Tomorrow Is Another Day...

I'm Ready For My Closeup, Mr. DeMille

I can officially add "Paid Model" to my resume now.  Not that being a paid model will help me in my probable future career path, but the fact is that I can add it should I decide that it may assist me in some way some day down the line.  Like when I've become a depressed, unpublished alcoholic, languishing on the side of I-10 on the outskirts of El Paso, my only career options being drug dealing or low-class prostitution and I need a resume to present to the head pimp.  It may come in handy then.

Anyway.

This morning I headed over to the public library and posed in various attitudes for 3 hours for a group of talented ladies who did a surprisingly fabulous job of making me look rather lovely in my camouflage uniform.  And then they paid me twenty five dollars and asked me to come back week after next.  What they don't realize is that I'll do pretty much anything for twenty five dollars.  Hell, I'll do pretty much anything for five dollars right now--it's a good sight better than the zero dollars an hour I've been making for the past two weeks.

What no one tells you is what hard work modeling actually is.  I mean, I don't know about photograph modeling where you crawl around in a bathing suit and growl like a tiger, that actually seems more humiliating than "hard work", but maintaining one position without moving for upwards of 15 minutes is a lot harder than it sounds.  Go ahead, try it, I'll be here when you get back.

I'll bet you didn't do it.  Chicken!

The first 15 minutes of the session were "gestures", which I only had to hold for a few minutes at a time--no big deal, I thought to myself.  This is cake, I scoffed as I gracefully lifted an arm, or artistically bent a leg.  Then the first long pose arrived, and I slouched artfully in a plastic library chair with my legs sprawled out before me and my hands folded across my stomach, gazing wistfully into the distance.  Two minutes into the pose I was stifling the urge to yawn, and five minutes in a little itch started to manifest itself by my nose.  I managed to get the yawn under control, but the itch was spreading out to my cheek and then flitting over to the other side of my face, or on my neck.  As my itch mischievously danced its way around my upper body, my tailbone began to throb and eventually started to feel numb, and I tried to adjust myself ever so slightly, so that the angle of my position wouldn't change but blood would have a chance to reenter my posterior region.  Just when I started to think that we had slipped through a tear in the space time continuum where 15 minutes was equivalent to 24 hours, the timer buzzed and I was able to stand and stretch.  And then I relived those fifteen minutes another 5 times before our time was up.

So, when they asked me if I would come back, I hesitated.  Colby would be in town on that day, and we had plans to do wedding planning that afternoon... did I really want to spend another 3 hours of my life dreading how I would turn out in charcoal and with a stiff leg and numb butt?  Then they handed me the twenty five dollars, and that's really all it took to get me to say yes to another appearance.  What can I say.  I'm just a slave to the arts.

I Don't Even Know Where To Begin

Well, for starters, I'm not dead, so that's a plus I suppose.  It all started off that I was going to take a little break from writing to figure out my priorities.  Then a few more days than I had expected went by and suddenly it had been a week since my last post.  So I sat down and I wrote a few intro lines, hated them all and proceeded to get distracted by something shiny.  And then another day passed and another day after that and I just got so overwhelmed trying to figure out what I should write about, I felt guilty for not writing so I avoided my website, and then suddenly it had been almost two weeks.  So today I am writing something.  It will probably suck and be of no interest to anyone, but I will be posting and I will no longer fear the judgment of the blogosphere.

I've been home for just over two weeks now, and with one slight bump in the road wherein I nearly committed patricide, things have been going quite well.  I officially received my Air Force discharge papers a couple of days ago, so today I'm going to attempt to file my unemployment claim through the Washington State Employment Security Department website.  Don't I live a wildly exciting life!

I've gotten a lot of wedding planning taken care of or prepped for the week that Colby returns, which is now officially less than two weeks away!  Can I tell you that I'm terribly excited?  Because I am TERRIBLY EXCITED!  In some ways I want to say that the past 5 months have flown by, but then I remember how much it felt like the days were dragging by and it seems rather flippant to say how easy and painless this has been.  But regardless of whether it was easy breezy or torture, it's almost over and soon we'll be able to put the "long distance" aspect of our relationship in the past.

One of the up parts of these very up-and-down weeks was Mardi Gras.  While I had approximately zero desire to head down to New Orleans for the drunken, overpriced debauchery of Fat Tuesday, I did feel that the day could be properly celebrated in a gay bar singing karaoke.  And not just any karaoke, this was Kamikaze Karaoke which meant that you signed up for a slot to sing in and then when you got on stage you found out what song you would be singing.  It was quite possibly the most fun I've ever had doing karaoke, which is really saying something!

