TRAVEL: finding a hotel

just got another deal on a hotel, so i thought i'd describe my process for anyone not yet familiar with priceline. of course, priceline is well-known these days, but using it to its potential can sometimes be tricky. here are the steps i use:

1. look up the priceline zones for the city i need to stay in
2. find out which hotels are in each priceline zone
3. read reviews for hotels
4. research pricing on hotel websites
5. look up recent winning bids in my target zones
6. begin the bidding process on priceline

okay, okay. the steps might be a bit confusing. let's go over them one at a time.

STEP 1: to find out which zones are available for the city you're looking, you need to go to amazing-bargains (you'll want to bookmark this link). in the middle you'll see the blue section where you can enter your dates and city. after you do that, click the 'start saving' button. it will take you to a page that has a map and some zone choices and different star levels to choose from. you're NOT bidding yet! this is JUST research, so don't let it scare you. the map on the right has sections of the city marked. if you click on the 'detail' link for each of the zones, it will zoom the map in so you can see the boundaries for that zone. this is where you need to decide which zones you would be ok staying in. get a notepad and write their names down. put an X next to the zone that you want the most.

STEP 2: now you need to see what your potential hotels are. here's where you visit biddingfortravel and start doing some more research. you'll have to set up a login and a password, but no biggie. you can handle that, right? good. now, if you have never been to this site before, the first thing you'll need to do is click on 'hotels' under the FAQ section, and then read the 'HOTEL FAQ'. don't skip this! once you have all that info under your belt, then go back to the main page and scroll down until you see the state & city you're looking for. on the next page click on the link for the hotel list. depending on the size of the city, the list could be quite lengthy. but it's organized in sections based on the priceline zones, and since you already listed the zones you're interested in, you should be able to go straight to those sections and find the hotels in each of them. you now have an idea of what hotels you could be matched with if you win a bid.

STEP 3: next you need to read up on your potential hotels to see if you're willing to stay there. i use trip advisor 99% of the time. the reason for this is because a LOT of other people use it also, which means the reviews will be current. you really don't want to trust a review of a hotel much more than a year old. if all you have to go on is a 5 year old review, then that's all you have. but it's much better to find a current review. construction noise that someone complained about 5 years ago probably doesn't exist now. and hotel staff changes often, so a complaint about service 5 years ago might not be valid anymore. hotels also remodel, and 5 years ago what would be old bedding and dirty carpet could be brand new today. the list goes on and on. also, if someone has a bad experience on their trip they often try to blame it on their hotel. so make sure you read the review carefully and understand what the writer's true gripe is. there are some reviews on biddingfortravel, and i do make sure to read them. but they are often old, so i always back them up with trip advisor reviews. once you've read all the reviews you need to determine whether or not you feel comfortable staying at all these places. if there are a lot of hotels on the list, i sometimes print the list out, and then cross off the ones that i would absolutely NOT want to win. once you're done, you can see how many hotels are crossed off in each zone. if you have the majority of the hotels crossed off in one particular zone, i recommend you DO NOT bid in the zone. if there's only 1 of maybe 5 or more hotels crossed off, i would say you could take your chances bidding there.

STEP 4: do some visiting of the hotel websites directly. enter your dates and price out what the retail cost of the room is. this gives you an idea of what you would pay without priceline. i always, always, always like to know how much i'm saving.

STEP 5: here's where you go back to the main page for your city & state on biddingfortravel. underneath the hotel list link are all the winning bids that people have posted. you now need to scroll through these and look for any that match the zones you've chosen. watch the dates that the winning bid is for because holidays will always be higher than others. depending on how popular your city and zones are, you might have to go back a year or so to see winning bids. this now gives you an idea of what you will be paying when you're bid is accepted. this could also be an indication of what zones you want to bid in. if you see that the most recent several bids in your target zone are all the same price and all the same hotel, chances are that's the price and hotel that will be accepted. make sure it's one you can be happy with. go back and read the reviews and look at the hotel amenities again if you need to.

STEP 6: once you've done all the research, it's now time to start the bidding process. even if i see 5 recent winning bids all the same price for the zone i'm looking at, i ALWAYS start the bidding lower if i have the time. if you have several zones that you would be happy staying in, these are call free rebidding zones. now would be the time to go to biddingfortravel and click on the 'hotels' link under the FAQ section again. this time you want to click on the link entitled 'advanced free re-bidding for experienced users'. this will walk you through how to get the most bids without waiting the standard 24-hr time period on priceline. it will also explain why i had you mark your priority zone with an X.

WHEN I DO NOT USE PRICELINE: i would choose NOT to use priceline if there were not enough hotels in my zones that had acceptable reviews and standards. i also have NOT used priceline when i've traveled out of the country. all of my international travels have been to latin america and we don't like big touristy resorts. we usually like small, out of the way places, and those aren't an option through priceline. i use a different process for my international travel.

