Miracles of Modern Air Travel . . . and a breakfast bagel sandwich to die for, or at least walk 3 blocks for.

1) An aisle seat -- BOTH WAYS!! Fate was smiling on me after my complaining about never getting an aisle seat. By now Fate should know that it is dangerous to reward me for complaining.




2) An empty seat (the only one on the plane) between me and the gentleman seated on my row. Almost never happens anymore.

3) An empty ROW for my flight home.
ABSOLUTELY NEVER HAPPENS ANYMORE.

4) Two take-offs, two landings,
no mishaps.

(Just how I like it.)



I have eaten myself silly.
I have spent all my money.
I have raised time-wasting to the level of art.
I have been beaten at canasta
soundly and repeatedly.
Did I mention I have eaten myself silly?

Let's examine each of these categories individually:


1) Eating. New bagel deli down the street from my sister's house. Perfect attendance for breakfast. And I did manage to fit 3 enormous mexican meals into the week (one of which will be detailed in a later post) as well as a whole lot of other stuff.



I remain
unapologetic.








2) Spending. I'm not much of a mall shopper but my sister practically lives there, so I like to do all of my mall-shopping for the year while I'm visiting her.

It's okay because there's a bakery
I like at the mall and my spending
is rewarded with cookies
(and new clothes).




3) Time wasting. We had a little craft project in mind which turned out to suck most of our available time and resources. And it also (unfortunately) turned out to just suck.


There's a long story behind the mirror in this project, which I may or may not share with you at a future time. Let's just say something had to be done and this is what we did.



It required 3 trips to Michaels,
2 trips to TJ Maxx,
and one to JoAnn's,
Kohl's,
Home Depot,
Anthropologie
and Ross.



And after our first supply-shopping day was an abject failure, rather than give up we spent the entire next day visiting every Goodwill in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.




FYI: Phoenix has
really good Goodwills.
I can only attribute this
to an abundance of
grandmas' houses
that need to be cleaned out.
If you are an antiques dealer
within the sound of my keyboard,
don't waste another moment.








4) Canasta. The laws of probability probably do not support my contention that I was dealt repeatedly bad hands over a period of several days.


I don't care about laws --
I refuse to accept responsibility
for my defeat.
I can't be THAT dumb
or bad at cards
and only be realizing it now.




When I returned home, my husband met me at the airport with an enormous bouquet of flowers and a bag of Australian liquorice.


(Yes, I was that lucky girl getting flowers at the airport!)


All in all it was a delightful vacation, and definitely worth enduring the horrors of air travel. In fact, I'd do it again next week. And then again in January. And February. (And probably March, now that I think of it.)

My sincerest thanks to all who participated.
I shall be anxiously awaiting an invitation to return (hint hint . . .)