Here is the story of our trip to England:

Why we get to go

My company has many clients in the UK. For some reason, the people over there see a real value in subscription management software. Anyways, one of these clients is taking a major upgrade and they have opted to bring out a consultant to hold their hand through the process. Here is where I come in. This is actually my second trip to the UK for the same purpose. Just a short while back, I was over there to help them prepare for the upgrade.

The vacation

So I am slated to be in the UK for a week to help the customer - and while I was headed over I thought to myself “this would be a great opportunity to bring Heather along with me”. So, I extended my stay and we bought Heather a ticket to fly out the next week. We would have a week together to enjoy the sights.

The plane tickets

So, we go home that night and purchase tickets for Heather (since mine were bought earlier that day at the office). We wanted to make sure that we got her on the same flight back that I was on. We toyed around with dates and found the cheapest possible flight, but in changing the departure date, we did not realize that it automatically changed the return date as well. Well, I think you can see where this is going. We bumped the departure date one day earlier and the return flight went with it as well - and I did not catch it. Luckily, when the confirmation email arrived, my beautiful wife (who is much brighter than I) caught the mistake and we were able to call Delta in time to make the appropriate changes. Phew!

The passport

One thing that of course is necessary for all foreign travel is a US passport. Since Heather did not currently have one, we had to have her apply - and fast since the trip was only just over a month away. That next day she spent her lunch hour fighting the crowds at the post office so she could submit the necessary paperwork. We paid the extra $$ to have the process expedited, but with the backlog that the passport offices had been seeing, they gave us little hope that it would actually make it in time. But, just a short time later (maybe 2-1/2 weeks or so), the mailman came to the door while we were at church and delivered her passport (I didn’t even know that the post office delivered on Sundays!?!?). And yet again we let out another sigh of relief.