29 hours

Yes folks, just 29 hrs till blast off … oops, poor choice of language, let’s make that ‘lift off’.

ASIDE: For the countless millions of readers who have not been following my occasional blogs – I am about to embark on a round-part-of-the-world trip, the first half to revisit (after 35 years) old friends in Europe, the second half to meet face-to-face (for the first time) my ‘new’ friends in America, and to attend the annual Digital Storytelling Festival and bootcamp in Sedona, Arizona.

Our first stop is in Bangkok. I wish my husband hadn’t told me that Thailand was a medium-to-high risk area for terrorist activity. Why do men do that! I’ve been deliberately avoiding all news media so that I DIDN’T know about such things.

Curiously, I find I’m not concerned. There are more pressing matters like ‘how am I going to close my suitcase?’ and ‘how am I going to get across the street in Rome?’ Besides, I’m embarked on the first step towards my Life’s Purpose, so it would be pretty silly of God to allow me to be blown into small pieces now, wouldn’t it?

Our son is worried about us … which is sort of nice really. I thought he regarded us as The Enemy.

The plan to have everything ready a week before we left failed miserably. I never took it seriously in the first place, which I suppose is why it failed. Plan B was to have everything ready a day before we left. Er … it looks like that’s going to fail too.

The Mac Connection: Any moment now I’m going to upgrade from 10.2.6 to 10.2.8 so that I can sync my address book with my .mac webmail. If disaster follows I’m going to blame the MyMac staff for not warning me. I have read the Apple blurb and there doesn’t seem to be any significant danger in the move.

If I’m not having such an incredibly fabulous time during the next 2 months that all thoughts of MyMac have been obliterated, I shall post amazingly entertaining snippets along the way. I know you’ll all be waiting with bated breath.

Oh … one more thing … could someone tell George Bush that I’d really appreciate it if he would stop stirring up the Islamic world till I’m home again. I’d rather die in my own country if he doesn’t mind.

POSTSCRIPT: I will be unable to read this once it’s posted because, since my husband notified our ISP that we’d like to go on their minimum service while we’re away (and not using it), I can’t get the MyMac site to come up properly … I can see the features but not the blogs. And everything is S-L-O-W. I must remember never to move to any place that doesn’t have broadband.