Surprise Jitters

 A lot can happen in 24 hours. Like an entire day's worth of stuff can happen and often does.

This week we begin mid-year vacation, when the entire of Bergen County decides to get out of Subaru and head to sunnier climes. I eschew that for very important reasons -- I'm frugal-cheap and I prefer this place when everyone else leaves. The last thing I want is to travel somewhere and be surrounded by the same people I'm surrounded by when I don't go anywhere. But then, with Talia visiting the holy land, I started getting the jones, that Israel-itch. Talia had mentioned a flight credit with United...El Al was hawking a sale and we have points and a voucher, and I had no plans other than "go to Dunkin and, at some point, slog through 150 papers."

So a few mouse clicks later I was looking at flights. I didn't want a trip that was too short. To spend any money/points and have to come back a few days after arrival made no sense. The United flights would still cost $500 out of pocket beyond the voucher and the El Al flights, if they even had seats, might get me in to TLV too close to shabbos. But we powered through. Dammit, if I'm going to be spontaneous then I have to plan for every eventuality.

We decided that it made more sense to leave the United voucher for Talia to use to travel somewhere, and I would use points. This meant I couldn't use the extra $188 voucher I had, but that's OK, because the flight would be all paid for anyway. So I used the Chase app and, after checking with big brother to make sure that his apartment would be available (it sort of is, though initially, I'll get the sofa while all the other house guests sleep in beds...this is OK because sofa, so good), I purchased tickets. I went to choose seats. I found one available on the way back and NO seats available on the way there. Weird I thought, they sold me a ticket but have no seats. So I called Chase and asked "what the hey?"

In short, they had no answer until they found that there were seats, but they cost $100 extra. If you have read through my earlier trips then you know that I swore to myself that on all future trips, I would spend the extra money to get the slightly bigger seats. So this was a fine alternative as I wanted to do this anyway. And (get this) to do so, I had to buy through the El Al website -- Chase couldn't sell the better seats. I HAD to use the El Al site which meant that I could use my voucher! So I bought the slightly bigger seats using the voucher and ended up spending 10 dollars out of pocket for the entire round-trip ticket. Not bad, considering that I also got better seats.

Now, of course, I have to cram 6 months of worrying and planning into 24 hours so I'm pretty much freaking out. More updates as my blood pressure allows.