A down part of the week was on Thursday when we went to New Orleans for my wedding hair and makeup trial.  Typically a drive to the Big Easy takes an hour to an hour and a half depending on traffic.  On Thursday we started the drive just before one and didn't get to the salon until almost 4 o'clock due to a wreck between two 18 wheelers on the spillway.  Fortunately, the visit was totally worth it because HELLO hot Angela after the girl did her magic on my face--of course we totally forgot to take pictures so you'll just have to use your special imagination cap to visualize the Hotness.

So those are really the highlights of my time here in Baton Rouge.  Oh and for those of you who are super confused about where I'm living, I am in Baton Rouge for the next few weeks, and then when Colby gets home from his deployment we're driving up to Washington together.  This is just sort of an extended "visit" I guess you could say.

Now I'm back to my 24 marathon and later tonight I'm going to a game playing/Oscar watching party, and hopefully the Oscars don't go too long because if I've learned one thing it's that under no circumstances should my bedtime be any later than midnight.  Or I'll turn into a pumpkin.  The End.

Grey's Anatomy SPOILER!!!

Do NOT read this if you haven't seen Thursday's Grey's...
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Am I the only person that really wishes Meredith would actually just go ahead and be dead??  Seriously?!  Seriously!

Happy VD

So, yet another Valentine's Day goes by without a special someone to spend it with.  Granted, I'll take these circumstances far beyond the circumstances of last year!  On the bright side Colby finally figured out how to call our house phone, since my cell reception here is so terrible, and we had a nice, albeit brief conversation.

This morning was the first day of Angela's Running Challenge (Volume 9,654)--the main challenge being to drag myself out of bed and get myself onto a running track.  Once I'm there it's easy (well, easy is of course a relative term... it's easier than, say, killing a roach), but getting myself in the mindset to work out is nearly impossible.  It's easier for me when I have a workout buddy of some kind, but my requirements are that they be in at least as terrible shape as I am, and hate working out just as much, so my sister is really the perfect partner.  It's going to be a sad day when I leave here and have to find someone new to motivate me.

It's funny though, the running program we're doing is geared to the completely out of shape, it starts you off very slowly (Which is fabulous since I haven't run regularly since, um, June--doesn't that give you faith in your armed forces?  I always just figured that if I were ever in a life or death situation and someone was shooting at me, I wasn't going to be able to outrun a bullet, no matter how quickly I ran a mile and a half.  I'm just being realistic here!) and after a little over two months you're supposed to be able to run a 5K without stopping.  So, I've done this program numerous times since I seem to follow a pattern of enjoying running for about 6 months and then hating it with a passion for about a year, and having run off and on for years I have a pace that I'm comfortable starting out at and I know I'll be able to build up to a steady run without stopping.

But running with my sister is like running with Bambi after he just heard the hunters' shot in the forest.  We start running and before I know it she's light years ahead of me, and I'm hollering at her about finding her pace and not wearing herself out in the first 5 minutes.  We did finally make it the full 30 minutes, and aside from the bone-numbing wind and the stabby feeling in our ears, it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd expected.  I'm tired right now, but I know eventually I'll work up to a point where this gives me energy rather than sapping it out of me, and mostly I just want to stop bulging ever so slightly at the top of my jeans.  I can accept a lot of things about my body changing as I mover farther and farther away from 16, but one thing I will never accept is the muffin top.

So, I was inspired for my next article at Wise Bread, about getting fit without shelling out tons of dough.  I think there's a lot of good information in it including the 5K running program I use as well as how to's for my favorite calisthenics and hand weight exercises.

(And I promise at some point I'll stop linking to my articles in my posts here, but I'm still not sick of pimping myself out, so you'll probably just have to live with it for a little while longer.)

Slinking Back in Sheepishly

So, I didn't update yesterday, as promised, ever so sorry!  But really it was probably for the best, unless you're really interested in reading about how I laid on the couch all day watching daytime television.  Not really newsworthy, is it?

