Yep you are spot on with all of that. I have been doing some more poking around. Thanks for the link and for doing some searching, appreciate ya! I have since learned that Delta changed the name of their cabin tiers and now call basic economy main cabin and then when you go to drill further into the reservation you can either stick with main cabin basic or upgrade to main cabin regular or something. And basic is just basic economy, no seat selection, no changes, board in group 8, no upgrades. Which sucks and I'm not sure I want to do that. I would like my wife and kids to be able to sit together and I don't need to get stuck in a middle seat for a 13 hour flight with my knees. That's at the 70k/person nonstop to Tokyo level. The upgrade is 95k/ person and I do not have enough miles for that. I'll be doing some more digging. Maybe I put this thing off for another year and just do something smaller this year.
I should have mentioned we're locked in on summer trips because my wife is a teacher, and of course that the kids are in school. Our other breaks - Christmas, spring break, etc are spoken for while both of our parents are still around. Thanks for the feedback so far everyone, very helpful. I'm not worried about a language barrier, that makes it more interesting to me. I've always envisioned that my first overseas trip would be Paris/Europe but I'm starting to lean towards Japan.
Maybe this should be it's own thread but also point related. I've been doing some reading in the France and London threads and would have posted there but I would love to hear from anyone who has experienced going overseas in both directions. I have never been overseas. We have two kids, 16 and 13. We take a family trip every summer. We are basically the Griswolds. I am out of DTW. My main rewards cards and accounts are Skymiles and Chase. I did some searching over the weekend and I have enough miles to book 4 seats in Main Cabin on Delta with skymiles to Tokyo (70k/per), CDG, LHR, Rome or Frankfort (all 50-60k but higher fees). I have always wanted to let them experience going overseas before college and if I can get us there on points, even better. If anyone has any feedback on traveling with family overseas I'd love to hear it. We are not surly elite by any means, but our strong preference on our trips is to avoid standard hotels and stay in a 2 bedroom Airbnb type of place. We would definitely want to do and see some of the touristy stuff as none of us have ever been anywhere outside of North America. I also have been hearing about tourist pushback and overcrowding in places like Paris and Barcelona so that worries me. I'm already ashamed to be American. Second question, is it worth seeing if I can beat those prices in miles with one of Chase's travel partners and where would I look? The only other time I booked via a Chase travel partner was SWA to Hawaii and that was very easy to research. Appreciate in advance any suggestions or guidance.
Luge is fucking insane. Most of these winter sports are but luge is the most fucking insane sport of all of the insane winter Olympic sports. How do you start on this shit? How do you practice without defying death every time? How do you get good at it? Do you just lay there and the sled takes you wherever it takes you at 90mph?
Just looked it up. There's three weeks left until the playoffs start but only two matchups because the last matchup encompasses All Star Week. So next week, regular matchup week, ends on Sunday. The final week matchup starts the 9th with games until 2/12, then no games from 2/13 - 2/18, games resuming on Thursday 2/19 and final week matchup wrapping on Sunday 2/22.
Yesterday was one week post op and the start of at home PT calling for two ten minute walks per day. It was -5 yesterday with wind chill of -25. Today it's a balmy 12 degrees with about 6" of snow on the ground and another 6" falling. You're really going to make me do this Dad? I am.
Not that they were going anywhere but Jimmy Butler just went down with a knee injury. As a self experienced expert on knee injuries, that looked like a dislocated kneecap and probably an ACL.
Anyone know anyone that can help TOR out with these dogs? I believe he said El Paso. Anyone have a decent following on social media to spread the word? @immamac ?
Saw the specialist today. The TPLO surgery is scheduled for Friday. It was not just her left CCL, they believe she tore some meniscus as well and also partially tore the right CCL. 😭 We discussed fixing them both at the same time but after talking through pros and cons I think both Doc and I were on the wait and reevaluate in a few months side. Estimate for the first surgery is $5-6k. I'm at a top specialist in the area so I'm sure it's not the cheapest option but still... yikes. I'm very happy I have insurance. My policy says 80% should be covered up to 50k. Hopefully Lemonade is true to their word. Anyway gonna be a fun few months here. Blech.
I was just looking at the league schedule and the NBA schedule. Our 18 week regular season ends on 3-1. If we follow the 1-2-2 week schedule our playoffs would end on 4/4. The NBA season ends on 4/12 so we are ok as currently configured. That said I'd be all for chopping a week off of the regular season to move the playoffs up. Those last couple of weeks of the regular season are a cluster.
My wife would agree with you. Twice a year doesn't seem like too big of an ask. I can agree that the final boss fight was kind of lame but I thought that Henry coming back to life and Joyce chopping his head off with an axe was pretty fun.
I tracked my old PMs down, Harold is @Jack Straw 's +1. Jack can you check in with him and make sure he found the winnings in his email? I haven't seen a follow up from him in the league chat. I'm not sure what I can do anyway, it definitely went out to that Yahoo address on 12/31 unless League Safe has been taken over by DOGE.
I rewatched the last half (post Vecna) of the finale last night because there were a couple of things I was curious about. First, as mentioned upthread, Mrs. Wheeler has nice jugs. Wait that wasn't the point, was it. She definitely has over the top scars at the graduation from the demo, and in my opinion they were at best trying to obfuscate the view of her at the top of the basement steps when she called the kids up for dinner to make it non committal. To the reasonable eye test standard, she had no scars. There was a very slight shadow there but it really did not look like she had anything from that angle. I definitely think it was intentional to leave it up to interpretation. The other thing to me that didn't really line up was the aftermath of El disappearing into the Upside Down as it imploded in terms of Dr. Kay and the Hawkins lab people. They just let the crew walk, including Hopper who has killed a number of their soldiers? I'm surprised there wasn't even a reference to how that all ended when the town was being rebuilt or something. Minor gripe.
I watched Stand By Me with Jr when he was probably a little too young to see some of the stuff. It hasn't mentally scarred him yet so go for it. Along the lines of some of the older comedies, Fresh Prince? Also some of the golden years of the Simpsons. Every kid should see Homer Goes to College.
Definitely Tulsa King. That's pretty cool and sounds fun. Too much diversity of interests in my family to do that other than the occasional holiday movie. I did start showing Jr some Mafia movies within the last couple of years and that's been fun.
I finished it last night. I thought this season was really fun. It was binge worthy. I felt like that in Season 1 and 3, not so much with 2 and the most recent season. A lot of bandwidth devoted to nostalgia at the end, but it worked for me. I didn't get to watch this series with my kids or anything but I watched those kids grow up dammit! And in my era. It's kind of sad having to say goodbye to something that helped me feel connected to my childhood.
What I recall was that they had huge beers. I think I actually got a Michigan beer that they had on tap. I also didn't really see anything on the menu that I wanted to eat so I ordered the pork belly appetizer as my lunch and it was really good. The grounds were super cool. Basement felt haunted.