Signs you are ready for travel (or at least GETTING ready for travel)

** The Euro/Dollar Conversion rate is a top pick on your computers history.

** You spend more time worried about the politics of Greece (a country you aren't even travelling to) than politics of your home country

** You put together your reading stack for travel (ok maybe that's just me!)

** You hesitate to buy any clothes that won't look good after hours and hours of sitting (on a plane, train or bus) or hours and hours of walking

** Bed bugs websites suddenly seem much more important

** You start tearing apart your travel books to make your cheat journal (Craig told me this last weekend that he thought our Rome one was so fantastic. Made me grin for the day! It's work planning to be spontaneous!!)

** You start spending more time on foreign websites pretending you understand the words and hoping you aren't getting all the dates wrong. (WHY does America have to be the only place it is month/day/year and not day/month/year which would be SO MUCH MORE intuitive, no?)

** You watch America's Next Top Model and snicker at the girls (really girls I don't care how old they are they aren't women. In fact they are so skinny they probably aren't even menstruating yet) try to find their way in an Amsterdam metro. These girls can't read a map to save their lives. Note to self: Teach eldest to read map.

I could probably come up with more. I have less than 2 months until our Europe trip and I'm starting to notice how it niggles into my thoughts daily. Soon it will occur hourly until all I can talk about is my trip. This is about the time my friends all mysteriously become busy.

Travel paraphenalia....my "shoe" addiction

This weekend Cindy's husband made a comment about her purse collection which made me think about how other women tend to enjoy and stock up on shoes and purses and I....do not. Part of the reason is because it is really hard to find cute shoes in Bozo size 11 and as I am super hard on my leather goods I tend to buy expensive products that last me years. And years. I buy a purse maybe every 2 or so years. But they aren't cheap. Which is not to say that I don't have my buying addictions. Pioneer Woman has posted about a favorite shop of hers called Francesca's. Sunday I needed to take my oldest to buy more jeans and I wandered into the Francesca's nearby and found TRAVEL GOODS.

THIS IS WHAT CALLS ME. I enter a shop and somehow I inevitably end up perusing the travel stuff from contact cases (ingenious!) to travel diaries to travel games. Me wanteth them all!





When Craig and I went to Rome we wasted some time on the plane asking each other questions in books called Do You Know Your Husband (Wife)? These were actually pretty fun and we learned a bit abut each other even after (then) fifteen years of marriage.

So these travel cards will be a fun way to waste time with eldest on the plane and trains and buses we have to take and be able to get to know each other better as well.

The Journal looking thing has a note pad and heavy cardboard compartments to store tickets etc. When eldest saw it he informed me he wanted a journal of sorts to keep on the trip. An exchange student at his HS has one and he thought it was a great idea. i'm so glad I don't have to force him to do this. I enjoy going back through my scrap books to read over the things I wrote while on my trips.

Especially write down funny quotes. I'll never forget (but am still glad I wrote it down) Carrie leaving the restroom in our Paris hotel saying "I don't know what that was, but it wasn't a toilet."

New Year's Resolutions for me (and T---tma)

I am actually proud of myself for sticking with this blog for the last few months. I haven't told anyone about it...well that's not true. I tell people about it, I just don't tell them WHERE it is :) So in itself this blog has been an accomplishment for me. It's a way to show myself that I can in fact stick with something if I set my mind to it.

So with that in mind I decided I want to make a few New Year's Resolutions that pertain to both my personal life and this blog.

1. I want to be in more travel pictures. This past year I have very VERY few pictures of me because I run from cameras like they spew flames with every snap because I don't like the way I look. And whose fault is that really? In August to prepare myself for our yearly Labor Day couples vacation, I lost 12 pounds with the Biggest Lost 30 day Jumpstart. I LOVED the food, but it's a lot of work. And really what in life isn't? So to achieve this goal, I resolve to use the new Biggest Loser cookbooks to cook healthy meals and lose 50 pounds by the August Berlin/Prague trip. To keep myself on track, I will post here the best food I loved and/or the most troubling dishes. I will NOT be posting a monthly weight update. However EVERY trip I take will have pictures of me and hopefully the differences each month will be noticeable.

In 1997 when I went to Europe the first time with my friend Carrie, she told me that EVERY picture had to have one of us in it. I juxtapose this with the last pictures I take and would love a happy medium. I have some great pictures of scenery marred only by a travel bedraggled woman with bed head (from sleeping on trains) that I really wish we would have taken without us in them. There has to be a happy medium.

2. I want to track what I read. In 2008 I resolved to track EVERY book I read. It was over 200 books. I read. A lot. And that was fun but not what I want to do again. I read about a bookstore in New York that groups books according to location. Supposedly you can email them a location and they will send you a list of books that you can buy from them that uses that location as a setting. Well I emailed and as of now I haven't heard back, but I can only imagine their puffed out inbox after being featured in a premier travel magazine. This led me to thinking that I want to do that here. I want to track everything I read based on location. I will list the labels on the blog so that anyone can link to a series of books based on the label for any location that I have read.
CAVEAT: I will not be listing all of the historical romances that I read like crazy because seven hundred London books set in the 1820s really isn't THAT informative for anyone who wants to read.

3. I want to spend less on crap. This pertains to T---tma because I have a tendency to buy any seemingly homemade crapola from any old native when I travel. Yesterday at breakfast I pulled out a bread basket made from Provencal material.





and told my husband that I wasn't going to buy any more souvenirs that I knew I wouldn't use. I wanted more like the breadbasket (or hell even a a coffee mug) and less of the jade (very very costly) elephant I got in Paris. WTH was I thinking? I mean who else doesn't immediately think of Paris when they see a Jade elephant???

Strangely enough that very day on the way to my inlaws I was reading a magazine article about the UNsouvenir. The author's main purpose was to buy items that the LOCALS use. I'm not going this far really. I just want to buy items that *I* will use. Like the candy dish from Mount Vernon I use to hold my jewelry



4. Learn something new I commit to this every year. But as I'm travelling to Czech Republic and Germany I'd like to learn enough conversational German to get by and quite a bit more Czech. We even get a Czech paper through our life insurance so I will have practice!

I think that's enough for this year. I've decided to go for the full marathon this year if I get chosen for Nike Women's Marathon again so I will have to start walking like mad very very very soon (like today). I turn 36 this year and with respect to my family's life expectancy half of my life is over. I want to really enjoy the second half!

How old is too old? Aka but this used to be a sushi bar...

Next year I'm putting myself on a money diet (actually a food diet too but that's another story) and I'm looking at one of my major expenses.....books. Now I'm not foolish enough to think I could go cold turkey on book buying ( I would rather give up air) so I'm already planning my economization. Used book stores. For the most part this is a good idea, but do I really want to buy old travel information?

What if the great hotel listed is now a flea ridden hovel. Or worse a bed and breakfast. My husband would rather eat glass than share a restroom or breakfast conversation. And seriously I plan so far in advance I'm using old books anyway! So where is my cut off??

For now (and I'm completely reserving the right to change my mind as I am in fact a woman) I am limiting used travel books to two years old. For general location info I may choose older books ( because really how much has the Eiffel Tower) changed in 100 years I will go as old as five years. And I will certainly complain if this blows up in my face. As I said I am a woman.

Which means it's Craig's fault anyway.