Loriville Gazette
2000 August 17 I'm in love with Cheaptickets

Cheaptickets never ceases to amaze me. For several days, I've been doing research during my lunch breaks on airfare to Denver for Aaron & Melissa's wedding. A few days ago, the best rate I could get was $290 on America West (yuck!) with a layover in Phoenix. America West offered the only flights under $400. All the other flights were over $400 and as high as $950. Maurice and I decided we did not want to use America West (mostly because they constantly delay their flights) or fly to Phoenix (obviously out of the way if you're familiar with geography). We also didn't want to pay over $400 per ticket for a quick weekend jaunt. Believe me, I literally scoured all the internet sites, including airline web sites, I could think of to get better rates. Nothing turned up.

Our disappointed mounted yesterday. All the rates jumped to at least $408... even the junky ones with terrible layovers. We had to make a decision whether to take a chance on waiting for the rates to drop (which, frankly, might not happen) and risk the flights selling out or pay top-dollar for overpriced airfare. Driving out to Colorado was not an option (who has the time?).

Today, the dark cloud lifted. Magically, the rates had dropped. Dramatically. We were able to purchase tickets for $260 for direct flights between San Francisco and Denver on Frontier Airlines! Whoohooooo!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Cheaptickets is the best.

Other than acting as travel agent, I've been working very hard on this frustrating Napa project. I'm at my wit's end. The City of Napa keeps changing their minds about what they want and it creates more work -and stress- for us designers who have to complete the construction documents by September 1st. Yesterday we had a 2-hour phone conference with them. Not fun.

I was on the same BART train this morning with the "one-hat" Project Manager of the Napa project. She says that she's been in Project Management for two years now and her stress levels have increased dramatically as a result. She says she doesn't like being a "one-hat" Project Manager at all... and that she'll be leaving her position once the Napa project is finished because the job stress is "slowly killing her soul". Very sad.

Well, that's mainly all I have to report, for now. Unfortunately, I have't been able to make it to yoga or ballet all week because of work or fatigue conflict. Hopefully next week will be better.

back & forth
recently...

quick recap - 2007 July 13
Happy August! - 2006 Aug 01
I dream of Albuquerque - 2006 Jul 08
mindstorm - 2006 Jun 30
Pomegranate scale - 2006 Jun 24