There is an exact moment when I feel my vacation has begun. It's not as we're packing (by we, I mean my wife), as we're sitting at the gate waiting to board the plane, or even when we touch down in Orlando. For me, it's as we drive up to our hotel and see the tastefully done, but obvious facsimile of the Italian bay village of Portofino. For the last few years this has been our destination of choice. It's the type of trip where we are already familiar with getting around, the restaurants, and the attractions. It's relaxing in the sense that we don't need to spend a lot of time figuring out what we would like to do or how to make it happen.

This year we hit a minor snag when we ended up in a different type of room. This room was in a less convenient location and the size and organization were less user-friendly. We asked to move and though they couldn't accommodate us immediately, we were told we could move the next day. The front desk told us to leave all our luggage in the center of the room and call them before we left for the parks. They would move everything to our new room and contact us when it was ready. The ideal situation would be for our new room to be ready before we returned from an action-packed day at the parks. I wasn't sure this would happen because we like to come back midday instead of staying out all day.

This year the Loews Portofino Hotel started doing something new where you can communicate with the hotel via text message. Since we were in a magical sort of mood during our first day in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, I figured maybe a shameless attempt at magical references would speed things up. To my pleasant surprise, it worked!

Thank you Loews Portofino Hotel for your well-trained staff, beautifully maintained grounds, and a magical stay! See you next time.

Next post next Saturday, 6:30 a.m.

Summer vacation. Warm breezes, cool drinks, and a much anticipated chance to unwind. Unfortunately, it's not all wine and roses when you're in the hotel trying to apply sunblock to a squirming child who is alternately overexcited or exhausted. After a few days of being beaten down by this seemingly sadistic rite of parenthood, I stumbled onto an EZPZ solution.

We were at Universal Resorts and one of the theme parks has a superhero section. A dash of X-Men, a splash of Spiderman, and a huge helping of Hulk. My son was excited to take a spin. The park triggered a memory of this time in college at the beach when we had taken some funny pictures of a friend with a sunscreen "S" emblazoned on his chest and a towel cape draped around his neck. He was NOT happy when I naively shared them with a friend's wife a few years later, who then immediately posted them to Facebook. Oops! But that's another story.

Back to our hotel as I prepared for another epic sunscreen battle with my son. However, this time I painted a huge "S" on his chest and asked him to look in the mirror. He was impressed! And so began the superhero sunblock saga. Every day, a new symbol and suddenly, it wasn't such a battle anymore. This experience reminded me that unlike in the movies, it's not heroic to engage in battle and impose our will on others. For us mere mortals, using empathy to figure out a way to transform and vanquish conflict is a more difficult, and dare I say, heroic approach.

Bonus tip: This works even better if you play some heart-thumping superhero music.

Next post next Saturday, 6:30 a.m.

What do a Nobel prize-winning psychologist, George Costanza and a Bible verse have in common?

In his TED talk "The riddle of experience vs memory," psychologist Daniel Kanheman tells the story of a man listening to a glorious symphony.

An exquisite feast for the ears till the very end, when there was an awful screeching. Although most of the performance sounded amazing, the few jarring seconds at the end had a pronounced effect. The negative feelings were what he took away in terms of his experience. Dr. Kanheman explains that we have an experiencing self, who lives in the present and only knows the present and a remembering self, who keeps score and maintains the story of our life. As it turns out, how things end are very important and can dominate the story that is told by our remembering self.

George Constanza implicitly understood that once you've done something impressive, you can only go downhill by sticking around. This was his idea of showmanship, which he takes to the extreme by leaving the room as soon as he gets a great reaction that is not likely to be topped. Never mind social niceties or gracious timing. In other words, go out on a high note!

Ephesians 4:26 says, "Be angry without sinning. Don't go to bed angry." Whether you are religious, atheist or something in between, it's good advice not to go to bed angry. Whenever possible, squash the argument with your friend or loved one before the end of the day. This may take humility, courage, grace or all of the above.

Imagine your anger as a snow ball. Squashing your anger is like pouring a cup of hot water on the snow ball. However, when you go to sleep without resolving the anger, you allow the snow ball to grow as each new offense will add more snow. Left unchecked, the bad feelings grow slowly, but surely as one argument rolls into another. Before you know it, you have a giant snow boulder. Now imagine pouring that same cup of hot water on the boulder.

It's not that all problems can be solved by bedtime. Relationships are complicated and some conflicts may take years to settle or may never be fully resolved. But it's good practice to defuse hurt feelings before you sleep. Perhaps agree to disagree and then reaffirm your importance to each other. Have your last memory of the day be a positive one. Or at least not fueled by rage.

So, what do an award-winning psychologist, George Costanza and a Bible verse have in common? All three recognize that not all memories are equal. In fact, the last memory in a sequence is a tremendously significant one. So...organize your vacations to save the best for last, leave audiences on a high note, and do not go to sleep angry.

Next post next Saturday at 6:30 a.m.