New Zealand (round 2)

I have found an amazing deal on a roundtrip flight to New Zealand. Yes. New Zealand. Land of kiwis, hobbits, and 90 Mile Beach. I know I have no real connection to the place (like I do with Ireland) but just look at it. Damn! The price of a round trip ticket from Nashville to Auckland in late September? $1278. Talk about exciting! I've been looking at tickets for a while now, hoping that they'd drop in price. They're down some $600 from their original price when I started looking.

I was talking with my Aunt Claudia when I was up in Michigan for Christmas. I told her that I planned on taking an adventure sometime in mid- to late-2010... Europe? New Zealand? Anywhere in the world, really. She, rather emphatically, informed me that I should go to New Zealand. "How many times are you going to get the chance to New Zealand?! People go to Europe all the time and it's a much easier trip to get there." Well, she said something like that.

I continued with the savings. And then yesterday.. *BAM*... Amazing price.

I sat down with my boss at job number one today for our weekly one-on-one meeting. Our conversations run the gamut from professional to shootin' the shit. Now, as you may or may not know, I have been gunning for a promotion here at work over the past few months (which I was originally supposed to hear about on December 11th and then January 11th and now the deadline has been pushed back to February 1st). So how do you bring up a subject like asking for two and a half weeks off of work to go 8100 miles to the other side of the world all while trying to show how dedicated you are to your job to get that promotion?

Simple. You ask.
My boss simply said: "Absolutely!"
I almost couldn't believe it.

So here's the plan: September 16th to October 3rd. New Zealand. As soon as I hear back from my partner-in-crime, Matt Melanson, that those dates are good to go I'm buying my ticket. Only 245 more days to go...