Hyatt Discounts

There I was in my room at 1am trying to find a nicer or cheaper hotel for my Holy Week trip in April to Cali.  I was checking around and found the HYatt at Ontario Mills which seemed like a really nice place to stay.  The prices were pretty high at abotu $130 a night, but then I saw this little "guaranteed lowest rate" link on their site saying that hyatt.com will have the lowest rate online, and if it doesn't, then they will match whatever lower rate you did find and discount it another 20%.

That actually wasn't hard to find and found it using expedia.com where it was cheaper.  Called the number to get the low rate guarantee and spoke to Tori.  Gave her the details of my trip and told her where I found the lower price ... she put me on hold.  And there I sat on hold ... for about 15 minutes.  I was here wondering if this was their technique, that when you call you tell them that you found a lower rate and you want them to match it and 20% off, that they will just put you on hold for x number of minutes until you hang up or your battery dies.  Well ... my battery started to die and I had to find my charger to make sure that it didn't.  She finally came back on the line telling me that she was doing paperwork for the discount and I was correct with the 20% ... then she put me back on hold for another 10-15 minutes again!  Here I was twidling my thumbs and just waiting, at this point I thought they were changing their site to get the same price and get out of the ad they put up.  She finally comes back and takes my reservation for about $85 a night (not including taxes and fees), well that was a huge drop from the $130 a night that I originally was quoted at!  

So the lesson for this is ... do some research when booking online at hotels, cars or anything.  You can find coupons, and deals, and you can also find low rate guarantees like this!

I think part of the reason they put these guarantees up is because a lot of people are reluctant to call.  At first I didn't want to call them and ask for the discount because I thought I might be wrong, or that it might label me as a cheapskate.  But really who am I to care what they think?  And it's saving me money!

The hotel looks nice and looking forward to the trip in April.  Good to get a discount on it too ... I might actually call my car rental place to ask for a discount or a deal :)

+ mon

Lenten Food Option

I woke up today and totally forgot that it was Friday. I didn't eat any meat, but I got to work without eating breakfast ... I wasn't sure what I was going to have. Last week I had two egg and cheese croissants but didn't want that since that made me a big gassy (tmi?).

So I made my way to the gourmet deli across the street and ended up getting some rice and shrimp (gotta have the rice!). Then I went around a little more and saw that they had stuffed shells! MmmmMmm I love stuffed shells! I haven't had stuffed shells in a while, and well today I had this treat!
I forgot about this yummy food but now that I've found it, I do hope that they have this often! Gotta love me some stuffed shells. So that's another option for the Lenten Fridays!

I forgot about this yummy food but now that I've found it, I do hope that they have this often! Gotta love me some stuffed shells. So that's another option for the Lenten Fridays!

+ mon

Feel the Heat

It's been a while since I've been excited ... about Holy Week.  Well it's obvious because the last time I went was last year, but it's different this year.  I guess in the past few months I've felt spiritually empty and dry, no one to blame but myself.  Well this time around I feel it again, I feel that burning inside.

I'm not sure what it is, or if it's even just one single thing.  Most likely it's a combination of a few things, one being that I went to confession on Friday and I'm still doing good since then - usually I'll fall within a few hours of confession, or even less!  Another factor could be that there are a good amount of youth that are going to California for Holy Week this year!

So far there are 7 or 8 of us that are going, and about 7 of us on the same flight going there!  It's going to be a party plane on that Virgin America flight :)

My only hope is that my spiritual prep continues to do as well as it's been for the past few days.  There's still a long way to go ... it's just the start, but feeling that fire within is definitely a good way to start.

Another big factor that I think is helping this fire go is seeing the kids.  See when I say kids, I'm referring to the 18, 19 and 20 year olds that I hang out with all the time.  Seeing Emil getting hyped about the past meeting and the upcoming events including HW is exciting!  Also knowing that the kids are doing what they can to try and make it even though there is a good amount of money involved in flying over there ... it's inspiring.  Hearing them say simple things like "I'm going no matter what" and even if they have to miss school (like they are going to actually miss being in class!).

As someone once told me ... do I really want to throw gas on that flame?  The answer is obvious.

+ mon