Saturday night reflections

 I just ate peanut butter and animal crackers for dessert. I had rice and spam for dinner. Didn't realize it was quite so late.

Ended up staying in bed today. 

Lots of clicking around for credit cards; read a few blog posts; clicked around some more. Looked up flights for Seattle. Pretty much looks like no matter when I buy roundtrip flights are about $800 to $1,000. 

It seems unlikely that I'll be able to use those AA points for my 2 planned Seattle trips. Oh well. I realized there are two flights that I like so am willing to spend a few more dollars to travel on those. The 2p out of NC that lands at 7p is great because if it's a workday, most of my UK colleagues are gone for the day and I get to my destination after check-in time but before it's too dark.

And on the return flight, I prefer the overnight flight. Even though I don't sleep the whole time, I can usually snooze a bit especially if I stay busy the whole day. Plus it doesn't feel like I spent the whole day traveling. And it's early enough in the day when I get to NC that it's not scary to wait for the 1 Uber driver.

I made a quick mental plan that I'm getting pretty bored (and that's okay), so to spice things up I might start my getaways early. I think if April looks to be a slow month, I might head to Philly for the month. To my city house ;). 

I was looking for the cheapest destination that made sense on the short term rental platforms I use. While Montreal still seems the more exciting one, I'm not ready to trade in boredom for snow.

In the end a rental in Summerville, SC (outside of Charleston) was actually a bit cheaper by about $500 and driveable, but I got way more excited about Philadelphia. I found a place for about $2k/mon; flights look to be about $600 rdtrp. And say I spend about $400 in food and other activities, that starts me at around $3k for a domestic trip to Philadelphia. Laughable. But oh well.

I haven't explored the Northeast since my last year of professional school. So that was about 2015... wow... 8 years ago! 

If the place is booked before I get to it, I might reconsider SC. I think I still might reconsider to see if Landing will let me use my free week there. 

I'm more likely to be bored in SC, but just further away from home and Summerville looks to be a suburb so I'll have to drive everywhere. And everyone is likely to be white. Since I'm at the beginning of my budget, I think I'm willing to spend a bit more.

Tentative plan is to get  1 or 2 meal kits; eat a bunch of take out and take it from there. I'm hoping the vibrancy of the city will get me out of the house. It'll still be very cool, so we'll see. This time, I'm taking my jacket! 

That's all for now.