Getting Ready

  For the next two weeks or so, I'll be traveling so you are going to get a travel blog interspersed among my regular entries.  I leave this evening around 5 PM and fly down to Washington State.  I'll take lots of pictures to share, and comment on things as I head off.  Thursday of next week I'll be flying off to Hawaii for one week due to attending and presenting at an educational conference.  The week after I fly back to Washington state just in time to see two of my nephews graduate from high school.  There are about 18 years difference in age between my oldest (the first grand child) and the youngest ones.

The following week, I'll be flying home to Alaska for a few weeks.  I warn you right now, I love walking around town, any town, because I find all sorts of wonderful things you never see when you are in a car or on the bus.  I'll have my parents with me so they like to take the bus but I can always start a bit early and meet them somewhere. 

I still have to pack, plant a few things, and figure out which electronic devices are coming with me and make sure I have everything I need.  My neighbor is one of those ladies who is always packed one to two weeks ahead of any trip she takes.  Me?  I wait till the evening before I head out but I've got a list I've been making so that I get it all packed. 

I enjoy traveling but most of my traveling is done because I'm on my way to or from a conference that I'm attending or presenting at. I seldom go somewhere just because I want to.  Much of that is because I'm limited on the time I can get off from work to travel.  Next August I'm going to try to head off to Finland for a short visit to attend a conference.  It will be about the same time I start teaching but I hope to get the time off.

Later in the summer, I'm hitting Portland which has some great farmer's markets and Los Angeles - which is always full of traffic and extremely urban but I'm staying right next to a shopping mall so I can pick up a couple things.  The mall with the target is a couple blocks away and I'm always trying to wander through the neighborhood rather than walking on the noisy streets and I get kind of turned around......LOL.

I usually have a couple other things lined up but they did not fit in this summer so maybe next summer.  Tonight I'm hoping to down load the pictures from my camera so I can talk about this year's prom.  They used plastic garbage bags and those long plastic table cloths to create a really awesome room.  I'll explain more tomorrow or Sunday.  It all depends.