Miraval Austin - Dream Vacation Review

Miraval. It used to sound like a faraway land only accessible in your wildest dreams. It was one of the first "aspirational" properties I heard about when I started my travel hacking journey three years ago. This week though, Miraval Austin became a reality, and not only for me but for my two daughters too.

Booking

Miraval can be booked using Hyatt points. It is an all-inclusive property so prices are based per person. It is 45,000 points for one and 65,000 points for two. They have single king bed and double queen bed rooms. For cash priced rooms you can put up to 4 people in a double queen room. My original plan had been to book a double queen for myself and my two daughters. Using the one and two person point logic I had figured it was 20,000 points for each additional person so it would be 85,000 for the three of us. Point bookings can only be made by calling the Miraval reservation line. When I called I discovered that, for point bookings, they cannot put 3 people in one room. I therefore had to book two separate rooms - 45,000 points for a single king for myself and 65,000 points for a double queen for my daughters - so it ended up costing me 110,000 points per night rather than the 85,000 points per night that I had anticipated. All told, even with points, it was a very expensive booking but we had our hearts set on going at this point so I just went for it. I ended up booking only two nights rather than three because of the unanticipated increase in points.

Cash price for the least expensive king and double queen rooms for our dates came to $6253.94.

I paid with 220,000 Hyatt points.

Both of our rooms were upgraded on check-in to third floor rooms with nice views.

Getting There

I used Southwest points for our flights. I earned a companion pass last year. With a companion pass your companion flies for free on the same flight you fly as long as there is any seat available when you book your ticket. This means that even if I book the last Wanna Get Away fare (the least expensive seat) but there are still higher priced seats available to book, then all I have to do is click "Add Companion" to my ticket and my companion will get a free seat. You can switch your companion three times a year. I designated one of my daughters as my companion so I "paid" for two tickets using 7,371 Southwest points per ticket. The three of us flew on a direct flight from Indianapolis to Austin for a total of 14,742 points + $16.80 ( 3 x $5.60 tax per ticket). Cash price for these tickets would have been $473.94.

Tuesday June 15th

My husband dropped the three of us off at the airport and our flight left Indianapolis without incident. We were able to secure three seats together in the exit row. Yay!! The plane was completely full and the mask mandate was still in place. We did get a choice of soft drink and a snack during the flight.

We landed in Austin 10 minutes early. Yay!!

We were then told that Southwest was suffering from a systemwide computer malfunction which was preventing the planes that were currently at the gates from leaving. We had to wait parked out on the tarmac until a gate was available for us to deplane. I then saw online that the FAA had grounded all Southwest flights. Flights were being canceled. People were stranded everywhere.

Miraval offers free airport pick up and drop off. We had a driver meeting us at baggage claim at 1pm. At 12:50 pm I called Miraval transportation to let them know we had landed in Austin but our plane was still out on the tarmac and no one knew when we would be able to deplane. At 1:30 pm we were still on the tarmac and I started getting worried that we wouldn't get to Miraval in time for our first scheduled activity. G had a free activity scheduled for 4pm; while it was free, she would be charged a $45 no show fee if she missed it so I called the resort to let them know we were still stuck on the tarmac. Finally, shortly after 2pm we were finally able to deplane. The ride to Miraval took about 40 minutes. We arrived a little after 3pm (4pm Indy time) and by then I was hot (temperatures were in the 90's), hungry, and nauseous (I get motion sick at the drop of a hat).

Our driver dropped us off at the Arrival Center. Once we were checked in and given a quick overview of the property we were driven by golf cart to our rooms.

Our Rooms

Both rooms were upgraded to third floor rooms with balconies which gave us nice views. Our building was Serenity 9. I loved the location as it was right by the Serenity Pool which is the infinity pool where we had planned to spend most of our time. It was also very close to the spa and the food. It was a bit of a longer walk to our other activities but I absolutely loved our location.

The other thing I absolutely loved about the room was the bed! I called it the marshmallow bed. It had an incredibly thick fluffy mattress topper that you just sank into, covered by an equally fluffy duvet comforter and soft squishy pillows. The bed literally swallowed you when you laid down in it and I loved it! My husband, who is a fan of hard mattresses, would have hated it.

my king size marshmallow bed

We arrived after the dining room had closed for lunch so we picked up grab and go snacks and smoothies from The Nest before heading off to our planned activities.

I took a free Tex-Zen Yoga class. It was a very basic yoga class set to music by musicians with Texas roots that ranged from Willie Nelson to Beyonce.

One of my daughters went to Kintsugi:The Beauty of Imperfection. This was a paid class where participants put together shattered pottery and highlighted the breaks with gold lacquer to highlight rather than hide the areas that were broken and repaired and discussed it's analogies to life.

My other daughter went to a Radiance spa treatment which consisted of a clay body treatment and wrap.

We also had time to sit by the infinity pool and later had a wonderful dinner at Hilltop Crossing.

The Food

The main restaurant is called Hilltop Crossing. All meals are included however you have to make reservations at the restaurant. On Tuesday evening we had a 7:30 pm reservation to allow for all our activities beforehand.

One of my favorite things about traveling with my daughters is that we are all foodies. We absolutely love good food. The advantage of eating together is that we all order different things and then share all our meals so we each get to try everything.

We started our meal by trying all their mocktails.

This was followed by some small plates...

Entrees were hard to choose because everything sounded wonderful. We were informed that some of the menu items were constant while some were different every night. We finally settled on three of the nightly specials.

Wild Boar Bolognese

wild boar Italian sausage, onions, garlic, peppers, red wine, chevere, spaghetti squash

44 Farms Sirloin

caviar rice, sweet corn, okra, red bell pepper emulsion, jalapeno coulis

Seared Striped Bass

quinoa tabbouleh, carrots puree, spiced yogurt

Our only complaint with all of the entrees were that they were all incredibly salty for our tastes... but we ended up finishing them all anyway.

We ended with dessert. We had three options so of course we got all three.

Thankfully all the portion sizes were reasonable (as we were at a wellness resort after all!) but I was pretty much in a food coma after dinner and quickly collapsed into my marshmallow bed.

