August 8, 2012

How To Tell Your Loved One That You're Going to Jamaica


1. Find a partner in crime and plot. You’ll need a roommate to split the costs, and it needs to be someone on the same page as you. This should be someone you can tolerate through not only four nights in a hotel room, but also ten months of anticipation and rationalization. Tell no one.

2. Pay the deposit and make it official. Give yourselves a virtual pat on the back for snagging the cheap[est] room, and ignore the relative nature of “cheap” in this situation.   
(i.e. cheap:Hanson::soon:Hanson)

3.  Now that it’s official, you can show moderate levels of excitement in corners of the internet that your friends/family/significant other don’t frequent. It’s not time to publicize your impulse vacation--yet.

4.  Continue to make payments on the trip. You can pay it off without asking for help, so do it, and do it quietly.

5. Enter a contest to have an extra night added to your trip free of charge.

6. Five months after booking, when you’ve paid everything off and worked hard all summer to replenish what you’ve used on your dream getaway, write a blog post. Speak liberally and post it somewhere where it will cross paths with your loved one(s). If you’re feeling bold, tag them in it. Now is your moment. (Hi, mom, dad! I love you :)
7. Allow two to three minutes for steps 1-6 to sink in. This may include intense moments of hair pulling, yelling, silence, sighing, and/or eerie laughter depending on the person and your individual situation. This will pass. (Note: Results may vary. Do not administer while your loved one is operating heavy machinery.)

8. Remind your loved one that while this may seem serious now, it has actually been true for months. In the meantime, the world has not imploded. You have not been selling anything dangerous or illegal for extra money (though you briefly entertained the idea of selling your rare pre-fame copy of “MMMBop”). You are not in debt and have not been surviving on ramen noodles to make up for the dent in your bank account. If necessary, use the phrase “it will be okay,” and mean it.

9. Include a shameless plug for votes for that free night somewhere in your post. If you’re coming clean, you might as well lay it all out. Click Here to help me out! You can vote every day if you're feeling generous.

10. If steps 5-7 do not succeed, proceed to Plan B.

Plan B:


Send a post card.



(Contest Update: The contest is over. I was chosen as the runner-up, which is odd since there was only supposed to be one winner. As Rachel put it, only I could win 2nd place in a contest that didn't even have a 2nd place. I'm not sure if this makes me extremely lucky or extremely unlucky, but thanks everyone that voted!  I won two DVDs from 5 of 5 and gave them away to friends in Jamaica since I already have the full set.)