The Jack Problem and Other Randomness

Michael here. Nearly a week until Sara and I depart on our All-You-Can-Jet passes and we can start to feel the immensity of these trips bearing down on us. Most of it is excitement; the rest is just nervous energy kinda wildly bouncing around the room, like playing racquetball in a phone booth.

For starters, we have a Jack problem. Jack is Sara's beasty, yet super friendly, golden retriever who I have inherited upon dating Sara — a perk since Jack and I quickly became buddies with the mutual admiration for the always-amusing "hey-that's-my-ball-give-it-back" game. For a trip in July we had Jack kenneled at this pet boarding place near where we work. It had this goofy Teddy Roosevelt Hunting Lodge theme, and they occasionally do puppy proms — I shudder just thinking of this — but it was a decent place and he always came back surprisingly chipper considering he's jailed at night in a little fenced bunker with a doggy-sized cot. It's just expensive — $40 a night. So for our 16 or so traveling days in September and October, rather than send him to the hound hotel we've decided to turn him loose on the street and just buy a new dog when we get back. No, wait — we've decided we're going to have a friend watch him. Our friend likes Jack, but her dog Poncho ... well, not so much. It's all going to work out, but the poor guy — I call him Bubba — is going to get ferried around like a lost piece of luggage. By the middle of October he'll probably just collapse on the rug at home and cling to George, his glow-in-the-dark rubber ball, like it was his security blanket.

We have some other concerns, of course, like money. Our company seems to change everyday — tomorrow they're turning off the A/C in one department — and with each change we have to wonder if traveling right now is the best thing. My theory is this: we can be glum at work that we're still on furlough, sitting in warmer rooms, cranking out work for a company that is grinding our emotions into a fine powder ... or we can travel. I vote travel!

First on the list is New York City, of which I have nothing but good things to say. Then Florida, by way of NYC. Then Boston. Then another weekend in NYC. You see, JetBlue flies to Boston and JFK in New York from Phoenix. That's it. Luckily, though, we like the East Coast, so we're thrilled that we've found a way to use the tickets and squeeze every dime out of them. Eight days to go before Trip 1 ... HURRY UP!!!