Wednesday June 16th

My day started with a free Morning Stretch class at 8am. G took the class with me. We then met J for breakfast at 8:45 am at Hilltop Crossing. We sat outside and ate from the buffet.

I spent the rest of my morning at the infinity pool, reading and swimming laps.

I met back up with the kids at noon for lunch.

G and I took a free Happy Hips class at 1:30 pm which was another stretch class. This was followed by Slow Flow Aerial Yoga at 3:30pm. This was a paid activity that I had really been looking forward to. It was a fun class as I had never done anything with silks but it was very basic and easy. We spent the last couple minutes just resting in our silks.

I went to my Ginger Healer spa treatment after yoga. It was fabulous! It's a 90 minute treatment that starts out with a deep tissue massage using ginger rosemary oil. I often worry that my massage therapist won't push hard enough as my shoulders are always in knots but this one knew exactly what she was doing. The massage was followed by a hot towel wrap and then a ginger salt glaze scrub. There is a shower in the therapy room to use after the salt scrub. This was the high point of my stay!

I met the girls for dinner at 7pm then all of us laid around in a hammock and talked about our day before going to our rooms.

G had gone to a free Food Meditation class before lunch and a free Crystal Meditation class with J before dinner. 

J had gone to a free Aqua Barre class after breakfast and a free Vinyasa Yoga class after lunch.

Thursday June 17th

We ate breakfast at 8am because both girls had spa services at 9am.

J had a Relaxation Massage while G had a Abhyanga Ayurveda treatment.

My original plan had been to go to the pool while the kids were at the spa but at the last minute I decided to see if I could join the free Photography with Your Phone class at 9am. I wasn't signed up for the class but showed up to see if there was an opening, and there was, and I'm so glad I did this because it ended up being the most informative class of the whole trip. This class was not what I expected. I thought the class would consist of walking around the resort and taking pictures. I hadn't taken many pictures during my stay because Miraval is a digital device free property - meaning they don't want you to use your cell phone or other digital devices in the public areas. Using your phone for photography is allowed but since carrying your phone around was discouraged I simply hadn't been carrying it. So, no, we didn't walk around the resort taking photos. Instead, the class taught you how to use all the camera functions on your phone that I, at least, didn't even know existed. Mind blown. And yes, my kids laughed at me but I was incredibly pleased with my new found knowledge.

We had to check out of our rooms by 11am. Our airport shuttle left at noon so we secured our bags at the Arrival Center (guests can stay as late as 5pm on their departure day) and grabbed some food at the Nest before going to the airport.

Settling Up

Included in the Miraval package is a $175 per person per night resort credit. This can be used for spa services or paid activities. I was told on booking that the credit is cumulative per person for the stay. That meant that since we spent two nights, we each had a total of $350 to spend however way we wanted over the course of our stay. Spa services were very expensive, with most in the $200-$300 range, but that meant that in theory you could have a $300 spa service covered by your credit and have $50 left over to spend on other things. 

There were a number of free activities available everyday as well as paid activities. The resort credit could be used for the paid activities as well. 

It was briefly mentioned that the paid activities would also incur a tax charge. Looking at our final bill it appears that there was no tax charged on any of the spa services but there was a tax on all the other paid activities.

It also appears that the resort credit was cumulative for all the guests on one bill as myself and one of my daughters went over the $350 total credit but one of my daughters did not spend her entire $350 but her "leftover" amount was still credited to the entire bill as it was on one bill.

Miraval also accepts Spa Finder gift cards. Since I knew that J and I were going to go over our allotted resort credit I purchased a discounted $100 Spa Finder gift card from Raise.com prior to our visit. I was told over the phone that they would accept up to $300 in Spa Finder gift cards but since I wasn't sure how exactly they would be applied I only bought a $100 gift card. Turns out this is all I needed as we only went over by $148 when it was all said and done. 

Hotel credit of $1050 is the $175 per person per night credit for 2 nights.

Restaurant charge is for the 2 glasses of wine we had on June 16th.

Spa/activities are for all the paid activities and spa treatments.

Spa Finder gift card was presented at check in on June 15th and credited.

My original bill had an erroneous charge of $21.65 (someone else's wine) that I discovered when I got home so I called and it was immediately credited back to my credit card.

Getting Home

Our original plan had been to fly to Charleston and stay a couple more days with family there. My husband was going to drive down and pick us up at the Charleston airport, then we would all road trip back home to Indiana after getting our fill of seafood and beach sand for a couple days. Our Austin to Charleston flight was booked with 17,818 Southwest points + $16.80 tax for the three of us. Cash price would have been $536.94.

Shortly after arriving at Miraval though my husband called about a family emergency that would require all of us to fly back to Indianapolis and cancel the Charleston portion of our vacation. Canceling tickets on Southwest is a non-issue. All the points are immediately refunded to your account and the tax is refunded back to your credit card. What was costly was getting our tickets back to Indianapolis on two days notice. I ended up spending a total of 37,924 Southwest points (ouch!!) + $16.80 tax to get us back to Indy. Cash price was $779.94.

Final Thoughts

All in all, I felt this was an expensive three day splurge on points but we loved it and the kids have decided they want to go back to Miraval every year.

I spent 220,000 Hyatt points, 52,666 Southwest points, and $172.60 out of pocket ($33.60 for Southwest ticket taxes, $91 for the $100 Spa Finder gift card, $48 for the final bill).

Cash price would have been $6253.94 for our rooms and $1253.88 for our flights for a total of $7507.82.

I think if  we go back I will be spending my entire resort credit on spa services and may invest in more discounted or free Spa Finder gift cards. Also would probably want to go back some other time of year as it was in the high 90's every day we were there so it was a bit uncomfortable to just hang out outside during the day.

The hammocks await our return!

Retirement - 1.5 month Update

 February 26, 2021 was my last day at work.

When people heard that I was retiring, after comments of congratulations or dismay I was often asked... Now what are you going to do? Do you have plans? 

So this is what March looked like...

Complete white space.

That's what I wanted.

This is what March used to look like...

I used to run around like a chicken with my head cut off  EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

My husband traveled for work.

