Spring Break

No, I'm not in school. And though we have many perks at Southwest Airlines, a Spring Break vacation is not one of them. However, when four of your closest friends are teachers, you get to celebrate the week nonetheless.

For the past three years, the group of us have ventured to some small Texas town for a relaxing couple of days. The first year was a last-minute jaunt to College Station, where Amy gave us a tour of campus and some of her old haunts - I recall some exceptional ice cream concretes. Last year we headed East and ended up in Uncertain, TX. No, I didn't forget the name of the town, that's really it - a tiny place on Caddo Lake. And believe it or not, this location was actually planned, though I can't recall how we came up with it. A tiny cabin, lots of fisherman, and pink sponge rollers - not a trip we will soon forget.

This year we ventured Southwest to Lampasas and stayed in the antique Peach House. Kim's (see San Diego post) parents have owned this cute place for years. Mom and I have spent some fun Summer weeks there with Kim and her daughter Keegan, so I was looking forward to sharing the place with the girls. It's the perfect place for a relaxing time, which is just what we had. A couple of movies, some reading, and eating all our favorite candy. We did venture out a couple of times, to church and walking to the downtown square. My camera didn't make it out of my bag on the trip, but Laura has a pic on her blog of us on the front porch.

On the way down, we were able to stop in Waco for Jamie's annual birthday dinner - pork tenderloin and cookie cake, yum!

"Official" Start of Spring

Forget Daylight Savings or any astrological indicator of the seasons. Sports fans know Spring really begins with the annual migration of baseball players and coaches to the warmer climates of AZ and FL - Spring Training. I will admit that the Red Raiders' victories last Fall had me temporarily interested in that other sport, but don't be confused, I am a die-hard baseball fan through and through and look forward to Spring like no other time of the year.

The metamorphosis has small, yet telling signs. Watching Sports Center again. Reading, not just skimming, the Sports section of the DMN. Contributing to office sports talk. Adding Braves and Rangers' schedules to my Google calendar. Strategically scheduling vacations to NL cities. And most importantly, dusting off the Stats book and jerseys. Yes, Baseball Season Jenise is coming.

So, how did I celebrate the start of Spring this year? As frequently happens, work made that relatively easy. First, the 2008 World Series trophy came to SWA Headquarters to visit last Friday (helps being the Official Airline of the World Series Champion). Although the backdrop had plenty of reminders that the trophy was won by that Philadelphia team (grrr), the trophy itself just looks like a World Series trophy, so I didn't mind taking a picture with it:)

Then, in conjunction with the Orlando trip (see Disney post below), we also took in a Braves Spring Training game at the Disney sports complex. Ironically, they were playing the Phillies. The cool windy weather made it difficult to remember it was Spring and Florida, but a Spring Training game is like nothing else, regardless of weather. I think it's best described as major league players in a minor league game - small stadium and more laid back atmosphere.

Now to anticipate the next big Spring event - Opening Day!

I'm Going to Disney World!!

Anyone who's met my mom has probably heard her use this catch phrase a time or two. This past weekend, she was right. Disney's 2009 Marketing scheme includes free admission to one of the parks on your birthday. Saturday was Mom's birthday and the following Monday was my day off. Perfect for a trip to Orlando.

We choose the Magic Kingdom for the park of the day (Don't worry, we have at least 2 more trips to Disney planned this year to cover the other parks). Despite the fact that we were considerably in the minority of people there without someone under the age of 5, I still say Disney is best when you are an adult. So long as you can reach the inner-child in you.

There were good size crowds but didn't have to wait longer than 15 minutes for anything. We had enough time to make all the rides we wanted and some of the favorites (Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion) more than once...or twice.

The birthday special seems to be working well; we noticed a lot of people with the "Happy Birthday" buttons on. The Disney Cast has certainly been trained to greet the birthday people, too. No kidding, I bet more than 100 people told Mom "Happy Birthday!"

Here's a few pics of the day:

Mom's Birthday - "What will you celebrate?"

Mom and I with one of the celebrities - Donald Duck in Frontierland.

Mom and Dad in front of Cinderella's castle - note the Mickey and Minnie shrubberies behind them.

Getting dizzy on the teacups.

Mom had read some articles where people were complaining about Disney using "product placement" in their theme parks. Which just bewilders me, since the whole place is their products - what else are they supposed to include? But it may have worked on me. I left the day "singing" the Pirates theme song and wanting to go home and dust off the old animated features.

Maps

I've always been a nut about maps, directions, and other geography stuff - it relates to traveling, enough said. So take a SWA route map + my goal to fly to all of our 64 (65, 66, we keep adding them) SWA cities + random craftiness = the "map wall." Jamie asked to see a picture of it months ago and I'm just now getting around to posting about it.

Here's a close-up of the map, with red pins to mark each of the cities to which I have flown.

And here's the whole wall, with a picture to correspond with the trip for each visited city.
There are a few "rules" as to what qualifies to make the map:

1. Must have been a free NonRev flight - eliminating anything before Oct 2007.
2. Must have actually left the airport and done something in the city - so layovers don't count.
3. Must have traveled for FUN and not for work - not that work isn't FUN, of course.

So far, I'm at 23 cities. It has slowed down a bit in my second year of work because I'm mostly traveling to places I've already been. Once it gets warmer, I'm hoping to add some of the northern cities to the list.

I also added a Google map in the blog sidebar to note the countries and states to which I've traveled. It's a little small on the blog, but you can open it larger to see the locations I included. For the US, I limited it to just state capitals; I'm not sure if the Google custom maps have a limit, but I might be testing it if I included every city in the US I've been!