How many tickets do I need?
Oh, good lord, am I really this oblivious?
Sometime in August, when I was purchasing tickets for Kris and I to fly to some tournament (pick one, doesn't matter, I don't recall which), I tried to find the receipt for our tickets to Seattle for Regionals. I thought I had bought the tickets early for a discount, but couldn't find them in my receipts folder. I figured I was wrong about the purchase, confused our Regionals tickets with the Spawnfest tickets, and bought tickets for Regionals.
Last week, I came to the realization that, no, I wasn't going to be able to take a week off in two weeks to spend the week in Seattle with Ben and Lisa and Jake. Work was going to be rough, and, well, honestly, I always want to come home sooner than I think I do when I book the tickets. I'm flying up early to spend time with Ben and Lisa, and staying late for more time, but well, neither flight would be flying with Kris, and that would be less fun.
So, I looked at his flight, and bought another ticket for me to fly home with Kris. I IM'd him and told him what I did, after which he asked me when his flights were. When I commented they were early, he'd have to leave the field before the end of the final round of play. "That's probably not a good thing, eh?" Well, no it wasn't, but I was flying with him, did that help?
No, no, it didn't.
So, we looked online at various tickets, and at different airlines. I favor Southwest because their reticketing policy doesn't include change fees. When I have an $89 flight, I don't want to spend $50 to reschedule my flight out. Things happen, plans can change, whatever, deal, but don't freakin' charge me $50 when, if you were smart and had a decent system, it would cost 3 cents in electricity costs to allow to change my flight anyway. So, yeah, Southwest gets my business when I have a choice. Kris hates them, but lurves the free tickets.
Southwest didn't have any decent return flights at lower enough costs at a good enough time for us to be excited about them, so we're flying back on a different airline. Eh, loyalty loses when you know you'll be using that ticket no matter what, or crashing on Doyle's hotel floor if not.
In the end, I have two tickets to get me to Seattle, and four tickets to get me home. In my book, that's four tickets too many for this trip.