We Take Ourselves With Us

So, this summer, we had an amazing trip to Iceland planned.  We were going to ride the small Icelandic ponies, soak in the blue lagoon, and stalk Bjork.  Instead I spent about a week in the hospital, found out one of my kidneys was dead and infected (that’s a twofer), got a nephrectomy tube for a while (look it up, it’s super gross), had surgery to remove said kidney, and couldn’t lift anything heavier than gallon of milk for about six weeks.  Goodbye, Iceland; hello, binge-watching Wild, Wild Country and home nurse visits.  What a great summer. Oh, and when I wasn’t binging Netflix shows about cults, I started planning a reboot vacation around Thanksgiving holiday.  Iceland’s not as attractive an option in November as it is in August.  Enter Hawaii!  On reflection, this selection may have been in part unconsciously influenced by my watching the entire Brady Bunch Hawaii arc on MeTV while I was in the hospital. Eager readers of this blog (...

Part way through the day at Dollywood, I told Ned I might be getting a cold.  By Monday, there was no "might" about it.  A quick stop at the gas and go provided me with Gatorade and DayQuil--Mother Nature's remedy.  Well, someone's remedy. Then, there's the apple a day keeping the doctor away.  South of the Mason-Dixon, this translates into complimentary apple fritters, apple muffins, apple butter, and apple juleps at the Applewood Farmhouse Restaurant .  Health food! Dreaming of apples ...  This road trip, we alternated iTunes shuffle with Station Eleven until ... we hit good ol' Southern white out rain.  I'd have taken a picture if I weren't so busy pretending not to be freaking out.  Flashers on, we drove on the tail of the guy in front of us for about a third of our trip.  Don't miss that at all.  Blargh.  But, steel-nerved Ned got us through safe and sound. We knew one thing that would restore our v...

So, we took a quick weekend trip to the City.  It began as a Father's Day gift for Ned: tickets to see Penn & Teller in their six week Broadway residency.  We figured we'd go down for that and maybe TKTS another show or hit up some museums.  A nice, relaxing weekend in New York City. Have you read this blog?   Yep, that wasn't going to happen :) We rushed from the airport through the very congested, summer traffic, road constructed streets of New York ... to our hotel: this time the Intercontinental Times Square .  Let me insert this: as may have become clear, I LOVE TO PLAN TRAVEL but what may not always be clear is that I LOVE TO DO IT AS CHEAPLY AS POSSIBLE.  So, I spend a lot of time late at night comparing various sites, identifying hotels on Hotwire and Priceline so I can compare these "discounts" to website rates, finding the lowest costs and figuring out if it's cheaper to buy it all separately or book a package.  If th...