My daughter, who didn't have a driver's license at the time, danced 6-7 days a week in Carmel (which is an hour from my house) so on the days I didn't work I spent every evening in Carmel. I also drove her to Kansas City for a ballet scholarship competition and she danced for Gregory Hancock Dance Theatre and they had a show that last weekend in March, right before Easter.

I split working my ED shifts between Bloomington and Morgan.

I spent every Tuesday evening I wasn't working training with my PBT running team in Broad Ripple while my daughter danced, then spent every other night running on my own while she danced.

Oh, and I ran a marathon.

So this was MY schedule, never mind what the rest of my family's schedule looked like!

I paid someone to drive my daughter to Carmel on the days I worked.

I wanted white space.

No bedtime.

No morning alarms.

I can stay up as long as I want, go to sleep when I'm tired and wake because it's light out.

It's been wonderful.

I made the decision to retire at the end of February last January, before Covid. Initially I chose this date so I would be free to travel on Spring Break with my kids. My older daughter graduates from college in May and my younger daughter graduates from high school in June so it would be their "last" respective Spring Breaks. Well, Covid changed all that. My older daughter did not get a Spring Break. My younger daughter moved back home then decided she wanted to go back to Philadelphia by herself on her Spring Break to see her friends that had stayed, so no big travel plans for me. Maybe we will travel more in a couple months...

I played around with the idea of baking more and having a stand at a Farmer's Market this year. I then decided that I didn't want to commit to giving up my Saturday mornings all summer so I'm passing on that.

I thought about working on a website for my crochet and handmade craft business, however, I've got more than enough word-of-mouth orders at the time to keep me busy so that's on hold too. I have really enjoyed having uninterrupted crafting time. I don't want to spend too much time making stuff for other people as it may rob the joy if it becomes too much like work!

I hadn't run seriously in a loooong time, mainly because I was tired of hurting all the time. I am terribly out of shape but don't hurt anymore. So... I signed up to run the Boston Marathon, virtually, in October. This is NOT "The" Boston Marathon, but rather the virtual version that does not have a qualifying time, but I still have to run 26.2 miles continuously and turn in a time, so I've started running again. Baby steps this time.

I did book a spa vacation for myself and my girls this summer as our "girl's trip." Oh, and I signed up for an aerial silks class on this trip. I know. What the hell was I thinking?!! That prompted me to sign up for yoga classes this week so as to not make an ass of myself while on vacation.

I've spent probably more time than is productive playing on Facebook, but heck, I don't need to be productive anymore!! I have become more active in my local "Buy Nothing" group and I love it. There are "Buy Nothing" groups all over the country. They are hyper-local groups where people give away stuff they don't need and/or ask for what they do need. I'm decluttering my house this way and feels so much better to give stuff away to people that want it rather than dumping it off at a donation site. I've also picked up a number of useful items and fun items along the way too.

I'm working on my garden. I am going to have a garden this year!!! Always before I missed the window to plant things because I was too busy. Now I'm anxiously checking the weather everyday trying to figure out when it's going to be warm enough to plant things safely.

I got to go mushroom hunting this week. Found a few morels. Not a lot but some is always better than none!

And yes, I've picked up the blog again. Writing is what makes me accountable. I realized a couple weeks ago that I could just stay in bed everyday and order Door Dash for the rest of my life but what kind of life is that? Stay tuned and stay in touch!

Simple. Complicated. Life.

The entire contents of my daughter's life for the last two years are in this minivan.

Life can be so simple.

Life can be so complicated.

This is my daughter that Marie Kondo'd her things before Marie Kondo was even a thing. The morning after we arrived at her place my husband opened her cabinets for a coffee cup and found one. One.
Where are all your coffee cups?
She had one coffee cup. She also had one plate and one bowl. It was just her so why would she need more she reasoned. She had a dish drainer next to the sink; no dish washer. Whenever she used her cup or bowl or plate she washed and dried it and put it away. That simple.
The entire apartment was like that.
A twin bed with under dressers and one set of bedding. She washed her sheets once a week she told me.
A desk, a chair, nightstand, floor lamp, laptop, printer, two trash cans, and area rug. Two carry on size suitcases of clothes and two bath towels. A box of toiletries, a box of art supplies and a box of food leftover in her pantry. What was left of a multipack of paper towels and toilet paper that I had bought her in January. Those were all the things we brought back with us.
The small table and four chairs in the dining area, the utensils and pot and pan left in the kitchen belonged to her roommate who had yet come back to move her belongings out. That was it. Everything in that apartment.
Both girls had trained six days a week to be ballet dancers.
They woke up, did some schooling online, took the subway to the dance studio, danced all day, came back home and made dinner, maybe did some more online classes, then went to bed.
They are both seventeen.
Life can be so simple.

We went to Philadelphia to move my daughter back home last week. We squeaked into town just before the 6pm curfew with National Guard in the streets and police helicopters in the air due to the recent race riots. G had lived on her own for the last two years to pursue a career in dance. Covid-19 put an end to that. The timing was horrible. It was audition season. Time to make plans for the summer and fall. Her friends are now scattered, literally, around the globe. The majority, herself included, are not returning to Philadelphia in the fall. There is too much uncertainty. Those that were offered trainee positions are pondering accepting a spot in companies that may not have a season at all. And those are the lucky ones. ..
Age wise G will be a senior in high school this fall. She was not offered a trainee position. She could train another year and try to find a job next spring... or she could come home.
She decided to come home. She is considering becoming a "normal teenager" and going back to "normal high school" to go to college. She only needs one more class to graduate high school though so she is now negotiating with the local high school on what classes she would take if she returned. She has not danced since March.
Life can be so complicated.

The Covid State of Affairs - Random Thoughts on Food and Groceries

Food... it doesn't last long around here

My husband has taken up cooking. He is looking up recipes on the internet. He told me yesterday that maybe we should buy an Instant Pot. I almost had a stroke. I don't know if it was the fact that I completely lost my shit one night, or the COVID lock-down, or the fact that he is now retired. In any case, the man is making dinner.