But let me tell you about Friday and Saturday, since things actually happened on those days.  I got into work at 8 on Friday and set about trying to peel my Little Rock Air Force Base decal off of my car with an ice scraper.  Let me just tell you now, if you ever think that you'll be able to peel anything but ice off of your car with an ice scraper, you are ever so sadly mistaken.  One of my troops pulled into the parking lot around 10 after 8, and I commenced looking cold and miserable (believe me, it wasn't much of a stretch) and enlisted his assistance  With the aid of a pocket knife we got my sticker off by 8:30, giving me 30 minutes to race around the building to get all of the last minute items checked off of my list so that I could officially outprocess through Separations at 9.

When I got back to the office for my 9 o'clock appointment, my troops were waiting for me with Sonic breakfast burritos and presents--the most sure way to my heart.  They presented me with a Victoria's Secret Pure Seduction bath product gift set and a little Precious Moments figurine for February.  When they gave me the gifts they said that since I was going off to live with my fiance, I could use a little seduction and they knew that I would always remember February fondly as the month I left the Air Force.  They know me so well...  I laughed so hard--and believe me, the gifts were so much better than the cheesy going away plaques I was expecting to receive.

I made it back home at 10:30 and started getting things ready to load in the car.  But why is it that no matter how much preparation you do in the days leading up to a vacation or moving, it still takes about 5 times as long as you're expecting for car loading procedures?  I'd been up since after one in the morning the night before boxing things up, and cleaning the apartment, and still it took me 6 hours to get everything out of my apartment on Friday.  Of course, it didn't help that I met a friend for a goodbye lunch and that went over schedule by about 30 minutes.

Eventually, I got my car packed and the dogs loaded, and all I had left was to turn in my keys to the front office.  Now, I have a very bad habit of losing keys, so I was so proud of myself that I'd been able to keep track of the second key to my apartment for the past 2 and a half years, particularly since I rarely have a need to use it.  So, I had a little pile of keys to turn in all ready to go on Thursday night, but by Friday at 3:30 my second key had vanished.  I scoured every surface of my apartment, I looked through the bags that I could still get to in the car, and after 30 minutes of searching gave it up for lost.  I was so frustrated with myself because I was fairly certain that I'd have to pay some kind of key replacement fee, but I went ahead and turned in what I had.  I asked if there was any way I could mail in my key if it turned up, but after all of my worrying and delayed departure they said not to worry about it, they were just going to replace the locks anyway.  Of course they were.

Finally at a little after 4 I hit the road, after deciding to give Jack the second half of the Dramamine to maybe help knock him out a little for the car ride.  With very minimal sadness as I left Little Rock, I made the 7 hour drive without the luxury of seeing anything but luggage when looking out of my back windows.

Saturday was my sister's birthday, so after breakfast with the family and a shopping frenzy at Target (my last hurrah until I resume real life with a paycheck) we got ready for her party--a "Pretend Like You're 12 Again" sleepover.  I'd just had a sleepover the weekend before with my girlfriends in Little Rock, so I felt pretty practiced at it and people started showing up around 8.   One of the requirements to attend was to bring a drink of some kind, so there were chocolate martinis, pomtinis, champagne, wine, Bloody Mary's, mimosas--it was like an alcoholic's heaven.  We had an ice cream bar and cake, and played charades and Taboo until about three in the morning when we all finally crashed.

Sunday and Monday I let myself be a total bum, and today I am easing back into life--I plan on actually taking a shower and getting dressed pretty soon and I may even get a little actual writing done today.  Tomorrow my sister and I are starting a running program around the lakes, and my goal is to remain as unslothlike as possible during these next few weeks at home.  Since my natural inclination is toward total laziness, we'll see how regularly that goal is attained!

Mini-Update

I'll have much more to come tomorrow, but I did want to let everyone know that Phase 1 of the moving process has been completed.  I outprocessed the base at 9:00 am Friday morning and after hours of cleaning and packing finally got on the road around 4:00 pm.  The ride was pretty uneventful aside from the annoyance that my cd player in my car has finally crapped out, and I made it home by 11.  Yesterday was crazy busy, and today I'm exhausted, so I don't have the energy to put much more effort into a post today.  Instead, I'll leave you with my Wise Bread Valentine's Day Gift Guide.

I’ve scoured the web to find the twenty best Valentine’s Day gifts for less than ten dollars, and I think I’ve found a little something for everyone. The toughest part was deciding how to categorize all of the items, but I decided on a list based on price, from lowest to highest. I’ll leave it up to you to decide to which gender each gift should be assigned, because if your boyfriend loves to smell like a freshly bloomed rose, who am I to judge?

