Starting a blog

Seems like the "in" thing to do these days is to have your own blog. Didn't really think I needed one all that badly - but my mom says it's a much better way for people to follow your travels than e-mailing everyone. She is making one of my "life list" items come true by providing my sisters and I a trip to London and Paris in March 2009. It will be my first time out of the country unless you count a couple of trips to Ontario so I'm pretty excited about it! (She'll be experiencing one of her own life list items as she'll be in Europe for three months with her twin sister Martha celebrating their 70th birthdays. Their birthday was a week ago but their trip will be Feb - May.)

I've been gathering information for our trip for several months now, and much of my "Christmas wish list" centered around travel. Eric gave me Rick Steves guidebooks for London and Paris, it'll be nice to have some that I can keep more than the library-allotted time! He also gave me a travel clothesline; microfiber travel towel; a tote bag; and electrical adaptors. Steve gave me a sleep sack and more electrical adaptors, as well as some SD cards for my camera. I received other gifts, of course, but these were the travel-related ones.

Some of the things on my trip-related "to-do" list are to figure out the best plans for London (arrive on Sunday morning; leave for Paris on Eurostar on Wednesday morning) and Paris (arriving Wednesday afternoon; Debbie & Judy leave on Saturday morning. I'm staying until the following Friday morning.) My original plans were to travel to Germany to visit with Scott the second week - he is stationed there in the Air Force. The Air Force changed those plans, however, as they are sending Scott to Iraq the month before. So doggone it, I'll just have to spend more time in Paris! I'd rather be able to see Scott but the alternative just isn't all that bad...

I also need to figure out what to take (I plan to just bring a carry-on.) I know I have some time but it is definitely time to start narrowing down the ideas swimming around in my head and making some concrete plans. Watch for them!

Today was a relaxed day, though. After all the hustle and bustle of Christmas, even with just four of us (including Steve's dad, Cecil) it was nice to just kick back and relax today. I did make it into town - had to exchange the SD cards from Steve as they were high capacity and they don't work in my camera. There's hardly a SD card (at least in 2 gb) to be had on 28th Street today - checked with Meijer, Target, Costco, and Walmart. I'm not in a huge hurry though as long as I get another one or two before the trip. I also did a few other errands - bank, post office, got a prescription refilled, and looked at the Christmas clearance stuff (we were completely out of wrapping paper...)

I also managed to finally get a geocache in. It'd actually been two weeks since my last cache - the weather (and therefore the roads) have been terrible with one storm after another. This was a park & grab lightpole cache in the Target/Costco parking lot, I didn't even bother to turn the engine off while I retrieved the cache and signed the log. It was my 1411th cache in 3 years plus of caching. I'm really looking forward to getting some caching done in London and Paris!

Well, it's getting pretty late so about time to end this first post. I'll try to figure out how to post pictures soon though most of my potential audience already knows what I look like!