I really truly do love my husband but I can't help but poke some fun. Here's the background. The man doesn't... or more like didn't... cook. He thinks operating the stove is like programming a nuclear missile. When J was a toddler she used to call the gas station the pizza store and I kept correcting her. Finally one day when I corrected her, she says, "Well, that's where Daddy goes to buy pizza for us." Yep, he'd been buying gas station pizza for the fam while I was at work. He and I have been together since we were 18 years old. The man doesn't cook.

I have always enjoyed cooking. Growing up, being a house wife was on my short list of "what I want to be when I grow up." House wife or farmer, those were my aspirations. We'll save farmer for another post. I became a latch-key child at 8. Both my parents had to work to support our family and they could not afford childcare. My entire childhood I wanted to come home from school to a mom with an after school snack, then play time, then dinner. This is what I saw in my friends' lives. Instead I was given a generous $7.50 a week allowance to care for myself and my younger brother after school. So long story short. My mom can't cook... or keep house. Her place is still a disaster. I thought being a house wife would be the perfect job. I mean, what could be better than staying home all day to tidy the house, cook nice meals, and craft? OK, so I forgot about the whole having kids and taking care of them part. In any case, life didn't turn out that way and the world has moved on to where almost everyone works. Fast food is the current way of life but I have always cooked since a young age and I have always wanted nice things on a shoestring budget.

Fast forward to March. Like I said in my previous post, we had plenty of toilet paper and dry goods so I didn't run out to the grocery store to stock up on things. My plan was to avoid the store for a couple weeks. Let things cool down. People can only buy so much toilet paper and Lysol. I felt that once their homes became saturated with supplies the insanity would stop and the stores would have time to restock. Admittedly, I'm a control freak. I do ALL our grocery shopping because frugality is ingrained in me and I cannot STAND to pay, gulp, full price for anything. It doesn't matter that we're millionaires, saving a couple cents here and there is an atomic habit that I do daily. However... now with COVID and all, one of my biggest fears is that I am an asymptomatic carrier. I mean I'm sure I'm swimming in that stuff all day at the hospital, and I want to avoid spreading it around as much as possible. Therefore, I had NO desire to go grocery shopping. So... I sent my husband to the store one day for a couple things. I believe ground beef was on that list. I always, always, ALWAYS shop with a list! If it's not on the list, we're not getting it. When he came back you'd a thought it was the Apocalypse. The shelves were bare. I already knew that. I'd seen everybody's Facebook posts. He's not on social media. He had no idea. Instead of ground beef he came home with... a package of turkey legs and some huge hunk of pork with a bone in it that I had never seen before. He proclaimed, almost in a panic, "This was the only protein in the store so I bought it!" Ummm... so we're not starving. We have a lifetime supply of frozen venison in the basement. I had no idea how to cook either of these things that he so proudly procured so I chucked them in the freezer... and decided I'd do my own grocery shopping.

There are pros and cons to having your whole family at home all day. I had really cut down on my cooking and baking with just me and my husband at home. Now that there were actually more people to eat the stuff I started baking more. My husband and I had pretty much stopped buying bread because he has been on a diabetic diet, watching his carbs, and I had been dabbling in Keto. Now with kids at home I started making bread. I love baking bread. It's the feeling of the dough coming alive in your hands when you knead it. It goes from mush to a springy ball.

Honey Oatmeal Bread

The kids love macarons. I love them too but they are like $2.00 a macaron so I started working on my macaron making skills. The hard part about macarons is getting the consistency of the batter just right before you pipe them.

Coffee Macarons with Nutella Filling

I finally ventured back into the grocery store on March 28th. I needed more blanched almond flour for the macaron making. I now wish I had taken a picture of the baking aisle that day. There was not a scrap of flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda or yeast to be found. I was, well, bemused. Who knew that so many people baked! And yeast? I can count on one hand the number of people I know that bake bread. Was everyone staying at home and baking? Apparently so. Are you?

I found my blanched almond flour without difficulty. I guess almond flour is not a hot commodity. I was also glad that I buy my yeast a pound at a time and my flour and sugar in 50 lb quantities. I generally buy my flour when it goes on sale for $0.99 for a 5lb bag. Same with sugar and brown sugar and confectioners' sugar. Aldi runs this sale most often but Meijer does it a couple times a year. In any case I still have plenty of baking supplies. 

The bare shelves at the grocery store made me wonder - why are people doing this? Do they really think they're going to run out of food? No, I think it's because stocking up makes them feel like they are doing something. COVID is an invisible enemy. At least by stocking up for the fight they are preparing, doing something. You can see your stockpile. Things you can see are reassuring.

So now the cons of having your family at home all day. They eat. And eat. And EAT! At one point it was starting to be like the Hunger Games at our house. Whole pints of ice cream disappearing in an evening, then screams of "Who ate all the ice cream!!" Keeping up with their appetites can be exhausting at times. I would come home from the grocery store and it would be like vultures descending on the food I was unloading.

The night I lost my shit and the aftermath...
Like I said earlier, I do all the cooking. It really is my fault too due to my control issues. Generally though, I try to batch cook things so we always have a variety of left overs for my family to graze on. This was especially true when the kids were in school because we hardly ever had the time to sit down together, all four of us, for a meal. Since the kids have left home both girls are used to buying their own groceries and cooking their own meals. They are enjoying the fact that they don't have to do this any more but I also know that they're quite capable of feeding themselves. I came home one night after a 12 hour day at work. 7 am to 7 pm, so by the time I drove home and took a shower it was 8 pm. Work has not been terribly busy but it's just tiring being there. I generally like to come home and stretch out for a while and have some quiet time before I interact with anyone. I had just stretched out on the couch and J comes around the corner and asks if I'm making dinner for everyone. Ummm... no, it's 8pm. I figured everyone had already eaten. OK, she goes in the kitchen and starts rummaging around for food. Two seconds later my husband comes downstairs. Hey hon, are you making us dinner? Yep, I lost my shit. What resulted was a chart of who makes dinner on what nights. Plus, I told my husband he had to figure out how to cook that piece of pork and those turkey legs he came home with because I had no idea nor did I have the energy to figure it out. He figured it out. Now he wants an Instant Pot.

