Just mailing your passport in to the DOS to add pages is free.

Will they still add pages to non-biometric passports?

I just purchased a paper ticket from a regular travel agency for the first time in at least six or seven years, with a $40 commission, to boot. Stopping by the travel agency on the way home to pick it up.

Wow. :eek:

What about the itinerary forced it to paper?

I think I finally found a workable itinerary in C for New Year's:

IAH-FRA-IST-AYT; AYT-IST; IST-BRU-IAD-ORD-IAH

Nice. Central Turkey is COLD in the winter, like snow chains required and some of the towns cut off from the rest of the country for weeks at a time. But it was rather beautiful in August/September. :cool:

Another Korfez story to hear, hopefully. :cool:

I am so glad I moved all my 401(k) holdings to cash in February and have left them there! I lost some in another retirement plan, but there wasn't a huge amount of money there, so I'm not shedding any tears. But wow, nothing like walking off the plane at DTW and seeing tons of people crowded around the CNN Airport Network monitors with shocked looks on their faces.

AYT should be in the low to mid 60s (on the Southern Med. Coast). IST will likely be colder, though.

Looks like I picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue. :o

I was thinking of ESB (Ankara). My bad.

You'll be OK with the cooler temps in IST, I think, as the number of options you have that are indoor will be greater.

I considered Ankara, but couldn't pass up the Cat 2 Sheraton in AYT, as it looks pretty nice. 3K/4K points/night sounds good to me (18K total points for a 5-night stay that includes 2 weekend nights).

I could not find an online booking engine that would book it as an eticket, and I needed to ticket it today.

I shouldn't have checked my 401(k). I'm in no worse a position than anyone else, and I'm young enough that I have time to recover. But it is ugly. I thought that maybe it was just today driving it down, but it seems that it has been tanking all year long. Perhaps it is time to start paying more attention to my investment portfolio. :o

I pulled a Homer Simpson of sorts. Our 401k plan was completely revamped this year and as a result I ended up moving 1/2 of my assets into a linked brokerage account. The money was deposited into a money market fund that I proceeded to procrastinate on and not invest in anything, thereby preserving some value.

In any event, hooray for the inanimate carbon rod!