*my last winning bid was for williamsburg, va at $44/night plus taxes. the hotel website wanted $91. i prefer to get the cost down to less than half retail, but depending on the city, it's not always that cheap. also, the reason i do all my priceline research and bidding through amazing-bargains is so that it gives credit back to the moderator of biddingfortravel, since i use her site a TON! you have to make sure you don't ever go directly to priceline, or your browser will remember. and then even if you go to amazing-bargains after, it still won't give her the credit. if you go directly through priceline at all, you have to restart your browser.

my favorite remake

one, two, sree, like a bird i seen
cuz you given me most bootiful set of wings
i'm so glad you're here wis me
cuz tomawow i might have to go and fy away
fy away, fy awaaaaaay, fy away, fy awaaaaaaay

original sung by tim mcgraw
remake sung by marz

heaven sent

it's been almost 3 years since i pulled the kids out of public school. (yes they spent 3 months in public school between then and now. i'm not quite ready to discuss that publicly yet.) when i first brought them home, i thought i'd done my research. i thought i had found a great method that fit my philosophies; one that would provide them some freedoms they hadn't known in public school. little did i know that it wouldn't suit them and that this homeschooling journey would be one of constant change. there were so many things i was unprepared for. it's like having your first child. you get a gazillion pieces of advice while you're pregnant but until you go through the experience yourself, there's just no way you can comprehend what anyone is telling you or imagine what it will truly be like. well after that first year of floundering and not really liking the program i had chosen, i discovered this:

this is a nice clean picture of the exciting 3rd edition that is to be released any day now. my version is without jacket and all beat up and full of bookmarks. i've often heard converts to our church say that as they heard the missionaries teach them, it was like they knew those things all along. this is how i feel about the philosophies in this book. when i first read this book, it was as if i already knew the concepts. i just never knew how to verbally communicate them or put them together in that way. everything i read just made perfect sense to me. i understood the why. i could picture the how. i now use this as the baseline for all that i do in our homeschooling world. the book is insanely comprehensive and there's no way i could do it all. and of course, a book is not a be-all/end-all. minor adjustments always need to be made along the way. the book even suggests it. and no one knows better than God what each child needs anyway.

i have a love/hate relationship with homeschooling. who knows if it will always be that way. but i am hugely grateful for this book, and the friends (you know who you are) who introduced me to it. for those of you who would like to know more about it, and the mother/daughter team that wrote it, visit THE WELL-TRAINED MIND. it's definitely a cyberspace pitstop worth perusing.

evolution, or illusion of

several years ago when i started putting family info up online, things were very different. i had a website before general population even knew of the word 'blog'. it began with laziness. we have always moved around. this june we will be making our 14th move in the almost 14 years we've been married. and the fact that we've been in this current residence for 5 years (WOW!) tells you a bit about those other 13 moves. as kids and our life events were changing constantly, i just became lazy about calling someone every time something was new. i had daily contact with email even before i was married (15 years ago). but it just wasn't the norm back then. most of my parents' generation still didn't even have a computer in the home, and if they did, they sure didn't know how to use it very well. so they relied on the annual card/picture of the family to see what the kids looked like and hear a few short sentences about what we were up to. 5 or 6 years ago i decided i didn't even want to do that all the time. it was costly, and i wanted something that people could get info from more often instead of on a yearly basis. so i set up a website that would keep current info on what the kids were doing, a few pictures, and our contact info. i'm pretty sure not many really ever looked at it. there were still so many that didn't have online access, or if they did, it just wasn't a part of their routine. but i didn't care. at that point i was just too tired of contacting people separately to tell them what was going on. so i figured i would dump the responsibility on everyone else. if they cared to know about us, they would have to visit the web. it didn't work all that well. people still rebelled against the technology and still complained that they didn't hear about or know about some news.

now in the world of blog overload, i have succumbed to the masses and put our info all on blogger. i'm not sure any more people take the time to find out what we're up to than before, considering the lack of comments i get from my posts. or maybe my posts are just boring. but nowadays the online blog serves sort of a different purpose and i never really noticed it until recently. or perhaps it's just an illusion in my mind. back in the day the online space allowed me to keep in touch with many people all in one fell swoop, without the cost of postage. now when i post things, it seems that i have much more to blab about and i actually want to share a part of my brain with cyberspace. i am a research fanatic. can't ever seem to make a decision or tell anyone about anything unless i feel i've absorbed an insane amount of facts about the topic. and then i think to myself..."why should anyone spend all that time and go through that torturous process if they don't have to? if i could just pass on the information that i spent all those hours accumulating, wouldn't they be on their way quicker than i was?". but again, it could all just be an illusion that i have evolved. if no one reads the blog, then really no one is benefiting from my 'sharing', and i'm just amusing myself. so for the time being, i'll just amuse myself and share some things i've learned along the way about my favorite OR most researched (don't confuse the two) topics, such as travel, shopping, and homeschooling. i'll leave photography out for now, since my views don't seem to agree with the masses and there are a million photography websites out there. (come to think of it, most of my views on most topics differ from the masses. perhaps that's the explanation for the lack of post comments). i tried that separate blog on shopping, and i don't think anyone paid much attention. hence, i'm leaning more toward the illusion/amusement theory than the evolution one. oh well.

coming soon...my basis for all my homeschool curriculum choices and why. revisit to read or NOT. but i will spew for my own amusement regardless.