Having a meal plan has reduced some stress. Everyone knows what food we have. We now have a running grocery list. Everyone writes down what they want from the store for what they're going to cook. Everyone but me has been wanting to leave the house so they take turns getting the groceries. I've given up on getting the best deals. Meijer has stopped printing a grocery ad. The last time I shopped Kroger they were having a $5 off 5 item sale except you couldn't buy 5 of the same item so it added a challenge to getting the deal and I felt bad about shopping the store any longer than I needed to. It's sad though. After 24 years in business my go-to coupon clipping site went out of business this week...

Surprisingly our overall bills actually have been lower over the last month. I think mainly it's because we haven't eaten out, we are driving less, and grocery prices here are still much lower than in Philadelphia (G was using my credit card for her groceries). When I shop my routine is to go to Aldi first and try to get all the produce and dairy on the list there because they consistently have the lowest prices. I hit up Meijer for everything else. When my husband shops he gets everything at Walmart. When my kids shop they get everything at Meijer.

I think overall we are eating better as a family now. It is actually nice to sit down and have a family dinner with everyone here on some day that's not a holiday. These are the family meals I thought we'd have when I was a little girl aspiring to be a house wife. It's too bad that it took a pandemic to make it happen.

The Covid State of Affairs - Sheltering In Place

In the course of two weeks we went from this...

to this...

The week of March 15-21st was Indiana University's Spring Break. It is also Spring Break for the Bloomington schools. I have always worked this week because I don't live in Bloomington and my kids attended another school system so our Spring Break was always later. That being so, I worked on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

Working in the ED that week was a bit maddening in that the "plan" seemed to change almost hour by hour. In Bloomington the first plan was to park an RV in the parking lot and screen all walking and talking symptomatic patients in there, so as to not contaminate the rest of the ED. A nurse would go in there fully gowned, gloved and masked and the provider would "see" the patient over an iPad, like Facetiming the patient. That lasted a couple days, then they figured out the RV couldn't be adequately sanitized. Next there were special rooms. The requirement for protective gear kept changing. The screening criteria kept changing. It was mentally tiring just trying to keep up with the "plan." We decided on March 14th to restrict visitors from the ED. Gone were the days of me running errands after work in my scrubs. I drove straight home and showered before doing anything else. My husband gave me the stink eye every time I coughed or breathed a little funny.

I'm not sure what the kids really did that week. I'm pretty sure G slept most of the week. I know she had been physically exhausted for weeks and weeks. In fact, while she was home for Christmas, she actually went to see her doctor because she was so physically exhausted. She had every blood test under the sun but everything came back normal. For J, it was her Spring Break. She has two jobs so she continued to work and I'm sure she hung out with her friends.

I was off the weekend of March 21-22 when I heard rumors that the governor was going to "close" the state with a stay at home order. All week at work I had heard people talking about going to Costco and Walmart and seeing people with carts loaded with toilet paper...and soft drinks...and beer. One of my co-workers saw a woman clear the shelf of Little Debbie snacks. Being the perpetual couponer/bargain shopper, I had plenty of toilet paper and other dry goods at home. I think the main reason I went to the store that weekend was I wanted to make sure my kids had enough contact lens solution and we needed some fresh veggies and milk. I think the only thing I needed that I couldn't find at Meijer were coffee filters. I honestly never looked in the cleaning product or toilet paper aisles, nor did I look for meat. My husband was also out running his errands so I had him pick up coffee filters at Walmart. He told me Walmart was "crazy" - shoppers everywhere with carts loaded to overflowing. Really? That was not my experience at Meijer.

On March 23rd Governor Holcomb issued a stay at home order, effective at the end of the day on Tuesday March 24th. J got a letter from both her employers on Monday stating she was an essential worker. The initial order was set to expire on April 6th. Since then it was extended to April 30th, then extended again to May 15th.

At this point in March life had not really changed much for me. I still went to work. My husband is retired. My kids are at home like they are on vacation. What was going on around us was alarming though. The Diamond Princess was not an isolated cruise ship incident. Now there were cruise ships stranded all over the world. My employer issued an indefinite work travel ban. Now the warning stories were coming out of New York City.

New York City saw an astronomical rise in Covid cases the third week in March. Now the warning stories of "this could be your town" were coming from there. The stories were also from otherwise healthy healthcare workers who had contracted the virus and nearly died. It was evident being young and healthy was not necessarily going to spare you. New York City hit home. My mother got her PhD from New York University. She lived there for several years while I was in college to get her degree. She lived in the same Jackson Heights neighborhood in Queens that was now the epicenter of death. G lived in Manhattan for 6 weeks in the summer of 2018. She loves that city. It is a short bus ride away from Philadelphia and she has friends who live and train there. With a population density of over 2700 people per square mile, the virus spread like wildfire.

March 26th. We became #1. The United States now has the most Covid-19 cases in the world. Watching the virus consume New York City was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. It's horrifying yet you can't stop reading the news stories... seeing the refrigerated trucks... the field hospitals. Cases in Indiana were rising too. The biggest problem with trying to document cases in Indiana though is the lack of tests. I remember the first email I received from the Indiana State Department of Health about the availability of tests. I can't remember the date but I think it was in early March? It said we had 900 tests available statewide. Obviously we've gotten more since then but still, I think our numbers early on were artificially low due to lack of available testing.

We have sheltered in place for over a month now. As I stated in my previous post (HERE), I am fortunate. My life has not changed much as I still physically leave the house to go to work, same as always. Our income has not changed as my husband was already retired. I don't need to worry about home schooling my children because they are grown.

I worry about my children though. G is technically a junior in high school and went to school online anyway so that has not changed. She does her classes in her own time, same as always. She was scheduled to take three AP tests in May and that has moved to an online open book format. She took her SAT in October and was signed up to retake it in June, simply to try and get a higher score, and that has been canceled. My worry with her is her future. She's a ballet dancer. She had been training at least 6 hours a day, every day. You can't replicate that at home. Her entire career is in limbo. She had been accepted into summer programs with the Charlotte Ballet and Ballet Met but was waiting to hear from Jacob's Pillow and was going to audition with the Nashville Ballet. Jacob's Pillow is canceled and none of the other programs know if they will continue. My heart goes out to all the kids, because they are kids, that are trying to land a company position in dance right now. No one has a job. Even those that got a contract this year, the contract probably is not worth the paper it's written on. There are no jobs.

