Departure Diaries #2, No more furniture.

I've decided to start a new feature. It's called (as you saw from the title of this entry) The Departure Diaries. These entries will chronicle my movements toward becoming a full-time traveler.

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In moving towards living on the road, I've constantly got a zillion ideas popping in and out of my head. Sometimes I pause and jot down a few things or make mental notes. For instance: I'm going to create a proper website/blogsite of my own that is not a blogger templated thing. It will be entirely mine. Cool, huh? But what will it be called? What will the address be? Should I stick to eyewandereyewriteeyeclick? Or should I move in an entirely different direction? I don't know yet. What do you think?

The big news today is that I've stopped collecting things for my present life. Somewhere in the past two weeks, when I put my foot down and decided to do this, all of those plans for my house and improvements to it have become irrelevant. I've started questioning my well-stocked pantry. It is probably too early to do that yet. After all, I will need to eat for the next year or so.

I've begun to question my beautifully managed supply of toiletries and medicals - you know, things like Contact solution, Pepto Bismal, Tylenol, Ricola cough drops and Excedrin tension headache. At what point to I cut off buying those things? I won't stop needing them at random intervals, of course, but obviously I'm not going to pack my hall closet around the world on my back.

For now, I've settled peaceably in that ever-gyrating cavern of my mind on this: I will not buy that new end table, or wicker basket, or duvet cover. I will not purchase another attachment for my Cuisinart stand-mixer. I will not acquire new dishes, or that beautiful Restoration Hardware leather couch that I've coveted for six years, or a new mattress, or a Dyson vacuum cleaner. Those things have all been on a list of to-gets/wants/wishes in the back of my mind.

So there! Take that, world of consumerism! You've been extremely convenient, and very kind to take my money over the past three years. You've offered up a wealth of stuff that has made my little house a cozy, neat and convenient home, but I'm done for now.

No more awesomely terrifying trips to Ikea. You know what I'm talking about.

The Evolving Plan

So, if you caught this post, you know I'm up to something big. As in life-changing, lifestyle-obliterating big.

Well, I'm still putting together what it is that I will be doing exactly, but the general idea is as follows...

By my 32nd Birthday I will:
-Sell my furniture
-Put everything I want to keep into storage
-Quit my job amicably (so that in case I'd like to return five or ten years down the road, it might be an option... ?)
-Start traveling full time

I'm starting a new website, all my own, not hosted by blogger for this ginormous life change. I'll be developing it for a few months before it actually launches, but I'll keep you all posted on the progress (most likely, this blog will be replaced by my site).

There it is.

Meanwhile, I'll continue blogging about the trips I take and journeys I make.

Intrepid

And Voila!

The travel agent who booked my now canceled Geckos tour provided me with some options for replacing the time-sensitive portion of my vacation. Amazingly enough, one of the tours she suggested worked out perfectly!

It's through a different, but similar company called Intrepid Travel. I'm excited to give this a spin.

This is the schedule, pronounced (Sheh-dule).

Jordan and Egypt Unplugged

• trip flights

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Day 1 Amman

Arrive early to soak up history among the ruins of Jerash, or head to the impressive citadel for views over the city.

Days 2-3 Petra

Enjoy a bouyant dip in the salty Dead Sea before exploring the spectacular, ancient city of Petra.

Day 4 Wadi Rum

Spend a memorable night sleeping Bedouin-style in rustic goat-hair tents - or under a twinkling canopy of stars.

Days 5-6 Red Sea Beach Camp

Settle in beside the glistening Red Sea. Snorkel through beautiful reefs, kick back on golden sands or join new Bedouin friends for a fresh seafood feast.

Day 7 Mt Sinai

Hike, or take a camel to the summit of Mt Sinai. This is where Moses is said to have received the Ten Commandments and the views are spectacular.

Days 8-9 Cairo

With its crowded souqs, treasure-filled museums and nearby pyramids, Cairo provides the perfect end to this adventure.


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It's one day shorter than the tour I'd booked through Geckos, which breaks down to me having an extra, unstructured day in Cairo. Not a problem. I think I can manage to fill that day up with Pyramids and Camels and the Sphinx maybe? Or perhaps a trip down to Abu Simbel? Hmmm...

Best of all, I don't have to make any changes to any of my flights or hotels. Can't beat it!

Was that serendipitous or what?

Grrr. Arghh.

No, I'm not really trying to impersonate a pirate. Although I have done that before. (Impersonate a pirate, that is.) I used to pose as "Captain Lulu" and tour kids around the Bahamian island of Little San Salvador (AKA Half Moon Cay). I got to wear an eyepatch, carry a plastic sword and growl and shout at the kids. Always a rollicking good time!

 

Just add an eyepatch and you'll have Captain Lulu on Half Moon Cay!

There I go digressing again.

My tour was canceled! You know, the lovely, perfect Geckos Adventure that I was soooooo stoked to take from Jordan to Egypt. That one.

It was CANCELED. Not enough people booked it.

What to do now?

