On Monday, I am getting on a plane and flying to Las Vegas for work, where I will spend two full days stationed at the airport, reporting on the Thanksgiving travel scene. If you live in the Vegas area, this means you might actually see me on your TV at some point---or hear me on your radio---and if that happens, I want you to be kind. I have to arrive at the airport at 5:30am both days, you see, which means getting up somewhere around....well, I don't even want to think about it. You can think about it for me, okay? Just don't tell me what time I'll need to be setting that alarm for, at least not without phoning the airport Starbucks first and calling in a triple latte for one Miss Holly Burns, to be collected upon arrival. 

I'm reporting from Vegas as part of a very cool program my company has been running for the last eight years called the Thanksgiving Task Force. If you're flying into or out of one of the country's top ten busiest airports next Tuesday or Wednesday---we're talking New York JFK, Chicago O'Hare, Washington Reagan, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas, Miami, Phoenix, Denver, or Las Vegas---you might be interested to know that there'll be a Thanksgiving Task Force monitor stationed at each one, reporting on things like security wait times, check-in wait times, weather delays, traffic, and parking. You can switch on your local news to get the scoop before you leave, obviously, and you can also check in constantly at The Window Seat blog, where we'll be posting near-hourly updates from each airport. 

(And if you happen to be in the Las Vegas airport next Tuesday or Wednesday, please come over and say hi! I'll be the nervous one in the corner on my laptop, freaking out just a smidge about going on live TV. Too bad they won't be beaming me into the studio as a hologram, eh? I wonder if the camera really does add ten pounds. Wait, don't answer that.)

After I'm done on Wednesday evening, I'm flying from Vegas to Seattle, where---how romantic!---I'm meeting Sean, who is flying in from San Francisco. We timed it so that his flight arrives at 9:37pm and mine at 9:43pm, although the likelihood of that actually working out as planned, of course, seems really quite a stretch. Nevertheless, I am still holding out hope for a nice old-fashioned at-the-gate reunion, the likes of which a person hasn't been able to have since 9-11. Do you remember that, when you could meet people at the gate? It was so much more fun! Especially when you brought a wacky sign with which to embarrass them.

We booked this Thanksgiving trip to Seattle in June, back when we didn't have a buckling economy to worry about and an impending wedding to plan, and now it does seem rather like a.....well, a slightly superfluous thing to be doing. As such, I seem to have done no research on Seattle at all, which is a shame, as I've wanted to visit this city forever and now what if I'm the person eating at McDonalds because she never looked up any good local restaurants? (We may actually be eating at McDonalds on Thanksgiving Day, come to think of it, or at least in our hotel room, because I guess I kind of forgot to make any reservations anywhere. Whoops! Turkey sandwiches from Whole Foods for everyone!)

If there are any kind Seattlites in the house with some super recommendations for where to go and what to do in your lovely city while we're there---my very rudimentary knowledge of it is limited merely to grunge music, coffee, and that place where they throw the fish, which I only saw on Real World Seattle because one of the cast members worked there---we'd be really everso grateful. We like breakfast, lunch, dinner, and brunch. Oh, and I guess we should probably throw in some sightseeing between meals.