Friday, May. 02, 2003 - 1:00 a.m.

wearing: jammies
in car CD player: same thing as last time
hey, Grampa! what's for dinner? Trader Joe's teriyaki chicken dinner, and dessert a la K.

I lied

Here I am again, DONE WITH EVERYTHING HERE AT HOME and consequently so amped up I can't think about sleeping. K. was an hour late and brought me two Krispy Kreme custard-filled donuts and a bottle of Yoo Hoo from the Terrible Herbst gas station at the corner of Charleston and Torrey Pines. I guess that thought about the Marie Callender's pie was, er, um, pie-in-the-sky thinking? eeugh.

Every piece of numerical information I could possibly need over the next two weeks is now written on both sides of one piece of paper, like my cheat sheet for my vacation. I can write really small if need be and so the contents of my address book, all the confirmation numbers and toll-free emergency hotlines and flight numbers and such are all there. I'm not taking the same airline for more than one leg of the trip, and except for my two domestic flights (here to LAX tomorrow evening; JFK to here on the 18th), all of the carriers are based outside the U.S., so I've got phone numbers for offices in English-speaking countries Just In Case. Besides his button-pushing last night, Eric did make one interesting point--I told him (for like the 12th time, but this is the first time he seems actually to have paid attention) that I change planes and have a 4-hour layover in Dubai on Thursday (less than a week from now! oh, man), and he was like, "Why are you only spending four hours there? That's the only place that's going to be really different." I don't think that's actually the case--I'm willing to bet Sofia and Bucharest are going to be plenty different, for starters--but it's so strange to think back over everything that's happened in the world since I started planning this trip--when I figured out that I was going to land for a while in the Middle East, I pinpointed that as the likely Big Trouble Spot of the whole itinerary. Then when I got my travel insurance, one of the covered perils is if you incur expenses because you or your traveling companion is quarantined, and I laughed at that because where in the world would I possibly have any chance of ending up in quarantine? The Netherlands seem to be clicking along as usual, at least. Malta voted to join the EU (but they don't go on the euro until some time in the irrelevant future) and Bulgaria is trying to suck up to the U.S. I guess Romania is in a holding pattern since December. Man, I hope there aren't any earthquakes like the ones that have occurred in Turkey and ALABAMA the past week.

I guess I can go print out a time conversion table now and go to sleep? maybe? It'll be my last night with my little girls for two whole weeks! They both know something's up 'coz the suitcase was on the bed all evening. I frightened even K. with the magnitude of my crazy-cat-lady-hood when I showed him that I had Nina's and Maddie's pictures in a little travel frame in my carry-on luggage.

It's 1:10 a.m.! 24 hours from RIGHT NOW my plane for Singapore will (let us all hope) be taking off from L.A.! I've got my copy of Moby-Dick and my big colorful happy notebook from Target all packed--bring that 16-hour flight on! (And my bottle of aspirin--Dr. Abramowitz, the retired OB/GYN who is Janice's new first-year associate since he decided in his retirement to go to law school and become a med. mal. attorney, recommends taking an aspirin every four hours on long flights to prevent deep venous thrombosis, i.e. blood clots in your legs that can migrate to your lungs and cause pulmonary embolism. We had an interesting conversation this afternoon about how he's been to Zimbabwe for some reason and lived on a ranch for a couple of weeks. I so want my next Big Trip to be to Africa...)

okay. enough. sleep sleep sleep. zzz.

previous - next

5.2.03--all packed up and nowhere to go yet - Friday, May. 02, 2003
5.1.03--the home stretch! - Thursday, May. 01, 2003
4.21.03--novel concepts - Monday, Apr. 21, 2003
4.19.03--this is not my beautiful wife - Saturday, Apr. 19, 2003
4.18.03--like chickens before their heads are cut off - Friday, Apr. 18, 2003

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