I was thinking about this as I laid out my schedule for the next couple of weeks.

Almost everybody's heard of frequent flyer miles. Plenty of people sign up for a card, and then diligently funnel as much of their spend as they can through that card and hope someday, usually in a couple of years, they will have enough for "free" flight to visit grandma in Tuscon. Hah!

Those are the "social drinkers" -- when do you admit you're a full-blown "alcoholic"?

1. The first warning indication is when you sign up for more than one credit card, just to get the bonus. When people ask me, I tell them I have a stack of cc's about an inch thick. They tend to look at me goggle-eyed. "Why do you need more than one credit card? Isn't that dangerous?" Sigh. They just don't get it.

2. The really definite sign, IMO, is the first time you hotel-hop. There is no reason on God's green earth to do that -- it's more than a bit inconvenient and it makes no sense -- unless you're a hard-core, well, FlyerTalker.

This summer -- about 45 nights, all in the same chain, no two consecutive nights in the same place. PITA? Sure. 250,000 points? Priceless!

To paraphrase Snoopy again, "Until it is demonstrated, it is not always clear, the difference between the true professional and the merely competent amateur."