Let's see... What's new today? I finally got around to making a reservation to go to the States this year. I don't know why I procrastinate so much. It used to be (for nearly 30 years) that I'd just call a travel agent in Tokyo who handled missionary and church tour reservations. They weren't especially cheap but after 30 years, though I never met the lady who always took care of me, they knew the quirks of my family. "Tanya has US citizenship. The two children have dual. The husband has Japanese. They want to go to the States before the rates go up but not so much that the kids miss too much school. The husband will only stay 5 days. Mother and children will stay a month." etc. etc. I just had to call and say my name and the lady would go into action for me and make the decisions, send me tickets and airport cards and any other pertinent information. But my personal travel agent retired three years ago and I decided to try online reservations. That may have been a mistake. I can't make decisions. For the past three years my travel planning goes thus... "Do I want to go on the 12th? or the 13th? Is this airlines better than that one? Why is there a cost difference? Oh dear. What if I need to change my flight?" It is probably a very simple process but I do better when people just say "this is the way it is." And then there is the problem of working in Japanese. I am not going to push buttons to buy a plane ticket when it is all in Japanese! So I get Tetsu involved and he doesn't like Internet to begin with and doesn't have any experience arranging plane tickets either. We end up having mild arguments how to fill in data, frustrations about why the website won't accept data (duh. They don't want it filled out in English, they want it filled out in Japanese) plus my inherent non-ability to type in numbers correctly. It probably would be worth paying the travel agent extra just to avoid the headaches... I THINK I've made arrangements to go to California on July 11th. I hope.