T minus one month

So it's now less than a month until "wheels up." I have four days until I begin my leave of absence from work. Things are getting kind of nuts.

First, here's an update on the itinerary. We've booked our tour package in Cambodia and Vietnam from February 19th to March 7th. The main things we're working on are two weeks in South America between Buenos Aires and Santiago and two weeks on the north island of New Zealand. Once we figure that out, we can think about roughly five weeks that follow Vietnam, which will include going to South Africa for some kind of safari-centered trip of maybe 2-3 weeks. On the way there or on the way from there to Europe we are going to do a multi-day layover in Doha through a deal from Qatar Airlines. In short, we keep struggling with the temptation to go to more places versus our drive to get below the surface in a smaller number of places. I think we're getting close to buying our next batch of plane tickets.

Second, drugs. We got through to our HMO's travel clinic. About a week ago we got our first round of shots, including 6 for me because I needed an MMR booster, Hep A and B plus the "normal" exotic destinations. On top of that, we're receiving 3 prescriptions each from the pharmacy. Now it's messing up our packing plan because it seems like we're going to have a cubic foot of pill bottles to start the trip.

Third, I hate technology. I made an impulse buy on a chromebook that is meant for the kids. Maybe later I'll be able to make a decision about a 4-in-1 for us. We've pretty much concluded that we need to switch our cell phone plan from Verizon to T-Mobile for their "One Plus" plan. But what phones to get when we switch/upgrade? Do I want to go all-google to have super-duper integration of hardware and software? It makes my head hurt.

Fourth, we're incrementally packing up the house. One manifestation of this is a relentless purge of stuff that we've either stopped using or won't use any more by the time we get back, especially kids' stuff. Another is that we've been making numerous trips to retailers of outdoor clothes and gear, like REI and the Columbia employee store (a perk of living in Portland). It reminds me of a Greg Brown song about fishermen who look like everything stuck to them when they visited LL Bean.