Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

The movers came yesterday. Don't ask me for a recommendation, because I wouldn't recommend these guys to my worst enemy. The contract (which we never saw, but I finally saw yesterday) said they had until January 6 to deliver our stuff. If we would have known that up front, we would not have gone with them. Instead, we were told that December 18 would be "no problem". We finally got the stuff 10 days later. And there was a decent amount of damage done to our stuff. One bookcase is ruined, our fake plant has to be replanted (it was pulled out of the pot), and lots of other minor damage was done to our stuff. The movers broke the step from the garage into the house but claimed it wasn't them ("it was like that" -- yeah, right). We're compiling a list of the things we are missing, and we got a few things that belong to someone else - two items I caught before the movers left but a couple others we still have. They also didn't put things back together...

Here is my list of the 16 states I visited (stepped foot at least) in 2009: AL, CA, CO, GA, IA, IL, KS, MA, MD, MN, MO, NE, NY, TX, VA, WI Additionally, I visited Washington DC, Alberta (Canada), and two cities in Mexico (Cancun and Monterrey). Here is the list of the 23 airports I spent some time in (at least one departure or arrival in each): ATL, BMI, BOS, BWI, CID, CUN, DCA, DEN, DFW, IAD, LAX, LGA, MCI, MSP, MTY, ORD, ONT, PIA, SFO, SMF, SNA, STL, YEG

Well, I just finished my last airplane trip for 2009. I ended up flying 30,544 miles on United, 15,016 miles on Frontier, 2,568 miles on American, 1,199 miles on Delta, and 693 miles on Northwest. That totals 50,020 miles for the year. Sounds like a lot, but I flew 81,865 miles in 2008.

I travel a lot, so I can catch a cold pretty easily. I usually get 1-2 per year. They always start out with a sore throat for a day or two, then the cold kicks in. This time, though, was much faster. 24 hours ago I felt fine. About 8:00 PM last night I had a sore throat, and this morning my nose is running and all that good stuff. This is the fastest onset of a cold that I ever remember.

The movers are here in Longmont today. Packing up the big moving truck for the long drive. So today is going to be the last "official" day in the old house. (We have been out of the old house for a couple of weeks, but our furniture has been there). Friday is the scheduled day for getting everything delivered to the new house. Hopefully that's still on track - the driver had a couple of doubts about that.

A couple months ago, I posted about the possibility of losing my Hilton Diamond status. Turns out it's going to be close. As of right now, I'm at 52 nights. 60 are needed to maintain Diamond status. I'm scheduled to go to Chicago next week for an additional 3 nights (55 total). But there's talk of that not happening. Assuming it does happen, that gets be to 55 nights. The week after next, I'm going back to Denver to "supervise" (babysit, whatever) the moving company while they load up the moving van. That's 2 more nights (57 total). Then my wife and I have a couple nights right after Christmas that we booked a while ago (and already paid for - non-refundable got us a cheap rate). That's 59. If that Chicago trip goes through, I might have to bite the bullet and take an extra night in town just to get me up to 60. But we'll see.