So, without further adieu...  Continue Reading Twenty Valentine's Day Gifts Under $10

Lesson Learned

When you are cleaning out your household before a big move, and in the process of throwing away three quarters of your bathroom and kitchen stockpile, don't get the thrifty idea to save fifty cents on your grocery bill by choosing the store brand tall kitchen garbage bags.

Go a little crazy and splurge on the heavy duty Force Flex.

Just trust me on this one.

Pick Pick Pick

I swear, you people and your attention to detail!  You know, I thought long and hard about that post title yesterday.  I thought about actually doing my research to find out what sort of category an olive falls into, but instead I based it on my pizza menu.  Vegetable pizzas.  Olives come on vegetable pizzas ERGO an olive must be a vegetable, right?  WRONG.

According to Wikipedia (which is NEVER wrong, right?):

The [olive] fruit is a small drupe 1-2.5 cm long, thinner-fleshed and smaller in wild plants than in orchard cultivars. It is also green and sometimes can be black.

And in case you, like me, saw the word "drupe" and started laughing hysterically, here is another little botany lesson:

In botany, a drupe is a type of fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin; and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a shell (the pit or stone) of hardened endocarp with a seed inside. These fruits develop from a single carpel, and mostly from flowers with superior ovaries. (Haha! My ovaries are better than your ovaries!!)  The definitive characteristic of a drupe is that the hard, lignified stone (or pit) is derived from the ovary wall of the flower.

So, in short, an olive is much more closely related to a peach than to an onion.  And that is just wrong--whoever heard of an olive and peach pizza??

Anyway, I'm still struggling to keep my eyes open during the day.  I've been sleeping horribly for the past couple of nights.  Jack is not taking this relocation well, and he spends the nights jolting violently awake from a dead sleep and barking frantically at top volume for no apparent reason.  This in turn jolts me violently awake from a dead sleep and subsequently I have spent the past two days cranky and yawning behind my desk.

I did however get a post up at Wise Bread yesterday, so in lieu of any further entertainment here, I urge you to go read about my love for Isaac Mizrahi (Have you seen his talk show?  I just want to squeeze him!)  Go, shoo, off with you now!

In Which I Make Bizarre References to Vegetables

So, my movers finally knocked on my door around eleven o'clock to say that they had everything packed and were leaving.  I rejoiced and made record time changing into my pajamas and getting to bed.  Then, just as I was dozing off to the soothing sounds of Basic Instinct, there came another knock on the door.  Jack went ballistic and I hauled myself out of my marginally comfortable air mattress and grabbed his collar, dragging him to the front door with me, in case one of the movers had decided to come back and murder me.

Instead of a murderous mover, it was the maintenance man (glory be, check out that alliteration!)  He was there to kindly inform me that my movers had managed to wedge themselves in a curve of the parking lot, snapped a cable, and had to leave the truck there to go get a new cable.  Also that they hadn't been able to fit my mattress and box spring INSIDE the truck, and so I should probably check it pretty carefully for damage when it all arrived in Washington.  I think he expected me to be more aghast at this revelation, but after spending over 14 hours with strangers in my house, I truly didn't care about anything but going to sleep, and figured that me stressing over my mattress wasn't going to make it magically be inside the truck.  So, I went back to bed.

This morning, when I left for work, the truck was still wedged in the parking lot.  I'll bet there are some pissed off apartment residents right now.  Whoopsies!

Anyway, today I am utterly exhausted, and also have a sore throat, but I don't care, because there are only 3 days left between now and Friday when I will be heading out of this God-forsaken state for good.  Honestly, I would happily press the delete button and erase pretty much everything that has happened over the past 2 1/2 years.  I think this era of my life trumps even high school in the suckiness factor (Although really, high school wasn't that bad--second grade on the other hand?  HELL.), in fact, I think I shall dub this period in my life The Green Olive Epoch.  I hate green olives.

But now I am onto bigger and better things, as I was reminded by the beautiful arrangement of flowers and sweet note that were waiting for me on my desk this morning from that cute boy in the -stan place.  The past couple of years may not have been the greatest of my life, but they got me from there to here, and I think here is going to turn out to be a much more black olive kind of place.  And I love black olives.

