If you give a gnome a cookie...

The original plan was to spend the annual vacation budget to replace the much-abused carpeting and kitchen flooring. But since my husband suggested an extended weekend in Canada's Maritime Provinces (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island), the idea won't let me alone. I inched a little further down the primrose path of temptation yesterday when I dorked around on Travelocity to price-shop equivalent jaunts to NYC and Halifax.

I haven't closed Firefox since, and now I'm being stalked by the Travelocity garden gnome. It's not coincidence, either: The ads are pitching fares between La Crosse and Halifax. Clearly, the travelocity.com servers are accessing browser cookies that would have been automatically flushed if I'd closed Firefox in the interrim.

For all that I know exactly what's going on here, I will confess that it's still kind of creepy being stalked across various websites (Yahoo, GMail). Pity that tonight's already spoken for; otherwise I'd plan to watch Amelie in the spirit of "hair of the dog." I can only wonder what would-be Travelocity users less familiar with the inner workings of their browers feel like...

Oi, Travelocity: Probably not the brightest marketing tactic, that. Just sayin'.