Booked!

If all goes well, alenxa and I will spend the first week of April in Hawaii!

We’ll leave April 3 and return April 10, staying in Kailua (near Kona) on the Big Island (aka Hawaii).

Of course this probably means we’ll miss this year’s CHP Retreat, but we’ve had to find out through nefarious means the last few years anyway. They don’t seem to be in the business of telling alumni about it, or if they are, they’re leaving us out of the loop.

Timing is everything

Two weekends ago, alenxa and I agreed that we would pick a vacation destination within a week, and make arrangements to go somewhere for a week sometime in March. I heard an ad for deals on Hawaii trips through Travelocity, checked out the prices, and was very impressed.

Last Friday we both got our vacation time approved, and I kept meaning to call a travel agent all week. Tonight I just went back onto Travelocity, pulled up the dates we’d picked… and it kept reducing the number of days and giving me prices that were twice what I had seen last time — and for fewer days! Other sites weren’t much help — Expedia couldn’t find any package deals at all unless I shortened the trip!

alenxa figured it out before I did: Spring Break. I guess I’ve just been out of school too long to remember when things hit.

Prices for the following week are back to what I was seeing before. If we can both get our vacation changed tomorrow, we should be set…

(Side note: I find it interesting that Travelocity emphasizes the total cost, while Expedia emphasizes the cost per person. Both numbers are there on each site, but it does make it a bit annoying to comparison shop.)

Giving Blood

In the past several years, I’ve gotten mosquito bites in exactly two places:

1. The Foster Botanical Garden in Honolulu. The first day we were in Hawaii, it seemed like I was bitten by every mosquito in the park. The rest of the bugs on the island must have decided I’d been tapped out, because no new bites appeared all week. Of course, the ones I had stayed with me for about a month.

2. Outside alenxa’s parents’ house. Repeatedly.

Maybe it’s just that I don’t spend a lot of time standing around in shorts outside at night. (With three cats in the house, I basically can’t stay inside for more than a few minutes without breaking out the Benadryl.) Or maybe they really do have more mosquitoes there than we do. But lately it seems that every time we go over there, I come back with bug bites. That. Won’t. Stop. Itching.

You know, this might actually be a use for emergency pants. Or just bug repellent.