The Flagg Agency

Last year, when my daughter was preparing to go to summer camp for the first time, she read about a nightly ritual. On the daily schedule she saw the following entry:

10:15 pm – Devotional, Milk & Cookies

For weeks she thought about those cookies. She had visions of the type of cookies. She thought about how warm would they be; how cold would the milk be; how many would she get? She could feel them in her mouth, she could practically taste them. I think she was dreaming about those cookies. When we dropped her off thinking about all of the adventures she would have: Horseback riding, sports, leadership, team-building while we are sure all she thought about were those cookies.

Missed Hubbard Glacier Calving

Many of my greatest travel memories have been captured with my digital camera. I can go back and look at those pictures again and again and relive those memories. On the other hand, I have been at times so focused on looking at the LCD screen or through the viewfinder, I have missed living in the moment.

Yesterday I was stuck in voicemail purgatory for 15 minutes. I couldn’t reach a human being.  I had received my mortgage statement and payment coupon. The paper indicated that the servicer had received no payment. They had also added a late fee and of course the payment due for February. After trying every combination of button pressing, I went to go a website called Get Human to see if there was a secret way to get out of this prison. It turned out that there was for this company. Even after reaching someone, I had to explain to two different people on the phone the problem. The situation was resolved and the issue that had caused this problem was explained. However, I spent a total of 45 minutes trying to deal with this late yesterday afternoon.

Chuck and our daughter at Hubbard Glacier

This morning I was looking back at pictures from our first cruise. We went to Alaska in 2004. My daughter was just 15 months old. Now she is eight and quite the cruise veteran. I still have the pictures from the cruise. So many of them look like others I have seen on the internet. There are the same shots of Hubbard Glacier.

I was surfing around the net where I can across a forum where the participants were conducting a poll entitled “What splurges are worthwhile?” The overwhelming winner based on this non-scientific poll was travel. The question I have for you is should you splurge on travel?

I guess this depends on your definition of splurge. Is it something that simply adds to your enjoyment of life? Or is it anything that doesn’t fall in the category of “Our lives depend on it?” I realize that even last category could be pretty broad. It might not mean you’d die, but that your lives would be seriously impacted in some way without it. I don’t think there can be a universal definition. What one person considers a splurge another considers essential.