The Printed Page

The excellent adventure actually begins this coming Sunday when we board the plane for Sydney, Australia from Boise via LAX. This is a trip that we’ve been talking about and planning since last May. For me vacation began tonight when I walked out the office door at 11pm. Admittedly I happy danced across the parking lot because I have nearly the entire month off! I’m not back at work until Noon the last Monday of November which coincidentally just happens to be the last day of month. I job share with 5 co-workers so I’ll simply be able to hit the delete key on my unmanageable email box and say “tell me what I need to know.” Alas for Jim vacation doesn’t start until Thursday evening.

This is my first trip over seas. This is a dream vacation for me. For a number of years, too many to count, I’ve wanted to visit Australia and New Zealand. I don’t know what the fascination is. I just know I want to go and now I am. I’ve been out of the US before but never this far. Canada and Mexico are neighbors so in some aspects it’s like I’ve never left home when visiting those countries. We’re spending the first half of our adventure in Sydney and environs. Then we hop a plane and head to the south island of New Zealand. One of the nice things about traveling with Jim is he’s the trip planner and loves it. He’s a details kind of guy when it comes to big trips. All I do is ask him “what do I pack and when are we leaving?” he does the rest. Now this is far from our normal laze around around the pool all day kind of trip. He actually had the gall to ask if I was packing my Kindle. The nerve of some guys I tell ya. My response will typical me: “Ah yeah what’d you think I was going to do on the plane for 18 hours?” I’ve been told that reading time is limited so why bother. Gee does he leave his precious [whatever] home when we travel, I don’t think so.

You might have noticed the blog theme changed. I haven’t done a new one in a while because I love my usual theme so much but I thought vacations merited their own theme. Also you’ll know when I’m traveling because the gorgeous beach will appear before your very eyes. And these guys to the left are about as far from the beach as one can get but we’ll be seeing some of their relatives in NZ. They’re just do so darn cute I had to include them. We have a couple of celebrations while we’re gone plus we miss a Monday and a holiday. Jim and I each have birthdays this month so not only we will get to celebrate our American b-days but also our Aussie and NZ b-days. Its not like I really need another b-day at my age but this one is special. Because we’re flying Sunday and cross the international date line we won’t have a Monday in our first week. Most everyone wishes for no Monday and now I won’t have one. And because Thanksgiving is a US holiday no turkey day for us.

Mailbox Monday will post as usual. I noticed tonight that the linkies from today’s (11/2) MM post have done a disappearing act. If I can’t get linkies to work correctly before leaving we’ll go back to posting the old fashioned way – blog comments. We are traveling with a pint sized laptop so hopefully we’ll be able post some pictures here or at our Facebook pages. If you would like to friend me so that you can see pictures you can search for marcia [at] printedpage [dot] com. I’m not a big fan of Facebook and do nothing with my account but we’ve had several requests to post our pics there so that’s most likely where you’ll find them.

I know I have more to write but can’t remember what I wanted to say so goodnight for now. I’ll leave you with some more friends and scenery.