Confirmation came this week of our wedding date. It will be Tuesday, May 9, 2006 — 05/09/06. Mark your calendars now! 😉
Also this week, Daniel and I bought the second half of our plane tickets. Let me explain. Because of the horrible, terrible, ridiculous Wright Amendment (to voice your opposition, check out the Set Love Free site), a direct flight from Dallas to Honolulu in May was going to cost us upwards of $700 a person (my brother can fly from Kansas City through Dallas on that same direct flight, and his roundtrip is more than $100 cheaper! that’s total crap!). I was hoping those fares would come down, but no such luck.
Thankfully, Daniel’s parents fly all the time for work and have a number of Southwest rewards vouchers/tickets. They agreed to give us two roundtrips to get us to California (when traveling on the rewards vouchers, Southwest can book you through to the west coast, but you still have to make a stopover in El Paso or Albuquerque — ridiculous!).
Anyway, so we began looking at places on the west coast from which we could fly to Honolulu, and hit upon a brilliant (I think) solution. We’re going to fly from Dallas to San Diego, spend a night there, then take a Hawaiian Airlines flight to Honolulu. Roundtrip per person cost: $365. BRILLIANT!
On the way back, we’ll spend a long weekend in San Diego before coming back to Dallas, giving us a chance to see a city neither of us has spent much time in (I’ve never even been!). I’m really excited about that, as everyone I know who’s ever been to San Diego has raved about how much they love it there. The money we save (basically the cost of one round-trip from Dallas) will easily pay for our weekend in San Diego, which is totally cool by me.
In other news, Daniel’s old roommate Paul is out of town this weekend, so we’re watching their two (male) dogs, still-very-young Labrador Retrievers who have a remarkable penchant for barking. In a decision I have since come to question, we decided to bring the dogs over to the house for the weekend so they wouldn’t be left alone at the house. The two of them are extremely rowdy when together (one on one they’re much more calm), and given that Rags has high levels of hostility towards other dogs, well, it’s been … um. Interesting. There has been a lot of barking (the labs) and howling (the hound), and the cats nearly went into shock. It’s not unmanageable; the labs slept in the bedroom with us (door closed) last night and the rest of the zoo was comfortably free to roam the house, and today the labs are playing in the backyard with the doggy door to the house closed off. Face to face the dogs are still pretty hostile, but not so much that they lunge across the room at one another; just enough that they tend to get chatty when they’re within a couple of feet of one another. With supervision, the situation’s totally under control.
So that’s something.
School? Well, it’s school. A ton of reading … I just cannot believe my brain is absorbing as much information as it is. I mean, I am thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to do little more than learn; I am squeezing in TWU stuff when I can, and gearing up to start training for Axia, which begins Feb. 13 (I won’t start teaching until sometime in mid- to late-March, probably). But otherwise, most of my time is spent either reading or actively avoiding the reading for much-needed mental unwinding. It’s interesting stuff, but it’s just. so. much. I know you’re probably bored of the whining, but I’m really not; I don’t mind it. I am just thoroughly — THOROUGHLY — amazed at what I have been able to do these last three weeks. I feel like I’ve learned more in the last three weeks than I have in the last 8 years of going to school on and off again. Crazy.