nawl

May 20-24 Seattle (STOC)

May 24-31 Phoenix (Meeting Jan's parents + Grand Canyon)

June 1-14 Princeton (seriously studying, reunions June 1-4)

June 15-18 Toronto, through BUF (Nikita and Lenore's wedding)

June 20-22 Copenhagen (...)

June 22-July 8 Bergen (seriously studying)

July 8(?)-21 Budapest + Lake Balaton (Horizon of Combinatorics)

July 21-30 Maui (family vacation)

July 30-September 5(?) California (seriously studying, burning man Aug. 28-Sept. 4)

September 5- Princeton

I would just like to declare my undying love for Michaela, the agent at STA Travel that I talked to. She actually called me back five minutes after I'd bought everything to tell me that she'd managed to get a $100 cheaper fare for one of my flights.

Buying plane tickets is always interesting. In this case, I could price each component individually online, but a travel agent is able to combine multiple complicated segments with the real price for the exact flights that I want. Published fares often make no sense--a one-way ticket for a two-hour flight is $1000, and round-trip it's $300. Expedia tells me a flight is $1800, and then when I click on it I get a notice "Oops, we're sorry, the price of this flight has changed to $3400."

I'm waiting for a website that actually lets you play with the travel agent booking software.