Two days and counting

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I have been trying to pack without alerting Jack to the fact that we are going away. I have to hide the suitcases because if he spots them he starts moping and the looks he gives me are designed to give me a giant guilty conscience and unfortunately it works every time.

It is hard to know what to pack...will the weather be nice? will it be rainey? will it be cold? I’ve been trying to pack enough for seven days knowing that we can stop at a laundromat. Still seven days is a lot of clothes.

A month or so ago I bought the new Microsoft Streets and Trips software that includes the little GPS receiver. I didn't want a Garmin or TomTom because they are expensive and I don't need anything like that to use in the Blazer so $70.00 for the Microsoft thing wasn't that expensive. Taking the laptop of course includes dragging along multitude of cables, cords and accessories not to mention whoever copilots being stuck with the thing in their lap but we would be taking the laptop anyway so we'll see how the nav. system works out.

What is really astonishing is the amount of other extraneous stuff that we need to pack in addition to all the laptop crap. Cell phones -- chargers for both. Ipods -- chargers for both. Cameras -- Charger for Cal's, extra batteries for mine and card reader for both and that's just the things I can remember right now. I know there will be more before I'm done.

When we were planning our trip to Europe, I was able to find from Amazon these zippered cubes that are part of Rick Steves travel stuff. They are in various sizes and I got three for about $17.00. So far I have used them for the electronic stuff and other stuff that I want to keep together as much as possible. I think they are going to work out really well.

I suppose it is silly but I still need to clean the house. I'm well aware that the place will be cat hair city when we get back but at least it'll be clean when we leave. The cats will appreciate that.

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