Roughing It
As I packed my little Saturn Coupe to the maximum capacity level of suitcases full of clothes, shoes, and other accessories, not counting the snacks, books, Gameboy SPs, and other required paraphenalia for a 10 day road trip, I realised just how difficult it would be for me to only take necessary clothing on a hiking trip. Since my goal is the Appalacian Trail, I've been really attempting to grasp the level of primitiveness that I will have to endure. One part of me is pumped full of excitement to rely on sheer human ability to travel such a distance without technology (except for a digital camera and small camcorder), while the other part of me shudders in fear and anguish with the concept that I will not have several changes of clothing for my mood, or electricity. You are reading about a woman that has a mini-fridge in her bedroom so she doesn't have to travel that annoying distance of one floor down to the main fridge.

Now that I'm becoming more and more aware of the small to no amounts of comfort items that can be taken on a hiking trip, I am starting to think the hardest part of training will be adapting to this huge culture shock of having everything at my fingertips to having to work for the most basic survival.

Spring Fever Follow-Up
As anybody will see when they come into my home now, I went nuts with completely re-allocating furniture around the house.

*pause*

Please tell me that I did not say "re-allocating."

Anyway, I am so very proud of myself because I totally redecorated the house only by moving furniture, and not buying anything except for one floor lamp, which was desperately needed anyway for better lighting, two big pillows for the living room, and two cool decanters. I found this self control utterly miraculous and inspiring.

Spring Fever
It would seem that Spring Break will never completely leave my system, as I can't wait for the season to arrive. I want sun (warm sun), flower gardens and redecorating. I'm sure Eric is cringing right now at the thought of redecorating :) Fortunately for him, I just rearrange, rather than buying new furniture. Did I mention the excitment of Spring Cleaning? While some people dread this weekend task, it is on the top 10 of my favourite holidays. I'm also anxious to see how well my daffodil bulbs did over the winter.

I've been completely zapped by the Spring Fairy.

Game Night
Am I getting stiffed for the 21st, or is everybody noting this important event in their palm pilots and daytimers?

RSS Feeds
I am trying to determine if the parasitical effect of RSS feeds is the fault of the blogger who sets up a RSS feed, or the fault of the idiot who subscribed to a blog. Before defenses flare, please understand that I am referring to feeds only for jabbering blogs like mine. I think the feeds serve a great and noble purpose for insane readers like my husband who has a current subscription total of 90+ technical blogs. While I cannot comprehend reading all of them, I can at least see how the feeds would help him to read the masses of information. I don't understand why he keeps wanting me to set up a feed for my blog though. I'm tempted to do it for my religion and Tae Kwon Do ones, because that is one subject that only relates to certain people, but a feed for my babbling seems very annoying. I can just see it now, Ball is having a bad day, gets a RSS feed of my bad day, and realising that precious moments of his already bad day has been wasted, throws a sandwich across Cubeland :)

Cruel Remarks
I was recently referred to as "a grumpy troll." I found this accusation to be most upsetting and grumpifying.

Cool Name?
So tell me, is John Blake Cusack 2.0 a cool name? Although I am attempting to be open minded, I find it a bit crazy to liken a child's identification to a technology upgrade...

Travel Observations
Obviously quite bored, I found a link while perusing blogs that gives me a geographical picture of my travels. I wasn't too displeased with my USA travel experience, although my western travels are quite lacking. I'm planning to make that up in a year or so though when Eric and I take a Western road trip...however, I didn't realised how untravelled I was globally until I saw the image! Hmmm...I definitely need to slow my re-occuring visits and start going to new places. I was surprised to see how many countries I had no interest in visiting though.

United States


create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Global


create your own visited country map

The countries I want to visit...


create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Blogging
I try to only blog when I'm inspired to prevent boring reads, but that can be difficult since inspiration doesn't come quite that often. However, as I went through Neal's lack of posting, Sterno's post that took me a full 2 days to realise he was venting about his moving fiasco, and Matt's little link rant, I came to the conclusion that I could post anything I wanted at any time!

On that note, I am beyond thrilled to have found the perfect gaming party outfit for the 21st! My big dilemma is that I'm not sure if I should wear it to Cabin Fever (Friday) or to my party (Saturday). Since it would be a grave sin in some women's books (including my own) to wear it two nights in a row, I am finding the dilemma very upsetting. While some of you are getting past the shock that I would even shop for a "gaming" outfit, please note that I was not specifically looking for one, it just fell into place while out shopping yesterday. I'll spare you the exciting minute to minute details.

Oh, quick question to you Cabin Fever people, is there an Euchre tourney, or am I getting confused with something else? I was telling Buffy Friend's stalker (that's what she calls herself) about it when she was lamenting that she wanted to play more Euchre. For those of you who don't know what Cabin Fever is, it's a crazy kind of lock-in for adult engineers at their company to play games with no alcohol.