Well, not exactly ... but I am not going to be around for the next week. Despite our dire, state-of-panic, financial situation, we are going off on vacation. My father-in-law is turning 80, and The Wife and her sister have planned a big party for him down in Florida. We have since found out that he and his lady are coming up here the week after we get back (for his actual birthday) ... and I still don't quite get why we didn't switch things around so that the party would be here ... five of the people coming to Florida live here, and two others are in Columbus (45 minutes away via Southwest). The only people that would be going out of their way to come here would be The Wife's sister and her husband, and they're having to travel anyway!
Oh well ... "it's only money" ... bleh. I cashed in nearly all of my long-held American Airlines frequent flier mileage for 4 tickets, so at least that's not dollars out of our pocket. What WILL be coming out of the pocket is the first part of the week ... as The Wife has decided that since we're going to be in Florida that we'd take The Girls down to Disney World. Fortunately, Daughter #1 and I have 3 days left on 5-day passes that we bought a few years back since it is going to cost $400 or so to get tickets for The Wife and Daughter #2. I can only imagine how depressing and stressful going to Disney World under our current finances is going to be. I'm going to look at every piece of candy, every drink, every sandwich like it's made out of gold ... and am not going to be happy with anything. At least I was able to get very reasonable car rental and hotel rooms in both Kissimmee and Jacksonville, so, with free airfares, our "base costs" are not insane (even though making the trip in general at this point certainly is).
And, to make it all extra-special ... it looks like there will be thunderstorms all the time we're at Disney. Could that get any more depressing?
Anyway ... I'm going to be AFK for 7 days. I hope everybody is judicious in their postings, so I don't have to come back to a Friends List of 1500 posts to catch up on!