off to the races

It's been a soggy gray day with the exception of a jesus-light moment near sundown, complete with a golden-edged clouds giving way to a patch of blue sky. I took the craptastic weather as an opportunity for guilt-free internet time researching for our trip to the other side of the world. After much avoidance and ambivalence, we finally bought tickets to Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. I went into manic planning mode, which consists of opening a flurry of tabs in my browser and zipping from this national park to that map to that blog about hiking to that other blog about hiking, to calculating this driving distance, and so on. On multiple occasions my computer slowed to glacial speeds, and I had to restart it. Yet another sign of its impending demise, but I refuse to upgrade for the time being (knock on wood - nothing like having that decision made for you). I also refuse to check our baggage, if at all possible, so we are obsessing about how to bring camping gear and minimal clothing (for maximum pigpen potential) while working within the 15lb airline constraints. Charrow had the half-serious, but bright idea to wear multiple layers of clothing through security to cut down on our bag weight. Then I had the following mental picture of going through the x-ray machine:

TSA agent: is there anything in your pockets ma'am (because they must gender you no matter what)
Me: no, sir (gender them back pointedly), but I'm wearing 11 pairs of underwear

And then we lost our shit laughing at the idea. This is why we work. There can be testiness and button pushing, but inevitably there is something ridiculous that sends us into a laughing fit and makes the hostility dissolve much faster than it would without the levity. And now for our short form portion of the show:

the wind howls outside
as we snort and gasp for air
all is forgiven

picture: an unfortunately cloudy view of Pico de Papagaio, or Parrot's Peak (check out the link for views of what we could have seen), the second highest peak on Ilha Grande, Brazil, September 2009, cross-processed slide film, Agfa Optima