I have some options. The travel agent gave them to me. (No I don't usually use travel agents. Yes, I HAD to use one to book the tour). Can I find a tour that starts in Amman and ends in Cairo, goes to the places I want to go within the dates I need so I can keep the same flights? Seems like a tall order to me.

I'll keep you posted.

Oh Those Pop Stars...

Have you noticed? That American Idol Mayhem business has started up again. I suppose it must have started a few weeks ago. I've heard rumors of a guy singing "Pants on the floor." I've caught sound bytes about Paula Abdul leaving and Ellen Degeneres joining and Simon leaving, et al.

You already knew all of this, didn't you?

It never ends, this stream of drama. About 95% of the time I tune it out. (I flip on E TV when I'm REALLLLLLLY bored, just to feel my brain cells die.)

Sure, I've bought some of the albums that have issued forth from the American Idol spawn: Kelly Clarkson, Jordin Sparks (gasp!), Daughtry and David Cook. I've enjoyed listening to them. But the point is that I'm a disloyal, disengaged and otherwise disinterested viewer of American Idol. In other words: I don't care. (Double gasp!)

There is a story. There is a reason why. Do you care to know? Probably not.
Okay here goes:

The show started, I believe, summer of 2001. I mean, it had to have started then because I hadn't heard of it before then. Summer of 2001 was the summer I started working on Cruise ships. Fun, fun, fun! Working (and playing) 12-22 hour days leaves little time for dedicated television watching, not to mention the fact that we only got a few channels via satellite TV. (CNN, TNT Latin America! You try watching "El Tiburon" [aka Jaws] five million times before bed at 4am, and tell me if you wouldn't just rather the TV be turned off!)

And then it happened. I'll never forget it. There I was on deck 12, Sports Deck, hanging out with the chilluns in the Club HAL clubhouse. I wore my day uniform of khaki shorts, white sneakers and a blue-striped, constantly over-starched, stiff uniform shirt. I had a fabulous tan. (Which really means that I was twelve shades of red darker than the pink I am now. And this is all very important to the point of this story. Okay, maybe not.)

 

Gotta love the shirts

A little girl around the age of ten pranced across the grotesquely loud purple, orange and blue carpet and up to me. She wore glitter lip gloss and had hair that had been braided and beaded in one of our Caribbean stops (at ridiculous cost, monetarily and time-wise, considering it takes about an hour and we were only in port for an average of six hours per stop). I'm sure that if Hannah Montana had been around at that point, she would have been wearing a Hannah T-shirt. A gaggle of other little girls who were her BFFs (who she had only met three days before on the cruise and would undoubtedly never talk to again after the cruise.) stood behind her and giggled. She said to me "OH MY GOSH! Did you hear about American Idol? I just cannot believe what happened to Justin!!" She was trying to be all buddy-buddy with the teen youth counselor. (Kids were split up into groups according to age - she was a "tween," I worked with the teens. THANK GOODNESS. I find teenagers much easier to deal with and entirely more reasonable than little kids and tweens. Feel free to disagree with me.)

I just stared at her a bit before asking what the heck this "American Idol" was. She immediately launched into a bout of over-exaggerated adolescent disbelief that I had no clue what she was talking about.

Because, like, everyone knew what American Idol was! Hellllooooo!

I was immediately disinterested in the show. Call me crazy, but tween mania turns me off to crazy, over-hyped pop stars and pointless television shows.

I left the ugly carpeted room and those hormone-raging pre-adolescent girls a few minutes later to go and play volleyball outside on the sports deck with my much-more-reasonable teenagers, soaking up the Caribbean sun and sea.

What is the point to this rant, you ask? My point is that I like traveling. And I don't like being pulled out of my travel-reverie by marketing. And I think over-hyped TV shows are dumb. And tweens are ridiculous (I can say this without bias because, well, I was one once). And cruise-ship decorations are generally heinous. And American Idol reminds me of all of those things, every season. Feel free to make your own point at your convenience.

Just imagine...

I went rollerblading yesterday. The trail I use is lovely. It's paved and goes on for miles and miles and miles. I bladed to the next town over, which is called Alamo. It's rather posh. The backyards that line the trail usually have things like swimming pools, over-sized jungle gyms, acres of perfectly manicured lawns, pampered horses and skateboard half-pipes. So imagine my utter shock and disbelief at finding this:

 

If you figure this one out, please let me know what it's all about. (Still scratching head)

Valentino

My little sister is supposed to have her baby on March 19th. Well, we all know that babies happen on their own sweet time and the rest of the universe bends to their prerogative. So last Wednesday when Kelly went into pre-term labor, we all began to scramble. The crib and dressers weren't assembled, the car seat and stroller were still in their box, and don't even get me started on the piles and piles and piles of baby clothing, diapers, lotions and gifts that needed to be laundered, unwrapped and put away.

Three days later, the furniture is put together and the clothing is laundered. The car seat is installed in the car and the stroller is ready to be used. Not everything is put away, but everything is in useable order.