I think J has had the hardest time of all of us. She is a social being. She hates being alone. She lived with four other girls in her house in Bloomington. Most of her roommates have gone home. She is staying with us most of the time although she works in Bloomington. Indiana University did not reopen for physical classes. Everything has moved online for the rest of the semester. She is struggling with learning online. She needs to be able to talk to her professors. She misses her friends. She is bored at home. Some days she's like a three year old, wanting me to play with her. G and I have always been solitary beings. It's easy for us to occupy our time reading, exercising, crafting... alone. Not her. I have played more board games and completed more puzzles with her than I have in, well, the last decade. Admittedly, I'd rather be crocheting alone listening to a podcast, but I have been telling myself to embrace this opportunity to spend time with my family.

The kids were already grown and gone. We were empty nesters. Now they have come back. When they were here it was a non-stop schedule of dance classes, cheer, football and basketball games and other extra-curriculars. Now all we have is time. We never know when our time will end. I am doing my best to make it meaningful.

The Covid State of Affairs - The Beginning

First Day of the Big Ten Tournament - March 11, 2020

Our Last Hurrah?

Was this our last hurrah or was this the wake up call the world needed? Only time will tell I suppose...

I am fortunate. I still have a job. We have no debt. No one is ill and my entire family is together at home. The last few weeks have turned into an endless summer vacation. G said it best one morning. She had finally come out of her room at 2 pm and was fixing herself breakfast in the kitchen when my husband made a sarcastic comment about having breakfast at 2 pm. She noted that time had no meaning right now. It didn't matter when she slept or when she ate. There was no where to be and really no deadlines to meet. She's right. It's like the summer vacations we had when the kids were way little... before they had a hundred extra-curricular activities, places to be, assignments to do. When was the last time you had a vacation and the kids had no where to be?

It all started insidiously enough in January. Coronavirus was something in a far off country afflicting a far away population. Like Ebola. It wasn't coming here. We had already had SARS and MERS. Again, something in another part of the world. Didn't really come here or affect us. Sure, there was a report of someone in Washington State having it but he had recently traveled from Wuhan, China. It was an isolated case. That traveler was briefly admitted to the hospital but he recovered and went home. It was like a bad case of the flu. Travelers from China were now being funneled through select US airports and being screened. Everything would be OK...

February 3rd. A woman in one of my Facebook travel hacking groups posted. She is a writer. She and her husband were on the Diamond Princess. They had already been to Vietnam, Taiwan, and now Japan. Someone had come down with coronavirus and now the whole ship was quarantined in Yokohama. We followed her plight through the following days. February 12th - still stuck in Yokohama. She had travel insurance but Med Jet either couldn't or wouldn't come get her so she was still stuck and quarantined. February 16th - the US government finally arranged for US citizens to get loaded onto two cargo planes and flown out to two US military bases for 14 additional days of quarantine before being allowed to go home. Several people were found to be Covid positive after being cleared to get on the plane so they put up a plastic sheet around them. She published an article  (HERE) in The Atlantic about her ordeal after she got home on March 5th. Meanwhile, in Washington State, more cases of coronavirus are being reported. Now it's in a nursing home. People are dying. Wasn't this suppose to be like a bad case of flu?

Mid-February. Now it's in Italy. Cases go from a handful to thousands in the course of two weeks and people are dying by the hundreds every day. OK, so this is worse than the flu. But it's Italy. Not here. For some reason we believe that the United States is somehow better and it can't happen here. We're a First World country for God's sake.

My husband and I went to Florida the last week in February. Most concerning to us at the time was not the virus but the world economy. It was feeling more and more unstable by the day. My husband was very nervous. We were in the process of reallocating some of my parents' investments at the time. We had their financial manager move a large portion of their stocks into more stable bonds. I remember that it was on a Thursday. The market had it's first big drop the following day. Their financial manager called to let us know everything got moved before the drop and that people were going to think he was either a genius or an insider. We weren't quite as lucky. My husband traded a large chunk of our stock portfolio for more stable bonds in after hours trading the day after the first big drop. After hours trading while on vacation - we were that concerned. At the time, the big tax hit from selling was hard to stomach. But then the market plummeted... a gut punch to the recently retired. We lost money, but not nearly as much had we waited.

March. We come back home and hear that Italy is running out of ventilators and doctors are having to choose who to treat. The Italians are writing warnings to the rest of the world. But still... it's Italy. We are the United States. But it's spreading. There are rumors of more travel bans.

Friday March 6th...

I was at work. My employer issued a 45 day travel ban that day for work related travel. I was scheduled to attend a conference in Las Vegas from April 16th to the 21st. It had been 3 years since I'd been to a conference and I was looking forward to meeting up with a friend there. I had already looked into the shows we would see and the restaurants we would dine at. I started counting days. April 16th was in 41 days. Arghhh……

Now I was upset. My passive aggressive self decided I was going to go someplace anyway. I already had the days off work. Now I could just go anywhere I wanted for vacation.

It was one of those moments I wish I could take back. I actually hesitated before I opened my mouth but I opened my mouth anyway. A family member of a patient I was seeing had struck up a conversation with me since coronavirus was the topic of the day. His wife too had just been notified that her employer was restricting work related travel. They were planning personal out of town travel though. "Off the record" he wanted to know my opinion about traveling. My opinion at the time was that as long as he and his wife were healthy without any underlying medical problems and they took precautions like frequent hand washing and not touching your face, it would be fine. I even related my personal plans to go somewhere in April. My scribe then asked me why I thought this way. Yes, it's deadlier than the flu... in the old, the sick, the immunosuppressed. But surely there was some media hype. If the internet and social media had been this active in the days of SARS the hype would have been the same, I thought. OK...  I was wrong.

