nights, too. Two more hours to kill. Okay, I really did write this in paragraphs but Blogger keeps putting it all in one long stream of consciousness post. I've gone back in twice and spaced it back out but it apparently does not approve. Have fun reading!