Over the past several years I've made a habit of using New Year's as a time to reflect on, and take stock of, the year just finished. It's time for the 2025 edition, looking back on 2024 ( Read more... )

Around every New Year I take stock of my balances in various frequent traveler points programs, both to see how well I've done in accumulating & using miles as well as to set goals for the coming 12 months. One thing that's different recently is now all the airlines I fly with and the hotels I stay with are doing it, too. They've been emailing me " ( Read more... )

Panama Travelog #39
PTY Airport - Tue, 31 Dec 2024. 6:30am.Today's going to be a long day. It's New Year's Eve, and we're hoping to hang with friends in a low-key fashion late this evening to celebrate the New Year. But first we have to get home from Panama. And to that end we were up at 4:30 this morning- 1:30am California time- to get dressed, ( Read more... )

Panama Travelog #41
Back Home - Wed, 1 Jan 2025. 8am.I'm posting this Panama blog out of order, (mostly) skipping ahead of the backlog to let people know we've finished our trip. We got home, as in walked through our own front door, last night a few minutes before 10pm ( Read more... )

As I wind down the workday today it amuses me to think that I'm just about done with work for the year. Today's Friday. Next week I'm taking PTO Mon-Tue, then my company has holiday recess from Wednesday (Christmas) through January 1. My next workday is Jan 2, 2025 ( Read more... )

Over the past several years I've made a habit of using New Year's as a time to reflect on, and take stock of, the year just finished. Ideally I would've shared my reflections on 2023 three weeks ago, at the turn of the new year. I've left this idling because it's been a challenge figuring out how to frame it. The challenge has been that my gut ( Read more... )

A gunman shot multiple people at a Chinese New Year celebration Saturday night in Monterey Park, California, a city just east of Los Angeles. 10 people died, 10 more were injured. Update, Monday afternoon: The death toll is now 11, as one of the injured died at a hospital Monday ( Read more... )

Over the past several years I've made a habit of using New Year's as a time to reflect on, and take stock of, the year just finished. Recently I've posted a few retrospectives about travel. That's only one part of my life. As I've mentally composed this article about everything else I've wondered what the theme would be. Like, if there's a title ( Read more... )

It's the start of a new year, and already I'm way behind. I'm way behind on blogging. Oh, it's not just stuff from the 3 days (so far) of 2023; a few of these items have been stuck in my backlog for months. I'm writing this to record my thoughts and put myself on notice of the things I want to see accomplished.

• Year-end retrospectives
  • I've already ( Read more... )

Hawk and I took a fairly low-key approach to New Year's Eve this year. We decided weeks ago not to travel. That turns out to have been a prescient decision given all the chaos with extreme weather, flight delays/cancellation, and an operational meltdown with Southwest Airlines, the carrier we likely would have traveled. Instead we visited with ( Read more... )