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Archive for June, 2007

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The Planning Begins in Ernest

Monday, June 25th, 2007

This last weekend I spent it alone in our new apartment because Jim was off bass fishing in Eastern Oregon with our brother in law Ken.

My sister in law, Wendy, and I did take Friday night to get pedicures and wander around NW Portland but the bulk of my weekend was spent in trip prep mode. In recent days we had received our campgrounds guides for both North & South Island and (woo hoo) I was the grand prizer winner on Travelfish.org, a website specializing in SE Asia and so received for FREE all 8 of their travel guides. Also delivered was the DVD “A Map for Saturday ” that I had ordered. It is a fascinating documentary by a round-the-world (RTW) traveler from NY who interviewed many other travelers in his year away. It was very interesting to hear everyones’ feelings regarding their whole experience… some traveled for 6 months.. some for 3 years but all shared many of the same views on why they left and if they’ll ever return to life as they knew it before.

Now that our life is back on a normal plain I’m thrilled to once again get inspired about learning more about the places we’ll be visiting on our trip. I tend to be a planner, sometimes perhaps an over-planner, and I am determined to do a lot of reading before we leave on the different destinations but to not actually have a set itinerary. We are truly going to just go with the flow and see where it takes us.

20 more days of work and boy am I counting down. It’s getting more and more difficult to be here everyday while Jim is at home or out & about and knowing there are so many more exciting things I could be doing! But, I’ll putter along here getting everything all situated for my departure. I’m not sure if I’ll come back or not but it is a very nice place to work and my boss has been wonderful about at least saying they would try to find a place for me if I do want to.

2 more dentists appointments for me, 1 other Dr, and the our travel clinic appt. and we will be as good to go as possible. Jim does have to go back in for another bloodtest to see if his Hep B booster took. We got my response back (I’m good to go) but not his so I called and they said they’d done the wrong test and could he come back to have more blood drawn…you’d think they could have at least called us wouldn’t you?

Anyway, lunch is over so back to my personal corporate wasteland for now. I will soon be marking one more day off the work calender!

Apartment Living

Thursday, June 14th, 2007

It’s official…we signed on the house and are now officially back to apartment life. It’s been 18 years since we’ve lived in an apartment and although this one seems fine.. I’m certainly glad it’s only for 2 months! I already miss my deck and lawn and seeing our pets wander about the pasture.
Right now I’m so sore my toes even hurt! We got a top floor because we didn’t want noisy neighbors above our head and it will be for the best but by the end of moving things up 3 stories yesterday I was questioning our sanity! We didn’t take too much to the apt. since it’s just a little 1bdrm,1bath but it’s probably a great thing for us to start downsizing our life now anyway since we’ll be living out of a backpack for 12-15mths!

A big positive (other than our new hefty bank account!) is the new commute time for me (12 minutes this morning compared to 55min!) and the fact that for the first time in 18 years we’ll be living within city limits and can order pizza delivery!!! I know, I know, scary what gets me excited.

In looking at airfares this morning, I did just find a fare from Portland to Auckland w/ a stopover in Fiji forĀ  $868pp. A pretty good deal since the best travel industry rate I’d found was $760pp out of LAX with us still having to get there. I think we’ll book it next week, have our departure date set and REALLY start planning & getting excited about our big adventure!

Typhoid Fever

Friday, June 8th, 2007
We've been taking typhoid pills all week, probably not the best week to do them with moving and all but hey, last time we took typhoid we had no issues. So, poor JIm has been sick as a dog all ... [Continue reading this entry]

Life in FAST FORWARD!

Wednesday, June 6th, 2007
We have a 24year old horse we call Bug and a goat named Butler. Obviously one of the challenges with us going round the world was to find suitable care for them while we're gone. We found a great boarding ... [Continue reading this entry]

Memorial Day Weekend

Monday, June 4th, 2007
We took a break from packing/ moving over Memorial Day and spent 4 nights camping at Trout Creek Campground near Warm Springs. It was a new site for us and a pretty nice campground... 16 sites, about half of which ... [Continue reading this entry]