Liveblogging: The Great Moving Caper 2007

9:58

I was up until 2 o'clock this morning getting stuff ready for the movers and sequestering the things I wanted to keep with me for the next few weeks in the bathroom.  I got up at 6:30 to finish before the movers showed up at 8:00.  The movers showed up at 9:30, which is good since I'm still not exactly ready for them to be here.  My last load of laundry is in the dryer, and I keep jumping up to move things into the bathroom that I forgot I'd need.  I must look like some kind of incontinent freak.

I think the movers are annoyed with me because I have so much crap.  When I filled out the form to arrange for my movers in the Traffic Management office on base they said to estimate 3,000 pounds per room.  I counted my living room, kitchen, bedroom, and dining room as 3 1/2 rooms and rounded up to 4,000.  When the guy did the walk through this morning before they brought their boxes in, he sighed a lot.  I heard them talking while I was in the laundry room, and it was very grumbly sounding.  Of course, now that I think about it, it seems fairly obvious that I have about 4,000 pounds in books alone...

Oh well, I have cookies to make later.  Maybe that will help soothe the savage beasts.  Stay tuned, I'll update if anything funny/mortifying/hilarious happens.  Like the fact that at some point Mr. Mover Man is going to come upon my silicone bra inserts because they just won't fit in my suitcase, and I really won't need them for the next few weeks.  I should install some kind of secret camera to catch his facial expression when he comes upon those.

(Oh God, I've been caged on the couch by a wall of boxes and my coffee table.  Send help!)

10:40

I put all of the paper plates and plastic utensils, along with some easy to make food items, in my pantry and put everything else out on the counter to be packed.  I put a big sign on the door that said "DO NOT PACK PANTRY ITEMS".  I just went in the kitchen to unplug my phone for grumpy moving man and the entire contents of the pantry had been neatly packed in a carefully labeled box.  I guess they get points for thoroughness.

11:48

Oh my God, they just unplugged my cable... that was tragic.  I can live without a lot of things in life, but internet access is not one of those things.

12:48

Weird, it's been exactly one hour--I didn't even do that on purpose!  Current PackCon: (that's Packing Condition for you civilian types)  It looks like they've gotten about three-quarters of my stuff into boxes.  I haven't been back to my bedroom, so I'm not sure how much progress has been made there.  It's kind of unfortunate, I was nursing a secret hope that they'd need two days to pack everything so I wouldn't have to go to work tomorrow.  Bummer.  Maybe I could sneak around behind them and start putting books back on the shelves.  I'll be like the shoemaker's elves--only the opposite, I guess.

I wish someone were here to play with me, we could make a kickass fort in here right now.

I was really hoping they would leave to go to lunch, but it's 12:51 and they're showing no signs of pausing for a lunch-break.  I wish I could have a job that I could show up for 2 hours late and then get fed.  Except minus all of the manual labor.

2:17

Sometimes I hate being the way I am.  I just offered to get lunch for my movers since it's after two o'clock and they've still not made a break for some grub.  They said, no thanks, they'll just pick something up on the way home.  Here is where a normal person would say, "Suit yourself!" and get food for his or herself.  I am not a normal person.  I have a guilt complex the size of Texas, and I just can't bring myself to sit here and eat in front of them.  It's bad enough I've parked myself on the couch for the duration of the day while they slave away packing my crap.  I can't chow down in front of them when I'm sure they're hungry and just trying to get the job done before the end of the day.

So, here I sit.  My stomach slowly eating away at itself while I whine to anyone who will listen to me on AIM about how freaking starving I am.

Also, they keep leaving the door open when they bring loads out to the truck, and it is F-R-E-E-Z-I-N-G in here.  My heater has completely given up on trying to regulate the temperature.

4:03

The movers are still here.  I'm still hungry (though I managed to sneak a couple of M&Ms).  I'm still cold.  I've just realized that the screwdriver I set aside so that I could take down the curtains when the furniture was out of the way must have been packed at some point.  For it is no longer set aside.  I'm not totally sure what to do about this yet.  Do movers have screwdrivers?  Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion...

6:03

Holy mother of God.  THE.  MOVERS.  ARE.  STILL.  HERE.  I was living in this dream world where everything would be out by early afternoon, and I'd have a nice leisurely day to loll about and enjoy my day off from work.  No one clued me into the fact that I was living in Fantasy Land.  I've taken down the curtains in the living room and the dining room, but there's still too much stuff in my bedroom to get to the curtains in there.  All of the stuff is out of the laundry room, so I've transferred the pupsicles in there where they Jack has been crying incessantly.  Ellie thinks she's died and gone to a heaven where the ground is covered in stray bits of dog food and dryer lint.  YUM!

