Lifestyles of the unemployed

I haven't been to Oahu in years, and I've been trying to figure a way to justify a trip over there for Judy's birthday in June. Well, a couple of weeks ago a postcard came in the mail offering us 2 roundtrip tickets to Honolulu with accomodations if we listened to a one-and-a-half-hour sales pitch for a Vacation Club. We've never done anything like this before, so I asked a few friends who have done it what it was like. They all told us to expect the hard-sell, but you do get a nice gift at the end. I then went online and tried to dig up dirt on the company, and basically only found some people who had bought into it and were not happy with the deal. Well, we decided it would be worth the torture, so today we drove over to Napa to listen to the schpeel. I tried to envision what the sales technique would be so that I would be prepared, and my guess was pretty close. Those poor people couldn't have invited 2 less-likely-to-buy people! We were both totally turned off by the deal. 5-star resorts do not appeal to us, sorry. Plus we sort of lied about our income, and told them our last two vacations were to the Eastern Sierras and Baja (oops, forgot about that France trip) so they didn't even really end up pressing us too hard. We walked away with a voucher for a trip to Oahu! Now, we shall see if we get the dates we want -- but we both felt it was fairly painless and worth the drive. Afterwards, we drove through Napa and visited our old college where we met and my old house. Then we drove up valley to St Helena and had lunch and bought some Easter goodies at Woodhouse Chocolate. We drove home over Spring Hill Road/St. Helena Road, which was gorgeous and mellow. A very nice day!