[Porsche-O-Phile]

This might sound awful, but here's an alternate opinion:

My options:
(1) Buy an overpriced plane ticket, stand in the line from hell at one of SoCal's airports overrun with idiots, screaming bratty children and generally the most clueless aspects of society. Pay a fortune to park or come up with some horrendously inconvenient method of "getting a ride" or taking some kind of bus or shuttle or pay $50 for an overpriced taxi ride with some quasi-suicidal illegal immigrant driver. Be stripped to your jockeys by overzealous TSA personnel because your shoelaces look like they just might be able to batter down that reinforced steel cockpit door. Sit (or rather stand) for four hours in the holdroom watching the worst behavior imaginable by your fellow passengers (ever see a hispanic woman change a diaper right there on the floor? I have.) Relish in the thought that you're about to spend the next six hours of your life on a plane with these people, breathing their exhalation and poisoning your body with their germs and disease that'll show up in you right as your vacation ends and it's time to go back to work - making you use up TWO weeks of your PTO time (instead of one) in the first calendar month so now you really can't take time off until. . . oh. . . October or so. Get on said plane, probably a middle seat between two fat dudes - or a fat dude and some guy that ate too much Mexican food. Try unsuccessfully to get comfortable for the next two hours. Finally succeed in nodding off only to be awakened five minutes later by the fat dude sitting inside of you demanding to be let out to go take a leak. Let fat guy out. Spend next hour trying to re-numb your legs so you can sleep. Nod off. Get awakened five minutes later by one of the eight or nine bratty children of that Mexican woman sitting two rows back who evidently thinks the back of your seat is a drum set. Cause momentary scene by turning around and telling child to behave or that you'll tell the pilot to suck Santa into engine #2. Get warned by flight attendant for causing scene. Listen to kid's mom ramble on in Spanish for next twenty minutes about how rude you are. Finally nod off again. Get awakened five minutes later by other fat dude poking you so the flight attendant can ask you if you want a $3 soda or a $10 box lunch. Spend next hour trying to re-numb legs to sleep again. Nod off. Get awakened five minutes later by some asshat's screaming baby. Arrive at destination. Spend next week freezing butt off and trying to make awkward small-talk conversation with distant relatives. Repeat process in opposite direction a week later, only adding the variable of inclement weather and ensuing delays. Get home, frazzled and unkempt and in desparate need of sleep. Start feeling the fever coming on that night. Enjoy collection of snow-globes and ugly socks you got as gifts while you recover from your illness for the next week.

(2) Stay right where I am, enjoy nice (reasonably) warm weather and the thought of no traffic because all the usual idiots in this town went for option #1. Ahh. Bliss. Actually get work done at work and get home in time to enjoy self. Laugh at suckers. Maybe enjoy a nice drive somewhere or trip to somplace I ususally can't get to since it's too overcrowded in their absence.

Go visit relatives in April or so. Or better still, let them come here.