Its the day before landing. I am not longer on the "Orbit Execute Shift", but am now on the "Entry Shift", which has replaced the orbit team to prep for landing. Its a nice change of pace. People on entry do things differently, a little faster and more intense, and also a more effort is required to be methodical than during our daily orbit grind (which really isn't much of a grind at all most of the time).

I'm excited about working my first landing since my days in the backroom.

The situation with the airlines gets bleaker every day (and my summer plane tickets to the cottage are still spiked at over $500). There is one ray of hope, according to this market analysis, that though the domestic market is toast, there are lots of indications that we could be going into an era of cheaper and more luxurious tickets to Europe as the Open Skies agreements lets more European carriers compete for the U.S. market.

That's nice. I haven't been back to Europe since we went to Greece (was that really in 2005?) and I'm a little "home sick" for it. All those trips I took to Europe (oh my gosh, I was about to nostalgically say "when I was in my early 20s"... oh, I'm so old!) really made an impression in my life and I'd like to go back. There's been some question of where my next big trip is going to be (after I've finished paying off Australia, which is still going to take me another month or two at the rate I'm going) -- the two top contenders are Thailand (where my college roommate should, in theory, still be residing) and Lebanon/Israel (via Jordan) (where Nick will soon be residing and Maayan is right now). Better start saving though, because plane tickets there can be even more expensive than Australia!