Saturday, April 19, 2008

Tag, You're It!

I've been tagged, by Collateral Evidence.

1. Pick up the nearest book (one of at least 123 pages).

2. Open the page to 123.

3. Find the 5th sentence.

4. Post the next 3 sentences.

5. Tag 5 people.

I have to admit, I had to dig through my nightstand to find something other than a People magazine. I finally came up with Capote's In Cold Blood, a book I started at least two (three?) years ago. I'm not sure I ever got past the first chapter.

"Hitchhiking his way to New Mexico? No, he said, he was driving his own car. And it was parked down the lane a piece."

Hmm, maybe I'll try this one again. Thanks, Amanda!

Now off to tag Robyn, Laura, the other Laura, and JeAnne. Yeah, I know that's only four people - I couldn't come up with five.

Friday, April 4, 2008

Bit by the travel bug

Che & I are in the fortunate position to be able to do quite a bit of traveling now. Well, putting aside the fact that I do have to work on pretty much every vacation I take and can't generally avoid calls on my cell phone, emails on my Blackberry, and sticking to locations where I can be wired and accessible. Umm, does that even COUNT as a vacation??? Anyway...

For my left-brained, OCD, dysfunctionally-anal retentive self, 90% of the fun in travel is planning the trip. Works out well for Che, since all he has to do is show up and go where I tell him. I know, I must be totally crazy. Or a travel agent at heart. That's not to say I plan every minute of every day of every trip. At least not anymore. :)

That said, booking our "big" trip of the year turned out to be a huge headache, even for me. And we're not quite there yet, but we're close enough that I'm no longer panicking. And we're super excited to head to Thailand (Phuket and Bangkok) and Hong Kong for two weeks in September!! What's funny is that we're almost as equally excited to return to NYC in July for a long weekend, a trip we impulsively booked last night just because we had the airline miles and hotel points to do it. We can't wait to spend more time in NYC - we had a great time there last year but our two days (plus) there was not nearly long enough.

But before that, we have our first trip to Chicago to look forward to next month. We've been looking forward to visiting Chicago for a long time. So far, the agenda includes a trip to the Shedd Aquarium, tickets to Wicked with my friend Debie (who is great enough to come down from Michigan to hang with me for a couple of days!), and dinner reservations at Everest (it was a very tight toss-up between Everest and Tru, not that we could go wrong with either).

Despite having to be completely connected to the office on my trips, at least I'm not IN the office, right? I can't tell you how much I look forward to these getaways throughout the year - I think I'd go insane at work without them. Now to break the news to my boss that I'll be needing three weeks of vacation in the next six months.