One question that hasn't been raised is: for your three office days in NYC each week, what hours do you have to keep?

Several years ago, I spent one day a week in an office near Wall Street & Water Street. I live near Bradley, and I took Amtrak from the Windsor Locks station....but I only needed to be in the office from "around 10" until "around 4". Those were really long days, however....and not something I would have wanted to do more than once a week.

My suggestions:

• Sit down with a map and some transit schedules, and figure out what is most likely to be the least-bad option given work schedules, or preferences of early-rising/late-return home, etc. Remember that there are transit options for your wife to get into West Hartford (rail+bus or bus). I'd probably start by looking at places within easy reach of the Waterbury or New Haven stations, out of deference to your wife's need to be in West Hartford daily.
• Unless you're being paid enough to easily eat the cost of a hotel room in the city, or unless you can negotiate your employer covering the cost of a hotel room....this arrangement is probably going to really suck. At least one of you might want to start looking for a new job, unless you really enjoy spending time on the train. I know there are many people who regularly have long commutes into the city without issue; hopefully you're one of them. But if you aren't....

I think context would matter.

When talking to a Connecticut-based audience...maybe even "New England based", I'd say "Greater Hartford" is Hartford, West Hartford, Bloomfield, Windsor, East Hartford, Wethersfield and Newington. Maybe South Windsor, Windsor Locks, and Berlin too.

If I was talking to an audience beyond Connecticut or New England, folks who might not appreciate the distinction between Hartford / New Britain / Manchester / Enfield / the Farmington Valley, then I'd probably use "Greater Hartford" to mean most of the area within the Capitol Region COG (see https://crcog.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Capitol-region-map.png) .

>Why can't we do donuts here?

Better questions to ask are: "why can't places with better donuts do better coffee?" and "why do New Englanders settle for DD's mediocrity?"

Here's BDL's parking website: https://parkbradleyairport.com/

Included in the website is the detail that the first level of the garage has a clearance of a bit over 9 feet. (The higher levels are lower clearance.)

Not mentioned on the website are the third-party parking services like The Parking Spot and Laz, all of which are mostly open-air. I'd choose them over BDL lots 3, 4, and 5 because of the frequency at which the shuttles to the lots run.

It's a near-universal fact of life in price-regulated enterprises: When you need a significant price increase, the regulator will likely resist. So you ask for the biggest increase you can justify, in the hopes that the approved increase is close to your real need.

The regulators know about the practice. If they're good, they know the right questions to establish the real need.

(Source: Spent many years seeking regulatory approval of insurance rates.)

PURA frequently approves only a portion of Eversources' and UI's requested rate increases.

Presumably Eversource and UI are asking for huge increases, hoping PURA's enforced compromise will provide what they actually need.

If you already have contact with the folks at Fox61, at least one of their morning personalities is living within walking distance of the studio, FWIW.

As a former Memphian, I feel obliged to warn you that the BBQ and fried chicken options up here are extremely disappointing. For pizza, the reverse is true, to the same degree. :)