Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

I was just looking at my TripIt statistics. I started using TripIt in January 2008 to track my travel. According to my account, I've been on the road 506 days. 2008 was a leap year, and 2009, 2010, and 2011 were "regular" years. May 25, 2012, is day 146 this year. That's 1607 days total. 506 out of 1607 is 31.5% on the road, which counts weekends (but also counts my vacations). That's a lot of travel.

This Sunday, May 27, 2012, is when Frontier Airlines starts flying into the Bloomington, IL airport. They are flying to/from Denver three times a week and to/from Orlando twice a week - at least that's what I think is happening based on looking at the web site. My family and I have already booked our flights to Orlando for later this year. It is nice to fly directly to Orlando MCO when going to Disney. Allegiant Airlines is already in Bloomington and fly to Orlando, but they fly to the "other" airport (Orlando Sanford) and Disney transportation doesn't pick up at that airport. So we bought tickets for an airline before it started flying into the airport we will be using. On a related note, AirTran will be stopping its service from Bloomington to Atlanta on Saturday, June 2. So there's a week when both airlines will be here, but I'm guessing that ground crews working for AirTran will be switching companies.

I just read an article from Vegas Magazine called The 10 Best Burgers in Las Vegas . I thought I'd post the list here. BLT Burger (The Mirage Hotel & Casino) Bottles & Burgers (Tivoli Village) Burger Bar (The Shoppes at Mandalay Place) Five Guys (3 locations) Holsteins Shakes and Buns (The Cosmopolitan) I Love Burgers (The Shoppes at The Palazzo) In-N-Out Burger (10 locations) KGB: Kerry’s Gourmet Burgers (Harrah’s Las Vegas) LBS (Red Rock Casino) Le Burger Brasserie (Paris Las Vegas)

My family scheduled a trip to Chicago for a little mini-vacation coming up. We're going to take our daughter to Navy Pier, the Shedd Aquarium, and some other museums. Turns out that a company in Chicago wants me to come up a few days before that vacation. So I'll be going to Chicago, coming back home, then going to Chicago a day or two later. At least I live only a couple hour drive from Chicago, so two trips up there in a week isn't a big deal.

Saturday night the fire alarm in our house went off around 3:15 in the morning. Turns out it was the carbon monoxide detector. And it turns out it was a faulty detector. The fire department came out and checked everything out and our CO levels were just fine. They disconnected the faulty detector and we ordered some new ones. Apparently, the new hard-wired CO detectors are "cumulative". Meaning, over time the sensors become more sensitive. The firemen said that the hard-wired detectors have a maximum life of 7 years, but they are seeing 4-5 years often times. It could have malfunctioned at 3 in the afternoon instead of 3 in the morning, though.... After buying the new ones, I put a reminder into my Google calendar to have it repeat every year for 6 years. That way, around 5 years from now we can start thinking of buying a replacement. We also bought a stand-alone CO detector. If the hard-wired ones are going off and the stand-alone isn't, then maybe it's a faulty d...