As I was cancelling all the reservations for vacation today (the second time in less than a year that I've made plans for a vacation out to the Pacfic northwest, only to have to back out at the last minute), it struck me that the relative ease of doing this varied from one reservation to another:

1. Hertz - Once I signed in to my account, all I had to do was supply the confirmation number online and the reservation was cancelled. Very easy to navigate and find the cancellation process.

2. Marriott - I did not even have to login to cancel the reservation. Not the most secure system in the world, but how many hackers get their laughs by cancelling other people's reservations when they could be stealing their credit cards instead. Also easy to find out how to cancel.

3. Redwood Inn in Olympia - sent the innkeeper an email, which I need to follow-up with a phone call. I just hope he reads his email daily.

4. Heathman Hotel in Portland - called the 800-number to cancel, but was told this was an "in house" reservation that had to be cancelled by the hotel (which I thought I was calling). Called the hotel and they cancelled. Had to spend a little time on hold, but still not bad.

5. US Airways - no way to cancel the trip online, which is not very customer-friendly. Had to call the reservation center and wait on hold for about 5 minutes. They were able to cancel the reservation, but were not able to redeposit the miles into my account. That cannot be done over the weekend at all, presumably because the mileage system is resting. I will have to call back on Monday to get the miles back. No wonder they're still on the brink of going out of business.

6. US Postal Service - I had stopped my mail online and was able to cancel the hold online as long as I had the original confirmation number. Easy to accomplish, although I do wish they'd put a link to the hold mail page on their main home page.

7. Philadelphia Inquirer - stopped it online, but there was no way to rescind the stoppage without calling. Was on hold for about 10 minutes, but the guy I spoke with was very apologetic about the hold time and the fact that they couldn't restart until Monday.

All told, it took less than an hour to get everything done that had taken many weeks of planning to put in place.

Rebecca and I visited a local pet food emporium that hosts a rescue society every other weekend. The rescue people bring in pets to be adopted and we applied for one we saw today. Max is a white 3 year old poodle/bichon mix, fairly small, crate-trained, housebroken and good with cats - which is a perfect combination for us. It takes about a month to process the application, do the home visit, check the references and so on. I'm sure there are many applications in for Max, so it's not guaranteed we'll get him. There was another dog there I liked, but she was already very large at 6 months old (a retriever/Akita mix), not housebroken and looked like she'd shed enough to make a dog-hair coat.