Thinking about airline miles

My husband and I have never gotten credit cards with airline miles. We've always used cards that give us cash rebates of 1%-5%. Our favorite card for a while was Discover Card, but now we're loving our Chase Rewards cards (5% back on gas purchases!). Courtesy of our recent trips to Israel, we each have several thousand air miles with British Airways and Continental, respectively.

The question is, considering the long wait for a referral, what's the best way to go about collecting miles? And on which airline, or group of airlines, should we choose to do so? We're going to want to choose an airline with a direct flight from Newark, JFK, or LGA. I absolutely, positively will do anything I can (short of spending over $3000) to travel business class. Is it easier to purchase economy tickets and use miles for a free upgrade? I think Johnny did that but his blog is gone. Yoohoo...Johnny...any input? You always had the best advice!

I would appreciate anyone's input. I've never paid yearly fees for a credit card in the past, but may consider doing so for these purposes. I can also beg-bribe-plead with my boss to let me use his AMEX Gold Card miles, if possible. I have a corporate credit card on his account, so I should be able to access them, assuming that he has enough miles on the account at that point.

And a LID too!

This was totally unexpected, as I had decided it was going to take a very long time until we got our LID. The fact that I was away for a while, then came back to work and am trying desperately to catch up, probably distracted me.

So yes, we've got a LID.

Are you ready?

Really?

Changed your mind yet?

Ok, ok.

Drumroll please!


JUNE 29TH, 2007


Let the countdown begin! 3 weeks down already!

(Let's just hope that it isn't 3 years before referral)

Oh, and yeah WE'RE DTC!

I will probably be flamed for not reporting this earlier ; ) but we were DTC on June 23rd!

We were slightly busy then, which is why I forgot to post it. My baby sister got married in Israel at the end of June, so I was very, very busy and was going without good Internet access for over two weeks.

So, yay, we're DTC*! Woohoo and all that!

We already got our "brown envelope" a while ago, so we're not waiting for that milestone.

Now what? Considering that we may have a two year or longer wait, I'm not going to start a nursery** or something. I also don't think it's healthy to read blogs obsessively for several hours a week for the next two years. I have 470 blogs in my Bloglines account and I can barely keep up. I need something productive to occupy my time. I would love to undertake some house renovations, but we've got adoption expenses to save up for!

So I'm going to go back to college, a college that offers online distance learning and self-study/mentoring courses. It's embarrassing that I still haven't finished my Bachelor's degree, and I'm well into my 30s. My husband not only has a Bachelor's from a nearly-Ivy-League institution, but he also has his first Master's, and credits towards a second Master's. Since I can transfer a lot of credits from my old college, I can finish my degree within two years, while taking my time and not taking on too much of a course load that will affect work hours while leaving me time to complete assignments and study.

Wish me luck.

* DTC = Date To China, i.e. the date one's agency sends the dossier to the CCAA in China. Eventually we'll get our LID, the date that we were Logged In to the CCAA, but I don't expect to get that for a while.

** But I may, MAY peruse a baby furniture catalog. Maybe. I'll keep you updated.

I just broke into a cold sweat. I can shop for baby furniture for a legitimate reason. Um, wow.