before and after

as i was searching for some old pictures of the house to possibly use for the craigslist ad, i stumbled upon this:



wow, i had completely forgotten what our dining room used to look like. this is a picture we took when we looked at it for the first time, before buying it. we redid the dining room last year. i can't believe we lived with it for that long! the wallpaper still makes me nauseous.

here's what it looks like now:



ah. i feel much better now.

let there be warmth...

because light just isn't good enough for me. yes, i'm glad that i finally feel like i can breathe a litle since the snow days are over, and some of the grass is beginning to turn green. i see a few trees here and there with blossoms on them. but for me, if it's under 80 degrees, i'm still cold. it's not even consistently above 70 in san diego yet. i'm disappointed. i had high hopes of being warmer during the year we're there. i can already tell i'll be trying to find ways to 'escape' winter next year, even in california. everywhere i go i see people walking around in capris and flip flops, some are even wearing tank tops. in the stores, shorts and swimsuits are in abundance. i am sad to say that i still go out in my jeans, sneakers, and sweater.

hope can be found

conference has always been hard for me. i didn't grow up going and it's just never a habit i developed. and having yahoos scaling the walls is just another excuse to avoid it. good thing i have doc M to keep me in line. we actually listened to saturday sessions this time. and i don't mean having the sessions as background noise while we cleaned, cooked, or painted. i mean actually LISTENED. here are some highlights of sunday's AM session...










what would conference be like without homemade onion strings?


i was taking notes, and here's luigi's attempt to follow suit.


the stove somehow became spic and span during this session. hmmmm....i wonder what doc M was doing while conference was playing??






here is luigi with his beloved dried mango slices that he purchased for himself.


she's glued to the screen as the last speaker, our wonderful prophet, is speaking.

i can no longer convict myself in the case of mom vs. unsuccessful conference sessions. these pictures are proof that some progress and success has been achieved. (notice i'm not posting pics of the PM session from sunday)

i, the CYNIC, the SKEPTIC, the UNBELIEVER, the REALIST (i'm told pessimist is the more appropriate word but it's my blog so i can use whatever word i want), am here to tell you that it does get better. i didn't believe it ever would. now that the yahoos have gotten older, i see we've reached a point where small things can be accomplished in situations such as these. so those of you out there still ripping your hair out because the little ones won't sit still for 2 hrs of speeches, i testify to you that there will come a day when they are bigger and can sit for longer periods of time with lots of glue and paper to keep them busy. and don't you think for a minute that i will remain an optimist for much more than a day. but for now i'll relish in the kodak moments of yesterday.

diary of a floor

i had been covered up for so long. i was glad that i was going to finally get a chance to breathe and shed my filthy, stained, stretched out skin. even so, i knew the process would be painful. to begin with, all the furniture that had been weighing on me for a few years needed to be moved off. once my sections were clear, my outer layer of skin needed to be torn off. after it was rolled up and hauled out for garbage pickup, my inner layer of skin needed to follow. because this layer is stapled to me, pieces of it stuck with the staples while the rest was getting rolled up and taken out.

all of these staples needed to be removed, along with the leftover pieces of my inner skin (often referred to as the carpet pad). needle-nosed pliers were the tool of choice, and some did not come out so easy. ouch!

here is one girl's job while all the work is being done on me.

as people walked around on me, the staples and pad pieces often stuck in the bottoms of their shoes.

once all the staples were out, i needed to be swept so that i could be completely cleared off and prepared for a fresh, new inner layer of skin.

here is my new inner skin being put down. it starts off much larger than the section of me that it needs to cover. then someone goes around and trims off the edges. after it is the right size, they go around and staple sections of it so that it doesn't slide around.

here is one of the installers bringing in a large roll of outer skin for me.

here is what it looks like after the edges have been trimmed in the same manner as my inner skin.

sometimes there isn't a large enough piece of skin to accommodate my section. so two pieces of skin need to be 'glued' together. this is the iron tool that is used. there is a sticky tape that goes on the underside of my skin and the iron melts the glue on this tape and this keeps the two pieces of skin together.

after everything is cut to size and glued together if necessary, then my outer layer of skin needs to be stretched. this large tool with a pad on the back is used to stretch it.

after everything is stretched, then one of the installers kindly vacuumed off the excess dust and debris from my outer skin. how nice of him!

i sure get played on a lot more now, and i really love my new clean skin!

flying solo

after interviewing realtors, studying options, gaining advice from real estate attorneys, doing research online, and much discussion, we have opted to proceed with the sale of our home on our own. i'm convinced it's not what i want to do, but why change the story of my life at this point? i thought once this decision was made, then all the other decisions would be so much easier. for some reason the dominoes aren't falling like i expected. i was never very good at getting those to fall smoothly and continually anyway.

but what am i snickering about? the big decision was made, right? now i only have the simple things to look forward to...reviewing real estate contracts, getting educated on the closing process in the state of new jersey, packing tons of boxes, fielding annoying calls from realtors, deciding how much more to do to the house before showing it, ignoring 4 kids, pretending the house doesn't need cleaning, filing taxes, selling a car, pulling weeds, painting, and wishing i had hired help for everything.