I haven’t bought a real airline ticket since 1997. The few times I flew on real plane tickets after high school, I received them as a gift. I’m not sure I flew at all in college, and then I went to work for an airline. On Southwest, my dependents and I can fly standby. It’s an awesome perk, but each year our flights get fuller, making it harder and more stressful to find open seats. Each flight we try to take is a gamble. Sometimes we make our intended flight. Sometimes we get bumped. Sometimes one of us gets on while the other stays behind. That’s part of the reason we normally vacation in October when the traffic drops a bit.

Flying home from Fort Lauderdale with Jenny last month made me realize that it was time to find a new travel solution. We barely made it on both our flights. Jenny got the last available passenger seat. I rode on the flight attendant jumpseat for one leg and the cockpit jumpseat for the other. It worked this time, but soon we plan to start flying places with the boys. After about two seconds of discussion, we decided that sitting around an airport with the boys praying for four open seats wasn’t the right formula for a relaxing vacation.

It’s a little crazy, perhaps hard to believe, and I resisted for a long time, but I’m ready to take the plunge. Are you ready? I just want to make sure you’re ready! Here it is…

I opened a Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards account and got a Visa that earns Rapid Rewards points.

OK, maybe that’s not exactly earth-shattering news. Many of you already have plenty of frequent flyer miles or points, which is awesome. But I’m new to the idea of actually being an airline customer, especially on my own airline. I set up my account on Southwest.com, checked my points balance (250 points already just for opening the account!), and used my new card to book a room for New Year’s Eve. Turns out that our website has some nice features.

If I run enough of our expenses through the card, we should be able to buy at least two or three round-trip tickets for our first big family vacation, possible four. Then we’ll have actual confirmed seats. That might sound stupid, but believe me, you guys who normally get real tickets are living large. We look forward to joining you.

And as of October 2014, most of the Wright Amendment restrictions on Love Field will be lifted, freeing us to fly nonstop to Orlando or Baltimore or Vegas or Denver.

Sniff, sniff…I smell points somewhere. Better go hunt them down…