Friday, October 28, 2011

Christmas tickets (stealin' all our monies)

We have finally, after much, much delay, purchased our tickets for our flight to Virginia for the holiday times. It is a big relief to have finally done this, as it has been on my To Do list for many months. We are super stoked and excited to have a vacation from real life. Also, we are crazy excited to see everyone! We are looking forward to having way too much food and drink and celebrating until we pass out.

Now for a question. Since when did airplane rides become so damn expensive?! It should be illegal to charge so much more money around the holidays. Shouldn't a ticket across the country be the same price every day of the year? Why is it half price to fly on Christmas day, as apposed to flying in on the 23rd? The plane doesn't run on half the fuel or half the pilots! I get it, I understand, supply and demand, blah blah blah, consumerism, whatever whatever, free market economy, and all that. Whatever. It just makes me angry. Stupid. Most things like this I can control. I don't believe cable should cost as much as it does, so I don't buy it and use Netflix instead. I don't like the fees they charge at ATM's, so I don't use them, ever. I mean never ever. I don't believe a movie ticket should cost nearly $10 so I patron exclusively second run theaters. But travel. Alas, I cannot figure out a way around it. A train is almost just as much and takes days longer. Driving is out of the question for too many reasons to count. I suppose my only option is to not fly around the holidays. Well, maybe that's what we'll do next year. This year we fly back to Virginia during the busiest travel time ever, with two dogs.

At least I can try and take comfort in knowing that I found one loophole, one way to save some money. We want to bring the pups with us, and as anyone who has ever looked into flying with a pet, it is ridiculous how expensive it can get. Luckily, we can take our wee ones with us as a carry-on piece of luggage. You would
think that since you typically get two free pieces of carry-on stuff, they would just be able to count them as one of those. But no. I guess there is some extra hassle involved that makes them able to charge $125 per pet. Each person is allowed only one pet, and each flight is limited in how many pets can be in the cabin at one time. Oh but we got 'em. There is some rule that says if the two animals are of the same species and size, and they ride in one bag or carrier, then they will be counted as one pet and only be charged one $125 fee! Now, Persie doesn't like to be caged whatsoever. And she is still kind of hesitant to snuggle up on Newton. He also bites all of the time. I imagine that on a seven hour flight there would be some problem, and I don't want to be that person with the growling and barking dogs peeing all over everything (hopefully they don't pee on everything). So I've come up with this brilliant plan to sew two very small soft sided carriers together, so that there will be a barrier between them, but putting one strap on both and calling it a double carrier. I believe I can fool the Delta people into believing me. I've had split 50/50 luck with getting nice airline worker people. Half of the time they seem to be very disgruntled and yell at me, the other half of the time they are very nice and do their jobs well and with a smile. Well, I'm feeling lucky. Now if only I can figure out how much food and water to give the babies pre-flight so that they don't pass out from hunger, and they don't have an accident. And maybe there is a sedative? Luckily, I have plenty of time to figure this all out.

Can't wait to see everyone! Miss you all a lot!

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