Category Archives: Trip Reports

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Work from Home Diary 7: Adult Easter Egg Hunts & Seeing My Family on Zoom this Easter Weekend

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Good Friday everyone.  I started sharing my thoughts regarding working from home in a series of Work from Home Diary posts.  Feel free to share your work from home feelings in the comments section below.  For today’s update, I wanted to wish everyone a very happy Easter weekend.  I know that many churches around the country are closed and many family gatherings were cancelled, but we can still celebrate Easter individually but still be connected to others.  It is important to reach out to your friends and family members and check in on them, tell them you love them and are thinking of them, and reminisce about happier times.

One of my fondest Easter moments was from a few years ago when I was at my parent’s house.  Since all the kids have grown up, we did an adult Easter Egg Hunt.  The brightly colored plastic eggs were filled with mini alcohol bottles (the kind you would buy on flights), chocolate eggs, big chocolate bunnies, and some cash.  The real adults (our parents) hid the eggs all over the backyard and they made it very difficult to find all the eggs.  After 20 minutes of looking, all the brightly colored plastic eggs were found and we opened them up.  We compared hauls to see who got the most eggs and who got the best prizes.  It was a lot of fun and hopefully we can do it again in the years to come.

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Work from Home Diary 5: Quarantine Buddy, Work Space & Daily Routine

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Good afternoon everyone.  I started sharing my thoughts regarding working from home in a series of Work from Home Diary posts.  Feel free to share your work from home feelings in the comments section below.  For today’s update, I wanted to talk about my quarantine buddy (Laura), our combined work space, and our daily routine.

I’m on week 4 of working from home, so I seem to have a good system in place.  For the last few weeks, Laura has also been working from home.  When I was home by myself, I preferred working upstairs in our guest room / home office.  But now that Laura is home too, I decided to move down to the dining room table to work next to her.  It is nice to work face to face with someone (even though we are working on completely different things) and I think it keeps us both accountable.  I make sure she doesn’t spend all day on Facebook, Instagram or online shopping; she makes sure I don’t spend all day watching CNN (aka Coronavirus News Network) and reading travel blogs.

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Reader Feedback: After We Survive the Coronavirus Pandemic, What’s your Dream Award Trip?

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Good morning everyone.  This might be the most optimistic blog post / news story you read all day.  You’re welcome.  I know we haven’t had many happy pieces of news lately, but I wanted everyone to think about the future for a moment with your happy glasses on.  I’ve read a few blog posts over the last few days about incredible award space on many different airlines to many different places.  For example, check out Frequent Miler’s article Premium routes with wide open awards.

Even though no one is travelling now, or even booking flights, there will come a time when it is safe to travel.  After the coronavirus pandemic ends, there could be amazing award space on every airline to every destination they serve.  Just imaging the possibilities brings a smile to my face.  So I wanted to ask my readers:  After we survive the coronavirus pandemic, what’s your dream award trip?  Assuming that every airline in every alliance has 100% award availability on every flight they operate, where you would go, what you would do, and why you want to go there?

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Work from Home Diary 3: Upcoming Travel Plans (Cancel Now or Wait it Out?)

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Good afternoon everyone, happy Friday.  I started sharing my thoughts regarding working from home in a series of Work from Home Diary posts.  Feel free to share your work from home feelings in the comments section below.  For today’s update, I wanted to discuss upcoming travel plans and my plans for those trips.  As of today, I have 4 trips on the books.  These trips are not set in stone and could be cancelled by myself or the airlines before departure depending upon how things are going in the world.  We are taking things slowly and focusing on 1 day at a time.

Trip 1 – Mother’s Day Weekend

My next trip is in mid-May for Mother’s Day Weekend.  I was planning on flying down from San Francisco (SFO) to Orange County (SNA) to visit my parents and grandparents.  I have flown down for Mother’s Day weekend for the last few years and enjoy seeing my family.  This trip was booked with Citi Thank You Points for basic economy travel on Alaska Airlines.  If the situation in California remains the same (all Californias are told to stay home to prevent the spread of coronavirus), I will probably cancel my trip and hold onto travel funds for a future trip.

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Mother’s Day dinner in St Kitts (2017)

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Work from Home Diary 1: Cancelling My Ireland & Kauai Trips

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Good morning everyone, I hope your week is going well.  These are very uncertain times and I have difficulty finding motivation to write about anything travel related.  Therefore, I decided to share my feelings in a series of Work from Home Diary posts.  Feel free to share your work from home feelings in the comments section below.

First of all, I am very fortunate that I work for a company where we have the ability to work from home.  My heart goes out to everyone affected in the retail industry, travel/hospitality industry, restaurant/bar industry and many other industries that are affected by the coronavirus.

Last week, my company gave us the option to work from home or go into the office. I decided to work from home the entire week.  I’m used to working from home a few days a week, but working from home 5 days in a row takes a toll (both mentally and physically).  In my next diary post, I will share how I am doing in week 2.

Laura and I were supposed to fly to Ireland last Friday (March 13) for a week for her spring break (she is an assistant principal).  On Wednesday evening (March 11), the Europe travel ban was announced and we decided to cancel our Ireland trip.  I cancelled our Aer Lingus flights booked with British Airways Avios, hotel awards booked at Hyatt and Radisson Blu, Hertz rental car, and a few Expedia activities.  Canceling everything online only took a few minutes and thankfully everything resulted in a full refund, with the exception of the $55 cancellation fees per person charged by British Airways (I called to see if they could be waived, but it was not possible). Continue reading →