Trip plans and such
2007-09-01 - 9:23 p.m.

B and I just spent some time making reservations for our trip out west on September 12th. Whoo! We finally decided to go ahead and get out there to scope out places to live, even if we aren't going to move right after that.

It's going to be quite a busy trip because we're planning on visiting three cities in Arizona and meeting with realtors in each, who will show us houses in our price range. This doesn't include the three nights we'll be staying in Vegas (!!!) and two days we're planning to spend at the Grand Canyon. In total, we'll be gone a week and it will be non-stop action from the word go.

We've both been talking about how much we really need (would like) a vacation, and it doesn't look like we'll have a whole lot of "vacation" in this trip, so we've also talked about possibly taking time off to do something more relaxing after this trip. In fact, we almost made plans to go to the beach for a few days next week, but then decided not to.

I'll be happy to just get out of town for a while, even if it won't all be fun stuff. Some good news is that we'll be flying straight from our local airport instead of having to drive an hour and a half away to the airport over to the east of us. We've flown from there to Vegas every other time because S0uthwest flies out of there and their rates have always been the cheapest; this time is no exception, but we found rates with US @irways that are only slightly more, so we're willing to pay that difference. Our local airport is only about 15 minutes away.

We made reservations to stay in the Exc@libur H0tel the night we arrive in Vegas. That's where we stayed when we were there in 2005 and the room wasn't bad; we just had some noisy, drunk neighbors one night who were banging on the door between our rooms. We were going to stay there again the last two nights we're there (we're staying in Arizona on the days we're looking at houses and going to the Grand Canyon), but the room rates were, like, twice as much for some reason, so we'll be staying at The 0rleans instead. We decided on this place because 1) they're a lot cheaper and 2) we love their breakfast buffett. I hope the room isn't crappy.

B and I are planning to hit the Seph0ra on the strip one of the days we're in Vegas. I got a catalog from them a few weeks back and I picked out some things I want to get. It's nice that B is willing to set aside some time specifically for this, because it's really just for me. Too bad he doesn't like to gamble; he could hang out in a casino nearby while I was in there so he wouldn't be bored.

I'm looking forward to trying out my work headphones on the plane. These are the ones that are like earplugs with headphones in them. I used them at the beach last year and they worked great. I could hear the waves crashing, but I still only needed my mp3 player on the lowest volume to hear the music. B has his own pair now, so he'll have some for the plane, too.

We're planning to stop at H0me Dep0t tomorrow to get primer so we can begin our next round of painting, but who knows if we'll do any actual painting this weekend. Seems doubtful because B hasn't been feeling well and I've been having some back issues that have only gotten worse lately. In fact, I called to make an appointment with a chiropractor today and I'm hoping he can see me very soon. I've been wanting to go for a hike up at H@nging R0ck, but there's just never a good time for that it seems.

I'm really trying to get psyched up for this trip out west, but part of me is really dreading it. I know we're going to be so sick of looking at houses after a while that we're going to exhaust our ability to even judge what's good and what's not. Maybe it will be fun, though. I guess I shouldn't be so negative about it.

