Fierceness and The Stuker Standard

Posted on by thepoelog

First things first, thanks to everyone who visited the blog yesterday! It was my busiest day yet! Keep visiting, forwarding, sharing, or whatever.

I think I’ve alluded to it here before, but my +1 for life XFE is a mileage whore. As in, he will do just about anything for airline miles. Or hotel points. Just as some people have hobbies like scrapbooking or whatever, XFE’s hobby is finding and accumulating points and miles. He works like Lindsay Lohan trying to stay out of jail to get his points.

Lilo
“What do you mean there’s no upgrade available for first class?”

This is truly phenomenal for me becaue I am usually the beneficiary of his schemes. We go to lots of awesome, far-flung places, in part, so he can keep his status on United. We stay in very lovely Starwood and Hilton Hotels, so we can rack up free nights at one of their resort properties. (We’re also pretty crazy about hotels in general, but especially boutique hotels. In fact, our bedroom looks like a Kimpton, which may or may not have been our point.)

Status on United is pretty awesome. We get upgrades, no bag fees, priority boarding. It’s the best. And we work very hard to keep our status – we use  United credit cards, we always choose them for flights, we fly to Turkey for a long weekend (Jan. 2012!), we follow them on Twitter.

Even I recently got in on the game, recently signing up for my first credit card in years because you got 30,000 Continental miles for signing up. In caseyou didn’t know, Continental and United are about to merge, so all those miles will work on United.

But this guy? This guy is amazing. He’s the standard to which XFE aspires. In fact, I’ve coined a new phrase around our house: The Stuker Standard. Check this guy out: 10 million miles on United! Amazing! And he did it this past Saturday, in Chicago, WHERE WE WERE FOR A WEDDING! Crazy coincidence. I don’t know how many miles we have (we just used up 360,ooo of them for first class tickets to Australia next March), but I don’t think we’re even in the millions. We’ve got our work cut out for us if we’re going to meet the Stuker Standard.

My favorite interview with him was on NPR, because of this part about traveling with his wife:

STUKER: Fifteen years. Actually, she’s flown a million and a half miles with me at the same time. But pretty much all on honeymoons.

SIMON: Aww. Aww, you take more than one honeymoon it sounds like, right?

STUKER: Actually, we take about four or five a year. I figure, you know, if we focus on the honeymoon more, you know, then the relationship works out just fine.

See? Cute, right? And that’s how my permanent travel companion and I feel about our relationship. We’re just honeymooning through life.

Oh, another love my remote-control-master -for-eternity and I share is Project Runway. And espcially Season Four winner Christian Siriano. Well, XFE might like it especially because of Heidi Klum, but Christian was my favorite competitor of all time. I picked him straight out of the gate that season and he didn’t let me down. So when this happened at work today, it did not suck (sorry for everyone who’s already seen this via my facebook, twitter and even direct messaging in a few cases).

Fierce

Did anyone else meet any small, famous people today? Who else knows about mileage runs? What about mattress runs? Where did you go/would you like to go on your honeymoon?

Luck Be a Lady Holding Two Airline Tickets

Posted on by thepoelog
United Airlines contest
Nice United people right before I tackled them.

I am not a lucky person. Well, I mean that in the most materialistic sense of the word. I’m actually incredibly lucky in life. I have a great life – I have my health, I have a wonderful man who loves me, great friends, a decent job, a nice place to store all my wonderful shoes. All in all, I have been very lucky, especially given my white trash roots and upbringing.

But when it comes to winning, I haven’t ever hit a hot streak. I consistently lose at every raffle I’ve ever entered, despite the fact that I take a lot of time to fill those cards out with exceptionally neat handwriting.

We go to Vegas several times a year and do some mighty serious gambling, but I’ve never walked away from a table with pockets brimming in chips. Sure, I’ll make a little every now and again at craps or pai-gow poker (the best game EVER), but then I play it all away. Or I shop and spend it. So either way, I almost always leave Vegas empty-handed. (True story: a couple of months ago, XFE was playing day craps at Foxwoods Casino and some high roller came up and started giving everyone at the table $500 bucks every time the thrower hit the numbers he was playing. XFE walked away with $2,000 AND HE DIDN’T EVEN PLAY. That shit? That is lucky.)

But today? Today was the day my luck turned around. A little backstory: my permanent travel companion XFE has been nagging me for a while about following United Airlines on Twitter. They are our preferred airlines and I love them forever and ever. Especially since we are using a whole bunch of their miles to fly first-class roundtrip to Bangkok and Australia for my 40th next March. I heart United.

Anyway, United was having this Twitter promotion where they would go to eight cities for these Tweet-Ups. They announce via Twitter that day where they are going to be (like in a public place like a park or a square) and then the first 10 Twitter followers to meet up with them would get free airline tickets.

XFE follows United and so do I but somehow I never see their tweets. Probably because I follow too many damn people. But XFE had a feeling that I’d be closer to the meet up spot than he would. He warned me to be ready. And to not fail.

I was at work, still sick, basically sneezing and snotting my way through the day (Seriously, the only work getting done around here is booger production and the factory is Blowing. Up.), and trying to write a major article for the people who pay my rent. At 12:49, I see this on my screen.

United Airlines Tweetup contest

Dammit! I was closer. This was it. It was my moment to shine. The future of our domestic household bliss was in my Robitussin-stained hands. I literally kicked my heels off, jammed my feet into flats, grabbed my wallet and ran down the stairs. I didn’t even wait for an elevator. I still had my this-office-is-too-cold, blah, gray sweater on. I ran to Farragut Square (all that running in the mornings really paid off), holding up the Twitpic of the two United Airlines representatives in front of me. I couldn’t really see because of the sun, but I could just make out that they were standing in front of the statue in the park.

Shoes
Moving fast like a snow leopard shoes. Not so much shoes. Yes, I have the entire animal kingdom represented in shoes. It’s like Noah’s Ark in my closet.

After running around the statue, I finally got my bearings and ran right up to them as they were trying to give the first follower his prize. I was third in line!! I won two tickets!! For any flights between the US, Alaska, Canada, Mexico, Caribbean and Central America. I was so excited! The first words out of my mouth were, “Man, my boyfriend is going to be so happy. He’s a total mileage whore.” Which may not have been appropriate, but I don’t care! I’m a winner! Somebody get me to Vegas!

So, what do y’all think? Where should we go? If the tickets had included Europe, the choice would have totally been so easy–we would have gone to see Erin and Greg in London.