Monday March 9th. My employer officially canceled my plane tickets to Las Vegas. I talked to my friend in Los Angeles that I was suppose to meet up with in Las Vegas. She says UC Berkley just canceled all their classes and that she totally understood. A student in the Avon school district in Indiana tested positive for coronavirus and the school district canceled classes until April 6th. I'm wondering, is this overkill? Have we been stirred up into a frightened frenzy?

Since Spring Break was coming up, the next "rule" that my employer came out with was that if we traveled to a state that had 100 or more coronavirus cases we would have to return home immediately and would have to self-quarantine for 14 days. My husband and I looked at the COVID case map and contemplated our choices. We wanted to go to the Porche track in Atlanta. I had a free night certificate with IHG that we could use at the Kimpton hotel next to the track and we could both fly free on Southwest. We were actually looking to travel the first week in April but Georgia already had more than 40 cases, plus they have the busiest airport in the country. Nope. Not a chance they'd be under 100 by then. Next we looked at Atlantic City. We had both done status matches for Caesar's Diamond status but needed to go to the Borgota in Atlantic City to do a status match for M-Life Gold. I'm not much of a gambler but having M-Life Gold would allow me to status match to Hyatt Explorist status and we could stay at a Caesar's property in Atlantic City for almost nothing with my Diamond status. We could fly into Baltimore on Southwest for free and rent a car. Both New Jersey and Maryland had less than 30 cases. My husband reserved a rental car. I told him I wanted to wait two more days "just to see" before I booked the hotel and flights.

Wednesday March 11th. Day one of the Big Ten Tournament. Due to some late season losses, Indiana University goes in as the 11th seed and ends up having to play the first night, rather than on day two.

We had actually considered buying third party tickets to go to the championship game on March 15th but then decided to just drive to Bankers Life Fieldhouse on March 9th and buy the general admission tickets for Day One. I guess I was in a "see how it goes" mood that day.

On Wednesday my husband and I went downtown and had dinner at Greek Islands restaurant, then went to Game One, the Northwestern vs Minnesota game, to secure good seats for the IU game. We ended up with arguably the best seats I've ever had for an IU game - half court, 12 rows off the floor. We were surrounded by IU fans. Notably absent were most of the other team's fans. There had been rumors floating around all day that the NCAA was going to hold their tournament with players only and that the Big Ten was considering the same. Then, at halftime, the announcement came. The Big Ten was canceling the rest of the tournament. If we had purchased our tickets at Bankers Life we could go to the ticket counter and have our money refunded for tonight. There was confusion. Were they kicking us out after Game One? Well, no, they let the second game play. That would be the last game of the season. There would be no more games. IU won. Then it was done. I heard during the IU game that a player for the Utah Jazz had tested positive and the NBA was canceling the rest of it's season.

Thursday March 12th. The NCAA decided to go ahead and cancel the whole tournament. Yes, it was all over. We weren't going anywhere any time soon. President Trump announced a travel ban from Europe for 30 days effective midnight March 13th. G called from Philadelphia. Her dance program announced that they would be closing the studios on Friday March 13th to April 6th. The Pennsylvania Ballet had canceled the rest of their season. All the companies in New York City were canceling. About half the people in her dance program are foreign nationals. The exodus had begun. Her friends were leaving the country as quickly as possible before all the borders closed. Most would not be coming back, even if the studios reopened. Her Canadian roommate was leaving at 3 am... She said she was fine but it was getting difficult to find groceries in Philadelphia. She was supposed to come home for Spring Break on March 21st. She was supposed to audition with the Nashville Ballet on March 24th. The Nashville Ballet was now closed. We rebooked her ticket home for March 15th.

Flying home...

By the time G got home it was evident life was no longer normal. Indiana University started their Spring Break the week of March 15th. They announced that classes would go online for 2 weeks after Spring Break. J was overjoyed. Three weeks "off"! She couldn't believe it. Social distancing was starting to be empathized. There was a strange run on toilet paper. Now that both girls were home they wanted to go to Milktooth. This is our go-to restaurant whenever both girls are home. Milktooth announced that they would be closing after Monday March 16th. I had to work on Monday but I figured the girls deserved to have a last hurrah too. I let them go to Milktooth with instructions to leave a very large tip.

Short Cutting My Way to the Southwest Airlines Companion Pass

Florida here we come!

Obtaining the Southwest Airlines Companion Pass was my travel hacking goal this year and I'm happy to report that it's DONE! My husband and I are now going to travel practically for free on Southwest Airlines for nearly 2 years. Woohoo!!

Southwest Airlines has a loyalty program called Rapid Rewards. The big time perk you can obtain from this program is the Companion Pass. With a Companion Pass, another person who you designate as your "companion" can fly FREE on ANY flight you are flying. The companion flies free the entire year you earn the companion pass PLUS the following year. I earned my Companion Pass on February 5th. That means my companion will fly free with me until December 31st 2021.

You can earn a Companion Pass by either obtaining 125,000 Rapid Rewards points or flying 100 Southwest flights in a calendar year. Points can be earned the following ways...

6 points per dollar for Wanna Get Away fares on Southwest flights
10 points per dollar on Anytime fares on Southwest flights
12 points per dollar on Business Select fares on Southwest flights
1 point per dollar on purchases made with a Southwest credit card
2 points per dollar on Southwest Airlines purchases made with a Southwest Credit card
booking hotels through the Southwest Airlines travel portal
shopping or dining through the Southwest Airlines portals
Southwest Airlines credit card sign up bonuses

You CANNOT earn points that count for the Companion Pass by transferring points into your Rapid Rewards account or by buying points.

I earned my Companion Pass with two credit card bonuses.

I discovered that in the travel hacking world "Companion Pass Season" starts in mid-October... meaning that is when most people trying to earn a Companion Pass for the following 2 years start looking for credit card bonuses. The way this works is that all of the Chase co-branded Southwest Airlines credit cards currently have sign up bonuses. Once you get approved for a credit card you have 3 months to meet the minimum spend requirement to obtain your bonus. The bonus points will be credited to your Rapid Rewards account only AFTER you meet your minimum spend requirement. Since all 125,000 Rapid Rewards points counting towards a Companion Pass have to be earned in one CALENDAR year the goal is to get your credit card bonus in January, NOT December.

