Travels and the Holidays

We spent a little more than a week back home visiting with our families in California. It's really hard to argue that air travel is inconvenient, since you can catch a flight from one coast, and arrive almost anywhere in the country within 8 hours of leaving.

• I really look forward to living somewhere closer to an airport than we have in the past two assignments. Murray is just shy of 2 hours from Nashville, and that would definitely qualify as the closest airport. As a result, to catch our 8 am flight back to California, we left the house at 3 am. Not a whole lot of fun to be sure.
• Nashville has a really nice airport. I think I may have been through there before once, but I can't be sure. Either way, it was very comfortable waiting for our flight there.
• Our flight stopped over in Las Vegas, and the slot machines do not take change in the airport. Not that we had remembered to bring any, but I guess I could have gotten some cash out of the ATM, but I was not really feeling it. Probably saved myself some money that way I imagine.
• It is amazing to me how many flights end up being early arriving. I know that they leave themselves some leeway, and it seems like something I probably shouldn't be complaining about.
• Leave it to air travel to cause me to get sick. I spent the majority of the week being sick, and a large portion unfortunately sharing as well. Sorry to all my relatives that caught this. It's awful.
• We had a great Christmas, and really enjoyed the time spent with the family. It had been a couple of months since we had seen them, and was definitely enjoyable.
• We flew American on our return flight, which was our first time flying with them. They actually provide a pretty good experience in terms of a flight. The plane was comfortable, the seating not too close together, and the staff very easy going. All-in-all, a very pleasurable experience.

Now that we're back, we're hoping to really start exploring the surrounding area.