HI!

So, now that Marc officially has a real job, he has to get a certain number of Continuing Medical Education credits every year to make sure he is staying hip on what's new in pediatrics. We got several offers in the mail for different available conferences. We were tempted to go to one held at GRU.

We had no idea that the fictional super-villain-turned-dad hosted symposiums for physicians. The main problem with going to GRU, is that we felt we would have to take the minions with us. We definitely did not want all five minions in tow so we went for the second best and chose a medical conference held at the Westin Resort in Maui. I tried hard not to be too disappointed.

My saintly mother agreed to fly out and suffer through a week alone with our boys so that Marc and I could go on our first vacation alone since we started having children. Since we had a captive babysitter, we decided to go to Hawaii a little bit early and spend two days on Oahu before the start of the conference. Of course, before our fun could start we had to go through the ordeal of flying from North Dakota to Hawaii. We had the unfortunate experience of flying coach on United. Even on a ten-hour flight from Denver to Honolulu, we were packed in on an overbooked flight and offered no food. Our stewardess was stubborn and surly. I only mention this, because I was robbed in the prestigious "Halfway to Hawaii" game because my stewardess refused to collect my entry slip. If you haven't been following the "Halfway to Hawaii" hall-of-fame, let me explain the game to you. Each passenger gets a slip of paper on which they have to write down the time estimate at which they think the plane will be over the exact geographic halfway point between Denver and Honolulu. You must give the time rounded to the nearest second. When the results were announced, I was 24 SECONDS off. The winner? 5 MINUTES off. Yeah. Totally robbed. But it's okay. I'm not bitter. I mean, I really could have used the "Lonely Plant Hawaii Travel Guide" valued at $22.99. At least, I am sure that could have used it more than the guy who won since he was flying FIRST CLASS, an upgrade which costs $1,000 more than flying coach. He probably used the book to start a fire with which to burn his excess wads of cash. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I suspect that Mr. First Class actually paid off the flight attendant NOT to collect any estimates that were closer than his so he could add the Halfway to Hawaii award to his already bloated CV. Marcus? Are you reading this? Can I charge somebody with something? Fraud? Class discrimination? Damages for emotional pain and suffering? I suppose all United coach passengers could sue for pain and suffering. I watched an episode of Colbert Report after our trip in which Beelzebub calls up Stephen and indicates that the reason he isn't in New York is because the only flight was United coach and he spends enough time in Heck already. I laughed pretty hard.

Obviously, the flight did end and we arrived in paradise. Just so you know, they do not give you a lei when you get off the plane. That's only in the movies. Lei or not, we were thrilled to be saying "hi" to HI.