It's 6:17am and the alarm is telling me to "get up". Our driver and her assistant will be here at 9am to ferry us and our luggage to OAK. I instruct Karen to begin our last minute preparations while I snooze for 10 more minutes. Our bags are packed, cameras, iPad and phones charged and ready to go. Boarding passes, passports, wallet, credit cards, medications? Check. Cats have food? Who cares. Heat off? Light timers on? I think we're ready. We are...

Today is the day we fly to Copenhagen, Denmark to begin our six week vacation through the Baltic area of Europe followed by a Transatlantic cruise back to Boston. Well, problems have already started. At 10am we get news from Norwegian Air that our 5:30pm flight has been changed to 7:20pm. I call the airline and ask if that will affect our connecting flight from Stockholm to Copenhagen. I already know the answer. This is a test. The agent says "Your connecting fl...