Our destination: Cork city, county Cork, Ireland.

Having gotten all (most) of my hysterical nerves out of the way several months pervious, while applying for my passport, the actual packing process was calm, quick, and efficient. Well, mine was. Bill’s preferred method of dealing with pre-travel jitters included packing everything, pacing around the house looking for everything he forgot, and then deciding that the first try wasn’t spot on. So he dumps out his suitcase, and starts again. It should be noted that the majority of his suitcase got emptied out onto me. But it was all clothes, and I was half asleep by then.
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After scanning and importing all of the ireland pics, and getting three quarters of the way through prepping them, the bloody computer decides that it no longer wants to recognize the primary hard drive and won’t boot.

Insert profanity here.

Insert worshipful praise for the guys at CompUSA here, as they got it back up and running in only a few hours, and it’s now back home and happy.

The 1.5 gigs worth of pictures have been moved over to the secondary (and larger) HD, just in case. ‘Cause I’m paranoid.

Still scanning in pics and typing up my notes. (Yes, I actually took notes for most of the trip.) In the meantime, I bring you…. The Jason Arc In Five Minutes.

I love Te so very much right now…

Back in the states. Notes on the trip, pictures, and random blather coming soon.

In less than 24 hours, I’m going to be on a plane for Ireland. For every single person who has asked if I’m excited, well boy howdy - I’ve only ever had two lifelong goals, and this is one of them. I’m getting to do something I’ve dreamed about since before puberty, and I’m doing it *before* I’m thirty. Good buggering god, I’m more excited than a kid on christmas eve.

That being said, I’m going to thwack the next person who asks upside the head, ’cause I’m just so damm sick of the question. The people who actually know me? Don’t *need* to ask.

If anyone’s thinking of trying to get in touch with me June 17-25, I’ll be on vacation. In Ireland. That sound you hear? Less than frantic last minute preperations. I plan on taking lots of pictures and *hiding* whenever Bill pulls out the video camera.

In spite of planning this thing for the last six months, (getting a passport is a pain in the ass, but not so bad as renewing a dirver’s license) it still barely seems real to me that in less than a week I’m going to be in a foreign country. ‘Course, being a huge european history buff and having wanted to do this *all my life*? Has nothign to do with the hamster running around in my head going “eeeeee!”.

If you had all the money in the world:
1) What would be the first three places you’d visit and why?
Ireland (and I’m actually going *there* in a month), London (or anywhere in the UK), California (because I was there for an entirely too brief time when I was younger and I want to see it Big Sur really is as beautiful as I remember it).

The foreign travel will surprise *no one* who has known me for a while.

2) What would be the first change you’d make in your own life?
Pay off all my buggering student loans.

3) What would be the first change you’d make in someone else’s life?
Pay off all of my brother and sister’s student loans. And clear out my mom’s debt (though I might have to get sneaky about that one. Is it possible to wire money into someone’s account with out their knowledge?) And then I’d attack Bill’s debts. (Mom would be practice for this one, ’cause I’d have to be *really* sneaky there.)

4) So you’ve decided to become a lifelong student - what sort of courses would you take?
What *wouldn’t* I take would be more apt.
Lit and media studies, for the fun of random bullshit.
PoliSci, ’cause I never did, and the way the world is going, it seems like a useful thing to know.
Art History, ’cause I actually like it. (As opposed to most of the actual art students I know, who loathed it. I was a communications major. Go fig.)

5) Where would you make your second home?
Branchville. I was born there and I firmly plan to retire and die there.

• WBH Swim updates
• Plonked down approx. $1,600 for plane tickets to Ireland. (Finally taking the out of country trip. Wheee!)
• Kept all my day job clients (mostly) happy.
• Began re-designing the US Box envelopes. (I’ve already revamped their order forms and invoices)
• Visited the bookstore. (On orders from Bill. Apparently, I’ve begun stressing so much that I’m becoming hard to live with.)
• Called my Dad.
• Planned what I’ll be taking on the plane trip.

What I need to do tonight:

• Finish coding the 1,000+ items for S4
• Finish redesign work for BubbleBliss (not yet live)
• Finish site updates for DragonFolk

No, I’m not going to finish all this tonight. Hence the stress.

What I need to do later this week

• Submit my passport paperwork
• Finish my taxes
• Figure out a way to stop stressing.

Now I just have to wait for the slow, grinding wheels of bureaucracy to send me my passport. Wheee.