A few years back we were able to negotiate a Thanksgiving deferral, a plan that moved our family holiday gathering to the weekend after Thankgiving or bypassed the holiday madness altogether, pushing our annual family pow wow up into January birthday season. We're lucky, no kids, retired parents, a weird genetic disposition towards avoiding traditional employment gives us independence in planning.

Fake plastic wishbones? Around Thanksgiving time last year, I read a post by blogger Rejin from Urban Botany blasting People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for promoting plastic Lucky Break Wishbones. She wrote: Hasn't PETA ever heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? They claim these wishbones and their packages are recyclable, but let's face it: 99.99% of them are going to end up in a landfill, or in the ocean, where they will probably be swallowed by sea turtles [And I would add baby albatross chicks] who will choke and die.... Animals, PETA, animals! Do you hear me? Apparently PETA did not because the organization promoted the wishbones again this year. Products like these are what blogger Linda Anderson from Citizen Green would call "stupid plastic crap."

It seems like a dream job, yet again, sort of like The Best Job in the World competition. It's Expedition 206, a Coca-Cola funded tour of the planet with the lofty goal of finding out what happiness means to people all around the world. The winners, three "Happiness Ambassadors" are going on a 206 country tour in one year to, according to the site, "Find out what makes people happy."

It was about three months ago that I received an invitation to participate in a social media cruise. The deal? A handful of travel bloggers were invited for seven days of Caribbean cruising in exchange for covering their adventures on Twitter, their blogs, whatever social media format they choose. I declined for a handful of reasons -- I get seasick, I'm a little claustrophobic, I was highly skeptical that this trip was my scene.

As I've been in the process of moving and putting most of my stuff into storage I've fantasized about getting rid of all my stuff so I could be unbound. It's a tempting idea but, as I thought, it is kind of time consuming and somewhat harder that it seems to execute. And though I like the idea of freedom, life on the road has never called to me. Thus I am all the more impressed by three women who've sold the stuff, hit the road and are blogging their adventures.

I took a guided tour yesterday. I'm not really a guided tour person -- I didn't like climbing in and out of the minivan, I didn't like having someone else decide when I get to stop to take pictures, and I didn't really appreciate the day's agenda. Hey, it was an experiment, every now and then I like to try out something I might not otherwise do. It's good to look at other ways of travel. I don't judge -- if you like guided tours you go right ahead, they're crazy efficient and on good ones, you learn stuff.

I freaked right out when visiting Warwick with my now repatriated friend who was living, at the time, in England. The bowels of that castle were full of horrors, plus, until we moved through history to more genteel times, it seemed like no way to live. I fell in to a giant weeping mess at Toul Sleng in Phnom Pehn and had to be removed to a quiet courtyard across the street where I recovered with a cup of tea. I was less traumatized by Schoenbrunn, Vienna's sprawling palace complex, though I am still mad at Queen Marie Therese for being anti-Semitic.

The "immigrant experience"  is a phrase I usually associate with the U.S., what with people from across the world streaming in here everyday. A travelogue is what I'd associate with literature by foreigners from India. But the blogosphere is telling a different story. Many American and other Western citizens, who have either got on the love train or are riding the global economy wave that took them to India or simply love living there, are blogging about their experiences in a personal way that travel guides are unlikely to offer. Some are there for a few years.

Last year, shortly before Halloween, some pals went on a haunted/spooky/some third adjective tour in Georgetown, a recovering industrial neighborhood here in Seattle. I missed it, I was in Tampa and ended up a bit too close to a Sarah Palin rally for my likings, that's all I needed to set the tone for my Halloween. I wish I'd been able to attend the Seattle tour, those things have a way of sticking with you and now, every time we buzz through Georgetown -- there's a coffee house I like there -- my husband points out haunted brothels and places where other unseemly events took place.

On my flights last weekend, I had the good fortune to be seating next to two totally different, charming, and interesting people. On the way out, I sat next to a lovely woman in her 50s. She was from South Dakota and off to Vegas with her girlfriend (seated somewhere in the back of the plane and oh, get THIS, I sat next to the girlfriend on the connecting flight back!). My seat neighbor ran a day care center, was going to see Bette Midler, worried about health insurance as a very small business owner, was the daughter of a college professor, and rarely gets out of her hometown.

A flight attendant on Oprah Winfrey's private jet filed a lawsuit Friday denying allegations that she had sex on board. In the suit, Corrine Gehrls, 39, claims that fellow flight attendants Myron Gooch and Kirby Bumpus -- who is the daughter of Winfrey's best friend Gayle King and is Winfrey's goddaughter -- made the accusation that caused her to be fired.--Huffington Post

In just two days, Blog Action Day 2009 will be upon us. You can still sign up your blog and take part in the worldwide event. This year the theme is climate change. You have some thoughts on climate change, I know you do. Here's your chance to share your thoughts and opinions and ideas about climate change and add your voice to this global event.