BlArgRrrRthGRRunnDpk

Today I am guaranteed to be the living dead. Or like the living dead, as I was in bed after one in the morning, but up at the usual 6:52 am. But it was so. worth it.

Lemme start earlier in the day. Yesterday, to be specific. I'm at work, feeling like I'm half there, like I've been up for 34 hours when I haven't, keeping productive but it's a bit of a struggle, you know. The usual. And then: my sister calls from her temporary jobbish thingsmadoo at a travel agency with stories of finding a magical ticket to Australia at an obscenely low price. A year ticket for less than the cost of a three month ticket (increased flexibility), flying with Qantas (king of the skies with excellent food, so I'm told), flying into the city we want, and out of this other city, where we are finishing our trip. It's cheaper than if we got a round trip out of one city, which is totally not even what we wanted, so it's perfect.

So, I got excited. Really excited. I knew I had permission from R to pick up the ticket that my sister found for us, knowing that she's working hard for us and there's no way on this green earth that we'd ever do better, so despite the fact that I couldn't really contact him, I could do this. Although it was a bit weird to be all ' Hi honey! How was work? Mmmm hmm, mmm hmmm, oh that's good. That's nice. Oh, also? I bought non-refundable tickets to Australia! Hope you don't mind! You owe me lots of money! He was stoked, so it's cool, but that's a big purchase to make without explicit permission. phew!)

If. If I didn't want to wait for air Japan to come out with tickets, which they may not do. This means no layover in Japan, Hawai'i, Fiji and the like, which would have been so cool, but how greedy should I really be?. Hmm. Also, no waiting for United, but that's no big screaming deal as they don't have cool layovers and couldn't possible do much better for price. Waiting would have been like saying "well, this miracle is pretty cool, but since I just experienced a miracle, I will wait for an even bigger one to come my way, since clearly that's how it works".

So I bought the tickets. I bought the tickets! We're going to Australia! For reals, ask my credit card! (whee PC points!). Aus-tra-li-AH! Aus-tra-li-AH! It felt like I had slept all night! It felt like I suddenly remembered the feeling of optimism! I felt...happy. Which is mostly cool, but it was a stark reminder that maybe if feeling so good was a surprise, that maybe I'm not feeling that good enough. Not saying I need to spend thousands (or a thousand and some hundreds) to feel good (I'm looking at you Paris) but dang, I should at least remember the feeling. Whatever, I'm on a shopper's high and I'm so excited. It's like planning becomes so much more real and tangible once you know where your start and your end is. We've already spent some of the budget, so now that we know how much is left, where do we want to go? How much is that? How long here then there? What gear do we need/want? Why is my foot itchy? So many questions!

Our tickets are for May 24 to August 24, but if we get jobs or win the lottery or some such thing, we can extend up to a year, paying only the ticket change fee of $200, thanks to the year ticket. Sweet. So. That was superb and it has spilled over to make this day for me too. Darn those electronic tickets! I half love that I can't lose it, but I half want the tangibility of something in my hand, to covet and place my hopes and dreams on.

So that's really eexciting. This will once again morph into a travel blog come the spring/summer, full of half formed sentences, typos to the max, and hopefully an interesting story or two.

My OTHER news is cool too, so I'll post another, since this one is long in itself! Yay happiness! I hope it spills over and you have a happy day too.

cheers :-)