My last post got me thinking. Some people probably wonder why I don’t just suck it up and fly coach. It’s a lot less expensive. And it is.

I’m not just an aviation geek. Sure, my inner aviation geek gets a boner when I see a 747 taking off over my house. But my inner aviation geek gets a boner when I’m on a widebody airplane. You see, one of the best parts of a vacation to me is the flight. And fine dining at 37,000 pretty incredible.

Believe me, it’s not just about the seat. Oh, the bigger seats with extra legroom is nice. But I’m not a super tall guy, so a regular coach seat can be tolerated.

I’m kicking around the idea of going back to Europe in the spring.

I really hate the idea of flying across the Atlantic in coach. When I had a bazillion frequent flyer miles to burn, I got spoiled by upgrading. Once you fly business class across an ocean, you’ll never want to sit in the back of the plane again.

The flipside of this is the price. The cheapest business class seats I’ve found across the Atlantic start about $2500, but most of them are in the $3500 range. That’s a pretty big price tag for a round-trip flight. This has me looking for other options.

There are options. One of them is a low-cost business flight from New York like MAXJet.  One problem with MAXJet is that it lands at London’s Stansted airport instead of Heathrow or Gatwick.  Another problem is that I don’t get to earn miles that I’d ever be able to use again. Oh, and I’d have to get to New York, too.

Another option is to fly Virgin Atlantic’s Premium Economy non-stop from Boston to Heathrow and then hop a train to wherever it is I’d like to go.  That will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand dollars, which is much more palatable than other business class fares. The downside is that I don’t really want to go to London. I’d rather go to Berlin and Amsterdam on this trip. However, I certainly wouldn’t mind taking the Eurostar train.

I really have no idea what I’m going to end up doing. It’s going to require some thinking and planning.

I had fun making the pumpkin creme bruelee. I had quite a bit of uncooked custard left, so I threw it in the fridge the idea of making ice cream out of it later. When you think about it, they’re both pretty much the same thing, just prepared differently.

The ice cream came out really well. It just needed a hint of vanilla, though, something I had neglected to put into the custard.

These are definitely things to put into my Thanksgiving arsenal.

Tonight, I tried the Pumpkin Creme Brulee recipe. It’s pretty awesome. What I did learn is that pure cane sugar isn’t what you want on top. White sugar burns much better. But the actual custard is awesome.

Tomorrow, Reggie has an appointment for a bath at PetSmart, and he certainly needs a bath. He got into the trash AGAIN today. So while he’s getting the spa treatment, I’ll be at Target and/or Homo Depot getting the things I need to put my trash under the sink and pug-proof the cabinet door.

Woot.com is doing another Woot Off today. I just missed out on a 23” HD TV. Well, I had plenty of time, but I was trying to decide if I really wanted to spend the money. By the time I had decided that I was going to do it, it had sold out. I snoozed. And I loozed.

The rumors are flying around that Delta and United are talking about merging.

I agree that consolidation in this industry would be a good thing. However, I think the smaller guys should be merged into the bigger guys. Having two power house airlines merging scares me a bit, and frankly, the pilots unions will have a fit. What really would suck in this transaction is that Delta’s flight attendants aren’t unionized. They’d get screwed.

I’m halfway through watching the first season of Project Runway season four.

I think Kevin is hot, but my money is on Rami.

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Originally uploaded by mikehillwig

My niece is eight. And she collects snow globes. If you point to any snow globe in her collection, she can tell you who got it for her and where it came from.

Being the amazingly cool uncle Mike, I got her this snow globe in New York a few weeks ago. How can she not love this?

I got one from Chicago, too, but it’s not nearly as cool as this one.

I looked at my pay stub today and was shocked to see that I have 46 vacation hours remaining. I had no idea how many personal hours I had remaining because those don’t print on our pay stubs. After taking a walk down to payroll, I realized that I had close to 80 hours to burn. We can carry over our sick/personal time but only upto a week of vacation time.

So I’m taking off a few days around Thanksgiving and then from December 21 through the end of the year. Wow. Ten days out of the office. Suh wheet!

I think I’m getting something like these for my dad. They’re traditional martini glasses.

If I were buying them for myself, I’d probably get these. They’re incredibly cool.  However, I’m not a martini person.