Palm Fronds & Nom Noms

 It finally happened.  We failed at Disney.  Or Disney failed us?  The semantics don't matter, the end result is the same.  We are not taking a trip to Walt Disney World (WDW) in 2025.  In the 14 years that we have been married, Adam and I have taken seven (yes, SEVEN) trips to WDW in Orlando (plus a trip to the California Disney parks).  Six out of seven were at Deluxe Resorts, and five of those were just the two of us.  In 2019 though the prices started feeling a bit too steep and we were introduced to the idea of renting DVC Points for a stay.   This worked our amazingly well for our 2020 stay in a Deluxe Studio at the Polynesian where we could watch Magic Kingdom fireworks every night from the balcony.  The price was right in 2022 when we knocked Bay Lake Tower off our wish list for stays (even though the room view was a total disappointment and we came home with COVID-19).  With some other, more far afield travel prioritie...

  I have been asked more times than I can count why we travel as much as we do.  My standard answer is some variation of, "because we never know when we might not be able to."  Enter the year 2020.  Nothing like a global pandemic to drive a point home.  Nearly overnight one of the world's most powerful passports became just a fancy blue booklet with some neat stamps and too many empty pages inside.  In the grande state of the COVID-19 ridden world, we would not have wanted to use it even if we could.  The risks were just too great.  We don't have the kind of jobs that would allow us to join the trend of "digital nomads" who are now working in comfort at luxury resort properties abroad for extended periods of time.  And unlike the glamorously wealthy, we cannot quarantine repeatedly or access repeat rounds of testing in order to escape to a remote vacation locale without either bankrupting ourselves or losing our jobs.  While the pandemic...

  There are innumerable quizzes and matrixes found online to help anyone, of any fan base, determine which character they would be in the fantasy world of their choosing.  Some are based on the old school Myers Briggs personality types, others link to astrological or Chinese Zodiac signs.  It's always fun to go down those rabbit holes to explore which book, movie or gaming character most closely reflects your personality.  (Or in the case of many, many online quizzes, frustrating to have the final outcome be your least favorite character.) It is another thing all together to be brave enough to ask you family members which character they think you would be.  Adam and I have had a version of this conversation with characters from the TV show Leverage.  One of the show's tag lines is "Hitter, Hacker, Grifter, Thief, Mastermind."  (Clearly I am the Hitter.) I don't recall why it came up at bed time a couple of nights ago, but I somewhat randomly asked Ada...

Yes, yes they did.  Constance Moofushi , Thank You! Despite the lengthy and exhausting transit effort, the Maldives experience made it near impossible to book an all-inclusive in the Caribbean the next year.   How could we justify spending per night rates on par with "Maldives Money" when we KNEW the service and experience would NEVER compare anywhere else (at least that we could afford and would be willing to risk that bucket of $$ on....) We agreed that our best bet value wise would be a return to the Dominican Republic.  First I booked the Excellence El Carmen with a two-story, beach front suite .  It was pricier than where we had stayed before, but maybe it would pay off.   That lasted about a week, and then I switched us to Sanctuary Cap Cana , Oceanfront Castle Suite.  Although with their over abundance of room categories, being satisfied with room location would be a bit of a crap shoot even with an extra $2000+ added to our typical DR/AI b...

On chilly January day I arrived home to a package on the doorstep.  Not unusual, especially since we were gearing up for a big trip and I had been shopping.  But I wasn't expecting anything, and this was clearly different.   Stepping through the door I yelled my hello to Adam adding, "did you order something perishable?"  His head poked around the corner like a startled gopher with wide eyes, "what makes you say that?"  "Well, there is a good sized box here addressed to you that has PERISHABLE is big letters on the sides."  "That checks out..." he quipped.  I brought the box in setting it on the kitchen counter between us before taking off my coat and taking care of my work gear.  "Did you buy something for our anniversary?"  "Maybe," he answered in the high pitched, little kid voice that meant yes, he absolutely bought something for our anniversary.   I didn't know whether to feel bad because I had no anniversary plan...

At the beginning of the movie Couple's Retreat Jason Bateman's character attempts to woo his friends on a tropical vacation with a power point proposal detailing the eponymous location - "it would play like gangbusters in the conference room..."  For about 2 weeks I have puttered along building a spreadsheet of logistics, options, and arguments to present Adam with a proposal for a river cruise on the Rhine to experience the European Christmas Markets.  While I was already taken with the romance of it all, I anticipated Adam would be a bit tougher to sell:   A) It would be a cruise (but not an ocean cruise, eliminating concerns of sharks, ship wrecks, seasickness, and not being able to swim to shore if something catastrophic happened). B) It would be colder weather (but we have our Iceland trip as a successful precedent for a wintry travel destination AND this would be sandwiched between our February 2024 trip to the Maldives and a winter 2025 trip to somewhere warm)...

~BOAT BUDDIES~ Sometimes you really have to consider serendipity.  How else, for example, would you happen to be poking around to see if the river cruise you are taking in a year has sold out yet?  How else would your happen to think, "hmmm, might be nice to have dinner companions... there are only 3 couples I could think of that  A) we would likely enjoy for that long and would be fine balancing together time and couple time and B) would potentially have the requisite funds and time available to even consider joining us.   Now usually I would have had a conversation with Adam before sending out a message saying "Adam and I have booked a Rhine River cruise for next December.  I thought they had sold out, but today I'm seeing one cabin still available.  Want to play in Europe for a week next year?"   The first responder said it sounded like fun, but unfortunately didn't line up with their travel plans next year.  The second asked for the ...

  The most meaningful coin flip of our lives to date happened a little over 2 months after Adam's mom passed away.   (SPOILER! It involved this dining room set that now lives in our house... )  

It started with a social media post, which of course I can no longer find to screenshot and include here. Adam and I were sitting on the couch at home on the day before my 49th birthday and I said, "I saw this post online today that said something to the effect of "I don't feel bad for any of you complaining about your work hours and cost of living when you could be living on a beach in South America somewhere for $500 a month!"   Adam didn't really respond at first, but had a look that said he was processing what I had just said and was likely pausing to choose his next words wisely.  I braced for snarky, so was all the more surprised when he said, "maybe once we pay off the house here in the next few months we should be looking at an investment property on an island somewhere..."  Wait.  WHAT?!?  Had I just been handed a research project requiring detailed spreadsheets to determine feasibility of a semi-retirement plan?  This could very well be the B...