Inspirations from cheese in a can. joey, kelly, danny, and charlie

I’m not quite as kitschy as William Shatner, but I can hold my own on Priceline.  When I can’t get Jackie do it for me, that is.  Seriously, though, do you know how complex this can get?  It doesn’t have to be complicated.  If you want, you can just know how much you can spend (though don’t forget to add around 20% for tax and stuff), go bid, and see what happens.  BUT, if you want to maximize your hotel quality and minimize your cost, there is a lot you can do toward that.  With a little time and research, you can stay at really nice places for not much more than the Super8, and maybe even take off your shoes in your hotel room without gagging.  BiddingForTravel.com will walk you through it; start with the FAQ.  If you read all that and still need help, people will actually help you on the message board, and tell you exactly what is your optimal bidding strategy.

I tell you all this because my delightful huthband just recently sacrificed attending his ten-year reunion and agreed to donate the money we didn’t spend on that to an extended anniversary date.  Nana (Joey’s mom, not to be confused with NaNa, my grandmother.  I know.  Fascinating.) came out to stay with Danny for the night, and Joey and I took off for our fancy Buckhead hotel.   We checked in and tipped two different people three different times for handling our two duffel bags.  Yeah, we’re n00bs.  But, since we only paid $75 for the room, we figured we could pretend we were high rollers for a minute.  We changed clothes, sipped my favorite canned champagne that Joey surprised me with, and dashed off to a mystery dinner location.  Alls I knew was that it was downtown.  It turned out to be at the Sundial, the revolving restaurant at the top of the Westin.  It’s pretty touristy, but I’ve always wanted to go and had never been.  Joey had taken several of his lady friends before me there, so it was all old hat to him.  He’s so debonair, right?

It was a fabulous dinner, timed perfectly to watch the sunset over Kennesaw Mountain in the distance.  In fact, it is the reflection of the sunset that is making Joey orange in this picture that our waitress took.

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It was so nice to pretend like we were all fancy for a while.  The next morning we had breakfast at J. Christopher and then made the rounds of ridiculously overpriced grocery stores in Buckhead….Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s.  Nothing in particular we needed, we just felt we should at least attend yuppy church since we were at yuppy ground zero and it was Sunday morning and all.  And that was the end of our amazing third anniversary date.  I’m keeping this one, y’all, he is HOT.