Planes, Trains & Automobiles...

What a week of traveling I had! The week started in Virginia; wedding for one of my man's best friends from high school. It was so much fun! It was nice and casual and cozy. No stuffy decorations, uptight bridesmaids and uncomfortable seating arrangements. It was buffet, let's get drunk and dance in this crazy humidity like no ones business kind of fun! And I made some new friends! My absolute favorite thing about the wedding was chatting with people who are not in the entertainment business at all! For the first time in months I had conversations about things that are genuinely important in life, other than, "how many twitter followers do u have?" (um...are you following me on twitter yet? @ColleenBoag) ;). It was refreshing and reinvigorating! Just what the doctor ordered.

 Next stop was home, sweet, home. I got to hang with my new nephew! Relaxing, right? Ha! Absolutely not! What a little doll. He is one of the smiliest babies I've ever known, that is when he's being held. If you put him down he will attempt to climb you, cuz, nobody puts baby on the carpet! Oh man! Every day around 2pm I needed a nap! Did I get one? Usually not. How do my sis and bro-in-law do it?? I give them major props! I was exhausted and I was only there for a week! I cannot imagine that full-time. Oy.

 Then next and last stop for me on this crazy crazy week was VEGAS! I was meeting up with friends for a surprise dirty thirty. It was great! I can't really divulge more than that since what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas! Wish I had gotten to spend more time there but I had to return to LA a day early because *sigh, unfortunately (please read sarcasm here) I got a callback for a feature I auditioned for a few weeks back! And then luck of the draw I was scheduled for a second audition for yet another feature later that evening. I was out of town for 8 days, in three different cities and it feels very surreal to be back in LA and back to the grind. I needed the getaway and feel ready to get back to it! Big things are coming...big things!

What's your fave getaway?

Flights are How Much?!?!??!

Is anyone else getting overwhelmed by the gas prices these days??  Yikes!  I'm always happy when I'm able to walk somewhere and save .011 gallon of gas, so I don't have to visit that horrifying gas station, spend $25 and only see the needle go up to a quarter tank.  Ugh.

I believe this is directly affecting the price of flights as well.  This year has already been a challenging one navigating the discount, cheap flight websites almost every day to plan for a hefty number of trips I'm taking this year.

I'm very excited to be taking these trips, don't get me wrong.  I'm visiting Vegas, I'm flying home to visit my new nephew, baby John, I'm flying internationally to Italy to be in my best friends wedding!  It's all fabulously exciting and very much worth my time, but my bank account keeps frowning at me...

As a 'starving artist', I find these prices to be even more daunting.  All things I want to do and I will end up doing, even if it means months of raman noodles and no cable ;).  Whatever happened to the days of discount travel sites actually offering discounts??  I've been searching for cheap flights on hotwire, orbitz, priceline, etc, and it seems to me that the prices they spit out are what you would pay if you were going to the airline site itself.  I miss the 'good old days'...am I actually old enough to say that?

It's so funny when I reminisce about 'back in the day' when I would stop at the gas pump on my way back from senior year classes and I'd sift around the floor and seats of my mazda 323 hatchback and find about $2 worth of change.  I'd walk inside to the clerk, "$2 on number 4 please", and I'd have a decent amount of gas to get me through the week.  Heaven.

Well, prices are rising...so I hope minimum wage gets on board soon enough, or I book that next big Tim Burton film and get a chance to pay my entire family's gas for a few years!

Got any secret good advice on how to save money on flights or at the pump??  Let me know!

Ooh, for those of you with smartphones, there's an app called 'Gas Buddy' and it tells you the price of the gas in the area you are so you can find the cheapest.  At least you may only spend $4.60 as opposed to $4.89  ;)