For clarification, the Rapid Rewards points themselves never expire. If you have 124,000 Rapid Rewards points on December 31st you will still have them in your account to use to redeem for flights on January 1st. However, you will have zero points counting towards a Companion Pass on January 1st as the eligible points towards a Companion Pass resets every calendar year.

The first credit card I got was the Southwest Performance Business Card. When I signed up for it last year it offered a sign up bonus of 80,000 points after I spent $5000 in the first 3 months. (The current sign up bonus is 70,000 points.) It also comes with a $95 credit that you can use towrads either TSA Pre-check or Global Entry. I was approved for the card on October 14, 2019. That meant I had to spend $5000 by January 14, 2020 in order to get the sign up bonus. The annual fee for this card is $199. The annual fee is billed on your first bill and does not count towards the $5000 minimum spend. I spent $4500 to have several large dead trees removed from my yard in November. then put the card away until January. There are stories of people either accidentally meeting their minimum spend requirement in December or getting super close to their minimum spend requirement in December and Chase going ahead a rewarding them with their bonus points as a courtesy and I did not want to take any chance of that happening!

You need to wait at least 30 days in between applying for credit cards with Chase.

The second credit card I got was the Southwest Premier Business Card. The sign up bonus for this is 60,000 points after you spend $3000 in the first 3 months. The annual fee is $99. I was approved for this card on December 4, 2019. That meant I had until March 4, 2020 to meet my minimum spend requirement. I had a homeowner's insurance bill due in February of around $2500 so I used this card to pay the insurance bill plus my January electric bill and some groceries and gas.

As you can see, I used my credit cards for things I would normally have had to spend money on anyway. As soon as my February statement hit, BOOM!, I had a Companion Pass.

The other beauty of the Rapid Rewards program is that you only need to EARN the points to get the Companion Pass. Southwest doesn't subtract 125,000 points from your account for the Companion Pass. That means that I had over 148,000 Rapid Rewards points in my account (80,000 bonus points + 5000 points for minimum spend #1 + 60,000 bonus points + 3000 points for minimum spend #2) that I could use to redeem for flights. You also do not have to have all 125,000 points IN you account at one time to earn the Companion Pass. That means that once I earned that 80,000 point bonus that hit my account in January I could have redeemed some of those points for flights right away but I would still have those points count towards earning a Companion Pass.

My husband and I planned to go to Florida. You can add a Companion to any flight you have a ticket on as long as there is a seat available on that flight. It does not matter what kind of fare that seat sells for; as long as there is a seat still available you can add a Companion. The flight we wanted to take had only one seat left at the cheapest Wanna Get Away fare earlier this month. My February credit card statement had not closed yet but I knew I would be getting a Companion Pass and I didn't want to lose the opportunity to "buy" the last cheap seat on this flight so I went ahead and redeemed some of my Rapid Rewards points for this flight. Once I had a seat it didn't matter what fare seats were left on this flight. As long as the flight was not sold out I could add my husband for free at any time.

Doing the math...
My flight to Florida: $92 or 5588 points +$5.60 tax
My flight back home: $187 or 9578 points +$5.60 tax
Husband's flight to Florida:  $5.60 for tax
Husband's flight home: $5.60 tax
I used 15,166 Rapid Rewards points + $22.40 in taxes for two round trip tickets to Florida.
The cash price for this trip would have been $558.
I paid $298 in annual credit card fees. In just one trip I am already $260 ahead.

You can bet we will be doing a lot more traveling this year!
Southwest flies all over the US, Mexico, the Caribbean, as well as some countries in Central America such as Belize and Costa Rica.

If you want to short cut your own way to a Companion Pass here are the current credit card offers...

Southwest Performance Rapid Rewards Business Card
$5000 minimum spend in first 3 months
70,000 point bonus
$199 annual fee

Southwest Premier Rapid Rewards Business Card
$3000 minimum spend in 3 months
60,000 point bonus
$99 annual fee

Southwest Priority Rapid Rewards Personal Card
$1000 minimum spend in first 3 months
40,000 point bonus
$169 annual fee
*additional 35,000 point bonus after spending a total of $5000 in first 6 months

Southwest Premier Rapid Rewards Personal Card
$1000 minimum spend in first 3 months
40,000 point bonus
$99 annual fee
*additional 35,000 point bonus after spending a total of $5000 in first 6 months

Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus Personal Credit Card
$1000 minimum spend in first 3 months
40,000 point bonus
$169 annual fee
*additional 35,000 point bonus after spending a total of $5000 in first 6 months

*35,000 bonus point offer ends February 10, 2020

I have only listed the bonus point earning benefits of each card. Each card also has a whole list of other benefits depending on what "level" of card you get, hence the difference in annual fees.

Chase rules state you can only have one Southwest co-branded personal card. That means if you want a personal card you can get either the Priority, Premier, or Plus card but only ONE of these. You are allowed one personal card but as many business cards as you want, provided you get approved.

I used my Etsy store as my business. There are a myriad of things you can do to qualify as a business. If you sell online (ie eBay), provide services (house sit, baby sit, walk dogs, etc), rent houses... all those things make you a business. You do NOT need an EIN number to get a business credit card. You can apply as a sole proprietor. As a sole proprietor you would enter YOUR NAME as your business name and use your social security number as your tax ID number. Chase does not care what you charge on a business card. What you count as business expenses are between you and the US government, not your credit card company.

If you do not qualify for a business card, now would also be a good time to get a personal credit card because of the increased sign up bonus. Get approved before February 10, 2020 and you could earn a 75,000 point bonus. You would then have until December 31st to earn the additional 45,000 points (45,000 since you will have earned 5000 points with spend to get the 75,000 point bonus) with your regular spend plus any bonus spend through shopping or dining through the Southwest portals. As you can see pretty much one flight will more than make up for your annual fees. Obviously the earlier in the year you get the Companion Pass the more use you will get out of it, but even if you earn it in December you will have another whole year to use it.

Hope someone can use this information.
Happy travels!