Mom, Dad: Hi, and please go away

Maybe it’s the full moon or maybe it’s the way weirdness accumulates around the holidays, but we got plenty of weird stuff here. For instance, we got surveys. One survey seems to have
stumbled on a nugget of truth, possibly profound truth: relatives may be family, but that doesn’t mean you like them. (This is a play on the line by the poet Robert Frost: “home is where they have to take you in when you go there”). In this case, on-line travel agency hotels.com found that a stunning majority (87%) of people would like it if their relatives would stay at hotel when they come to visit for the holidays. The survey found a pecking order of sofa guests, starting with distant relatives and cousins, whom many wanted to trek to the Holiday Inn, rising to grandparents. Only 23 % of the people surveyed didn’t want gramma and grandpa on the fold-out bed in the spare room. Another survey found that business travellers would miss their toothbrushes the most if their bags didn’t make their flight; this was followed by deodorant, lip-gloss and other personal care items. Interestingly, the Orbitz for Business survey also found that almost one-fourth of business travellers have had to share a room with a colleague when travelling for business. Cause and effect?