Join Me in Snarkville

Yes, yes, I did drop off the face of the world, why do you ask?

Let’s review, in the past month, I’ve flown something close to 10,000 miles, spent less than 96 total hours in my home (and as a result in my very own bed), had exactly 4 home cooked meals TOTAL, worn the same clothes that I packed for a one week cruise to Alaska for three straight weeks — yes, I did a little laundry along the way, and finally, I stayed in 5 hotel rooms, one cruise ship cabin, and flew on 10 different airplanes.

Yes, I’m still tired — but I’m unpacked.  I’m two loads of laundry away from that being done and yet I still need to put a few odds and ends away — like yarn.

But the big news is that summer vacation can FINALLY begin.  The problem is that even though the vacation can begin, I’m too tired to care.  I have two weeks before summer camp begins and I had grand plans of fun outings, cooking, playing, and such in those weeks.  As of this moment, I’m hoping we get dressed most days and maybe make it out to a park once or twice.  That’s me — over promise and under deliver!

I have so much to tell you, like why I stayed in so many hotel rooms or the time I feel down in a yarn shop that everything was 50% off and they weren’t going out of business. I also want to tell you that I did lots of knitting, but sadly I didn’t — it was like my knitting mojo was on break.  I’m finally ready to get back into the groove, but the need to vacuum is calling my name first.

So — what’s been happening with you?

As of the typing of this, I’m sitting at a Recharge station in the Atlanta airport.  I’m sitting here because I took a bump off my flight across country in exchange for money.  (Cold Hard Cash!!  Mir would be proud, I think)

However, this is not a simple story of me going from having a seat on one flight to sitting on the next flight.  No, because this is me, it comes with a story.  Does anyone remember the “Perfect Storm”  where the forces of nature unite together and create a horrible storm and people die?  Well, no one dies in my story, but it about as many things that can go wrong as humanly possible. (more…)

Ok, so after the snack issues I had the night before leaving for Las Vegas, I promptly was sucked into the vortex of the underbelly of the gambling lifestyle for a few days.  When I finally came up for air, it was time to pack up and go home.  Thus, you get the highlights of the trip to Las Vegas. (more…)

Neither do I.

Seriously, I was sent off to the store today with the single purpose of buying snack food for tomorrow’s road trip.  I wandered the aisles looking for foods I like to have on the road.  Do I go for junk or healthy? (Junk of course, who are we kidding.)  Sweet or salty?  Chips or crackers?  I have no idea what I’m going to want tomorrow.

This is a problem I have with road trips.  You see, I grew up traveling the open road with the bottomless pit of a cooler.  My dad was able to pack a cooler to meet all of our needs while riding.  You get thristy; he’d have a drink.  You want a ham sandwich on rye with mustard and not mayo; oh, yes it would be in there — packed up with a pickle and some chips, maybe even a cookie.  I am very spoiled.  We didn’t stop at the road side gas stations for our food — no, we’d pull over and eat picnics from the trunk.

Fast forward to my life today.  Today, I’m not as organized about pulling together a trunk picnic.  I never know what it is that I want.  Prince doesn’t know either and he’s more likely to say, don’t worry about it, we’ll pick something up along the way (can we say chips and beef jerky?  I might pout and get some sour gummy somethings).  Really, it is sad what we tend to eat on the road — and without fail, it is never what I’m truly want, whatever that is.

So, today, today I stood in the grocery store, knowing that I wasn’t making ham sandwiches tonight, but wondering what I was going to put in the cars to prevent beef jerky and chips and sour gummy things in my car.  I asked Prince what he wanted, Cheez-Its and Flips.  Ok, done.  Duke is easy — blueberries and cheese.  Me?  Well, I’m the wild card.  For me, I got chips, rice cakes (um, yes, I like them), crackers, cookies, dried fruit, and so on and so on.  Here’s hoping at least ONE of those things will be what I’m craving tomorrow.

You know it has been a long time since you blogged when your browser doesn’t recognize your blog address.  I’m sorry, folks, I did the horrible….

I went away AGAIN.  This time you can feel ok about it, because I went away and promptly got the plague and proceeded to be sick — well, I’m still a little ill.  (I also shared and gave the plague to both Duke and Prince.  Let me tell you, the recipe for a great vacation begins with getting the plague and then sharing it with the people you are sharing a room with.  Add to this, leave the country — where your ability to get things like Nyquil aren’t easy and you will have enjoyed the perfect vacation.)

Now don’t get me wrong, in between all the drama — what? you think me having the plague didn’t involve a little drama? it is like you don’t even know me. — we did have fun.  Well, we were snarky and laughed and ate reasonable food for days.  I drank more hot tea than anyone should be allowed to.