Yesterday my sister, her hubby and I went out to Lake Chabot and took pregnancy pictures. They are darned cute. We'd been waiting, you see, for Kelly to actually show enough to look pregnant in the pictures.

Now that everything is set up for him, we're just waiting for the baby. I hope he's born today. Because it's Valentine's day. Which is hilarious. Let me tell you why it's hilarious. It's hilarious because if he's born today I will forever call him little Valentino. I'm not kidding. I told my sister that and she just laughed, patted her belly and said to it "Wait until Monday."

But anyway. Lake Chabot is a great place to go and do stuff. Lots of walking/running trails, beautiful scenery for pregnancy picture-taking, boats and paddle boats for rent, a lake... and one ginormous swan.

A Grand New Thing

I found something yesterday that I fell completely in love with. An idea. It pleases me ever-so much. Maybe more than an idea, a way. A way to do something I love always. What is it that I love? You should know by now. Travel. Exploration. This way, a way to travel all of the time; A path to accomplish that small thing: making a life of my passion for travel. It fits, it makes sense and it's something I find myself getting more and more excited about. The idea of traveling as a career. Well, again. This time on my own terms.

Because you know, I'm "not gonna be happy unless [I'm] going Mach 2 with [my] hair on fire."

Stay tuned. Because this is good. And it will take time, as all good things do. I have adjustments and fiddlings to do and make. I have loose ends and odd ends to tie up and round out. I have a life to unload, and another to set up. Do you know how much work lives are? I'm sure you do.


It's been a fun experiment, this staying in one place for an extended period of time thing that I'm doing right now. Living like normal folk do. But I always knew it was a stand-in, a time-killing experiment and also a way to confirm what I already knew; Complacency and I are not good bedfellows. When I moved here I gave myself a five-year expiration date. You know, "in five years if such-and-such hasn't happened, I will move on and do _______." Well until recently I didn't have a solid idea what ________ would be. I had guesses. I tried to push fate into hinting at my future for me, but no dice. Fate will not be pushed, prodded or otherwise bamboozled. (I have always wanted to use the word bamboozled in a post! Ha!) And I am not the ower of a time-traveling Delorean. So.


Some things you have to wait for; some things are ideas you haven't finished forming.

This is going to be good.

72

72 is the magical, depressing number today. It's the number of days left until I leave for Rome. UGHH.
I breezed through November and December and even January. But February has suddenly stalled out for me. Perhaps due to the overwhelmingly tragic and ridiculous week that was last week.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Some people you just can't have healthy relationships with. It is impossible. That person for me is my Mother. I love the woman, for some reason; but it's best for the world that we remain separated by at least 1,000 miles.

That heavy weight off my chest, here are the happenings for the tail end of last week and the weekend:

I took Friday off. I'd planned on working at least a half day, but after all of the time in the city last week, I already had 96 hours in for the pay period.  So, I took a personal day. Friday & Saturday entailed much running around and purchasing of gifts and party supplies. Gifts for my little sister. She's having a baby you know. Soon. Very, very soon. So her sister-in-law and I threw her a baby shower on Saturday.

The sis-in-law and I determined very early on that we wouldn't make everyone play stupid baby shower games. So this is how it went: Food, cake, chatting, the very fast opening of gifts (because my sis is a rockstar and kept it moving!) and the option to tie a baby quilt. 40 people. 2.5 hours, done and done. Much less painful than it could have been. Phew. And boy did my sister make out like a bandit. For real. Heaps and piles of presents. It appears that some people like her (I like her too).

 

One of two massive present piles

 

Somehow I skipped telling you about Friday night. I will now correct that error. Aren't you excited? Most of the night was great. Sushi dinner. Cheesecake Factory cheesecake for dessert (Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake = the stuff dreams are made of!) and the big surprise for Mom: Tickets to see Wicked. Love that show!! My third time seeing it, Mom's first. It is still fabulous and doesn't get old. I'm going to have to listen to the soundtrack a few hundred times now.

Yup, that's my Mom

That's my good stuff (and a hint at the trauma) from my weekend. And I am SO relieved that it's over and happy to be back at work. (And just what does that tell you about it?)

What did you do this weekend?

Four Days in the City

I grew up near San Francisco. Somehow I ended up moving back to the area a couple of years ago. Many people love and adore SF. I've never been one of those people. I'm just not a big city gal. I like space. I like driving my car. I like being able to walk down the street and not feel like I need a shower afterward.

For work, I've been spending time in the city this week. I'm on day two of three. And then to top it off, by some off twist of fate, I will be going back into the city on a rare, planned expedition to take my Mother to ______ (It's a surprise!) on Friday. Four days in a row. That just about fills my quota for the year, I think. Except I found myself somewhat enjoying (and at times amused) by the goings-on that I saw going on today. I think I may need to come up with a project to get to know my local metropolitan area a bit better. What do you think?

 

This is what I'm running/Why I'm in the city

 

Nice view of Nordstrom. Powell and Market.

I've always seen chess boards set up in every big city I've been to. The coolest ones were in Puerto Rico, in case you were wondering. I finally found them in SF. I know, totally exciting, right?