7:30

Yep, it' 7:30 and the movers are still here.  Isn't there some kind of limit as to how long they can stay??  My bed still hasn't been taken apart, but I think we're down to less than 10 boxes now.  The median temperature of my apartment is probably about 40 degrees--a little warmer in some places, but not by much.  I've been keeping both doors to my bathroom closed, so it's created a nice little sauna area.  I just keep disappearing into the bathroom for long stretches of time when my hands have become totally numb.  A more money conscious person would have just turned the heat off altogether, but then I wouldn't have my little haven of warmth to recover in from time to time.

Okay, I think I'm going to go start vacuuming now.  My life is just one exciting adventure after another...

8:51

Everything has been moved out of my apartment, but the movers are still loading things into their van.  I'm done vacuuming and I just ordered my damn pizza, but it's occurred to me that I have no idea how they'll get in since the only way to open my gate for people is through the phone and my phone has been disconnected.  Oh well, we'll figure that out in 45 minutes.  I'm signing off for the evening, but thank you for bearing with me through my moving day from hell.  Next time we're doing this in two days.

And just for Carolyn... I'm Angela and this has been the longest day of my life.  Seriously.

T-7 Days

I would like to begin by saying that yesterday was a cold, rainy day, and I received a phone call at 6:45 telling me that the wing commander had released a delayed reporting time of 10:00.  Last night, we received at least 2 inches of snow and the roads were covered in sheets of ice until about 9 o'clock this morning.  Yet, we were expected to report to work at 7:30.  I watched two accidents occur and nearly skidded out of control on bridges three times.  Sometimes, you have to really wonder about people's decision-making processes.

Anyway, flashing forward to exactly one week from this moment, I will no longer be an Arkansas resident.  How long have I waited to be able to say those words!  (Though, technically, they won't count until it actually is a week from now...)

Have I started packing yet?  No.  Have I thought about starting to pack yet?  Yes.

I'm so overwhelmed, but I think I'm going to put everything in the hands of God and Mayflower Moving company.  I'll pack a couple of suitcases and stash those in the bathroom along with all of my liquids that shouldn't be packed and then tell them to just box up everything except the refrigerator, oven, and dogs.  I don't think puppies do terribly well in storage facilities.  Although, I'll admit, I am tempted to experiment.

I'm pretty excited about having a month and a half off from life as a working girl, though a bit nervous about living with my parents for the duration.  My plan is to attempt to stick to a schedule, and get as much wedding planning done as is humanly possible.  I'm also devoting myself to writing.  I figure there's probably not another time in my life when I'll be as free to take a stab at this "full time writer" dream, so I'm finishing that damn novel if it kills me.  And it very well might.  Then, if I'm not dead, and I'm feeling particularly ambitious, I'll start on my idea for my next novel that came to me in a dream a few nights ago.  Literally, it came to me in a dream.  Weird.

In other writing news, my Wise Bread blog on Target shoes was the only one to be quoted in the Carnival of Shoes and Bags and my article on the shipping kit for military addresses was picked up by The Consumerist.  Not bad for my first week on the job!

Since I've had nothing to do at work for the past couple of days, I've begun researching for the honeymoon.  We're pretty much decided on two weeks next March in Rome, Florence, Capri, and the Amalfi Coast, so I've been scouring Trip Advisor and have come up with a nice loose itinerary that I think could work very well.  If anyone has ever been to Italy, do you have a recommendation for a town to base out of along the Amalfi Coast for about 3 days?  I've been looking at Positano, but have seen some warnings that it's gotten pretty touristy.

I've been having a blast though--I don't know why people get travel agents, I've had so much fun doing the research and googling this and that.  Half the fun of travelling is when you get horribly lost on your way up a "hill" that turns out to be a mini-mountain or are unwittingly attempting to travel by the seat of your pants on a bank holiday and end up having to stay at the bartenders flat above the pub.  You'll have to remind me to tell you those stories some day...

Anyway, I've got a busy weekend planned.  I'm hosting an old-fashioned slumber party at my apartment Saturday night, complete with chick flicks, pizza, ice cream, and pajamas, and then all day Sunday will be spent in a panic preparing for the movers to come on Monday.

Expect my next post to be written as I'm cowering in an out-of-the-way corner, horribly embarrassed as a group of strange men tromp in and out of my apartment, hauling my furniture and possessions away.  Should be fun!