I flew back to Snarkville on a very full flight.  SO full that we were delayed while they re-calculated the fuel needed to get us from point A to point B.  This flight was made more fun, by the plague soaked, tired people I was traveling with who needed to sleep (and sweat) on me.  Oh yes, I can tell you are jealous of my life.

I’m sure I owe you a photo or fourteen, and they will be up soon enough (right after Paris), but let’s leave this post with the most important news to share. (more…)

Just having come back from yet another trip, I have questions that I don’t get or think are totally unfair.

1. Why does it take 4 hours to fly east and 6 hours to fly west?

2. How is it possible to need twice the normal amount of sleep just because you are traveling when you really want to see people?

3. Why do you wear twice the number of normal clothing when away?  The laundry alone is not fair.

4. How can a cat with no thumbs have the ability to take ornaments off the tree?

5. Why is it I am so lame that I left the pattern I was working on in the rental car when we turned it in?  Oh, and the magazine is sold out.

6. Why do our cats think that our return is cause for a party and thus had night crazies at 5am after we went to bed at 2am?

Welcome home to me…

Yes, I’m back to the world of the blogging.  I’m sorry for leaving you a whole week with nothing, but since I barely got my bags packed I had no time to actually get the posts ready to go.  Problems with getting bags packed involved me being both the primary packer of useful stuff (Prince is going to have a cow here, but it is true.  I pack things like clothes, underwear, and such.  He packs power cords.  He can spend hours packing up a camera, where I spend less time making sure three people aren’t naked for a week.  In total fairness, he does pack his own toiletries — as my passive aggressive ways would require that I leave out something important like his razor if he didn’t) and being affected by the plague.  (what a run-on sentence, um, sorry.)

So, not only am I back in the blogging world, I’ve stopped coughing up a lung to return.  I also sound like a girl too — just saying that’s relatively new too.

Want to know where I’ve been? What I’ve done?  Why?  Me, too — when you figure it out, please share.  Since, it has been too long since I’ve been bonding with you, I have a list of stuff — just random stuff from the past week. (more…)

I went to bed last night at 8pm. That would be in my very own bed, but 8pm, folks. I’m apparently either 80 or I’m not yet recovered from my trip.

Let’s review, I’ve spent no more than 72 hours in a single time zone since the 1st of October. 72 hours, people. Can anyone guess why I was wide awake at 3am, then 4am, and then 5am.

I got out of bed at 5am when I heard Duke talking to himself. He declared he didn’t like Snarkville and wanted to go back on vacation. Well, since I was awake and all…I got up and asked him if I could snuggle and talk with him. I want to freeze that hour in time and just live it forever. I curled up with Duke and we chatted about what made vacation fun and how we might make Snarkville more like vacation. Yes, sure we can go to the zoo every day and not have to clean our room or possibly put in a water park in the backyard — I’ll get right on that, um, when the sun comes up, ok.

But at the end of it all, he put each hand on the side of my face and said, “Maybe we can just make pancakes before the sun comes up?” Well, hmmm, let’s see… I think we can do that. So at 6am, Duke and I made pre-dawn pancakes. I reminded him that this isn’t going to happen all the time, but I understood he was awake and hungry. (and pancake making is fun)

So, back to the story of my travels. I thought about on my very last flight of October, I’ve traveled 38 hours in the air, 6 days on a ship, 2 hours on a train (plus countless Metro hours) and about 9 billion miles by foot. I did all of this in 17 days. Keep in mind I lost a day and a half in air travel alone. I don’t even want to think about all the hours I lost (and gained) in time zones. However, I want to give you a few highlights. I’m hoping the laundry will cooperate and let me get a few photos up on Flickr later today. Real life must begin again tomorrow and I’m not prepared for it at all. (more…)

I have so many stories to share, but I’m going to briefly say hello with this one brief one.

Sitting outside at a cafe, I casually mention to Prince, “I noticed that really the French don’t do finger foods.”

Him: “Wha…”

Me: “Well, maybe it avoids having to touch foods since now that I think about it, we didn’t wash our hands before we ate and we were climbing all those stairs and touching handrails.” (sidenote: I’m icked out by that just remembering it — please don’t think ill of me — I can’t believe I did that.)

Him: “Honey, what do you think you are going to catch? French*?

Well, NO — I don’t think I’m going to catch French, but I am not so sure about the things the tourists might carry….

* In thinking about it, I think “catching French” can be summed up best by “becoming a cheese loving surrender monkey” — I already like cheese — let’s not push the rest.  (Oh, and you know the middle of the French Flag is white, right?  It is so surrender in easy no matter where you are — heck, I think Prince and I conquered a neighborhood or two…  I jest…mostly.

The airlines are a tricky, tricky lot.  Don’t trust their wily ways… (more…)