Seattle Nerves

Pearl Jam has been my favorite band since 1992. As soon as I heard Eddie Vedder's beautiful, emotional voice, I was in love (with both him and PJ). I saw them live for the first time in 1992 and it quite literally changed my life and it changed who I was (I know that sounds melodramatic, but it's true). So this band means a lot to me. I've seen them many time since then, and every time it's a religious experience for me.This year, I'm taking TJK to Seattle to go see them and I am so excited about it.

Excited to see them play in their hometown, but also excited to go on a little adventure with just the two of us. The Home Shows, as they are being called, are apparently taking over Seattle. The shows' proceeds are being used to fight homelessness in Seattle, so there are a million companies partnering with PJ: Theo Chocolates came out with a Home Shows chocolate bar (I got 2; they are delicious), Heritage Distilling Company is making a Home Shows bourbon (I got a bottle, can't wait for it to get here so I can get white girl wasted on PJ bourbon), Georgetown Brewing is introducing a Home Shows Pale Ale (you can't get this by mail, so I'll be hunting this down once we get to Seattle), Starbucks has a PJ Spotify playlist that they are playing in all (all, not just Seattle) Starbucks stores, and so on and so on. So this isn't just a concert, it's a city-wide extravaganza. I am so happy to be a part of all of this and it feels totally bucket-list. I'm especially happy to be doing this with TJK.

TJK and I have a whole weekend of stuff planned (I actually think we have three weeks of Seattle planned for the two and a half days we will be there, but whatever). We will go to museums and PJ parties and the market and two concerts and and and and and. And, here's the thing: Hubby usually plans all of that stuff out. He is great at timing everything and figuring out how we will get from one place to the next and what time we need to leave X to get to Y so we can be at Z on time. Me? I'm best at researching where to go, what to see, what cool shit is off the beaten path that TJK will get to Snapchat and make her friends jealous.

So I'm a little nervous. We are staying at an Air BnB for the first time and I am so psyched about it - but nervous too, because it's something we have never done so I don't know how to do it and it's gonna be just me. We have timed tickets for three things in one day, but schedules are not my thing and there's no one to keep me on track. We have to get to and from the airports, lugging our bags and lifting them to the overhead compartment. I like to think I am too dainty for heavy lifting of that sort. We have to walk from the Air BnB to the concert, and back. I am nervous we will get lost, or harassed because we are two chicks by ourselves late at night.

With all that said, with all of my doubts and ridiculousness, I know this will be a big triumph. I travel alone when I go away on business and I am perfectly fine. Turns out I am not very dainty at all and can lift the shit out of a carry-on bag full of shoes. I have a good sense of direction and love wandering around alone when I have non-work time on those trips. It's just, I'm spoiled by Hubby taking care of all of this for me. He does so much for me that I take for granted, and the truth is that it is nice to prove to myself that I can do it alone. And, it'll be even better to be able to show TJK that WE can do it ourselves. Two badass bitches in the PNW, ready to do all the things. Sisters are doin' it for themselves.

Where I'm Going in 2017

It's official. I'm going stir crazy in Jersey.

Yes, we do lots of stuff. We are out and about every weekend and most weeknights doing this or that. Whether it's an exhibit at a gallery in NYC or checking out a new brewery or simply going to the movies and dinner, we are people who do not know how to rest. We go all the time. So it's not like I'm bored or stagnant.

I just want to pack a bag and hit the road and leave life behind for a few days. That is what keeps me going.

The last trip I went on was to Belize and Honduras in November, so it's been only 2 months...but our next trip isn't till April so I am getting cranky about being home instead of somewhere that gets me going. I think all of our major trips are planned for the year (we always throw in some little long weekends here and there, and those are still in the planning stages). So here's what's on deck:

April: Chicago for a few days, and then Grand Rapids, Michigan for a few days. This might not thrill some people, but I happen to ADORE Chicago and can't wait to check out the beer scene in Grand Rapids. And TJK is super excited because her major bucket list goal is to go to all 50 states. She has been to more states than most adults, so she is well on her way. She has been to Chicago already, but she has never been to Michigan...plus we will have the drive through Indiana as well so she'll get to check off 2 new states (and Michigan is a new one for me, too!). It may be a little chilly in April, but I am looking forward to being in Chicago off-season and enjoying the architecture, the Bean, the Art Institute, and the deep dish pizza! And, for the kiddo who wants to be a rocket scientist, a trip to the planetarium will be stellar. In Grand Rapids, we will mostly do beer stuff, but I'm also excited to see the Ai Wei Wei exhibit at the Frederik Meijer Gardens, too.

May: CUBA! Hubby and I are going to celebrate our anniversary by finally taking the trip to Cuba that I have been wanting to take forever. I am SO excited about it, and hope we can get this trip in before Our Cheeto President decides to undo all the progress we have made with Cuba. We will spend a few days in Havana and then a few days in other areas of the country. It will be an intense trip, as it is a people-to-people trip where you spend time learning about the culture, art, music, cigars, farms, etc. I love that kind of stuff so I am really psyched to do it. Hubby prefers to sightsee on his own (as do I, honestly, but I know it's not an option yet in Cuba), so he may struggle with the itinerary but I think it's going to be life-changing for us. I wish TJK could come along, but it's a very expensive trip so she's going to have to wait a few years till prices come down. In fact, our other trips this year are less-than-fantastic because of the cost of this trip, so I hope that putting off Budapest another year is worth it!

June: Captiva Island. We went last year with some friends, and while they can't go again this year, we decided it was so much fun and so relaxing that we wanted to do it again. We are staying at the same gorgeous resort and can't wait to lie on the beach and look for shells and drink frozen drinks and eat at great restaurants and basically chill for a week.

August: Toronto. We had planned to go to Toronto last year and then replaced it with Vancouver and Whistler. I was happy about that choice, and now I am happy to be going to Toronto. We are going to drive up there, which hubby loves and I dread, but it'll be fine. We will stop at Niagara Falls since TJK has never been there (and it's been a longggg time since we have been there at all) and spend the night before heading to Toronto the next day. I am kind of excited about our hotel room there - we got a suite that overlooks the Falls. It should be awesome. I have to admit that I don't remember too much about Toronto so it's going to take some research to figure out what there is to do there. We will definitely hit the Hockey Hall of Fame, which I remember loving.Other than that...I'm not quite sure yet, but it'll all come together.

November: Pittsburgh, possibly. We are waiting on this one until we get the Steelers' schedule for next year. We always do something for Teacher's Convention weekend, and we are hoping they will have a Sunday 1pm game at home that weekend so we can drive out on Thursday and come home Sunday night. If the game doesn't work out, I have no idea what we will do. Maybe Vermont again? Maybe Maine again? I think it'll be somewhere we can drive (trying to cut those costs due to Cuba), and I think we have seen everything within driving distance! (Which, truly, is a good problem to have).

All in all, a pretty good year. Not as exotic as I usually like, but I'm dialing everything else back so we can go to Cuba. Next year is a big anniversary for us, so we have already planned to go to Hawaii to celebrate. That's where we went for our honeymoon and it was so wonderful. We can't wait to show it all to TJK and see how it has changed over the years. The only downside is that, again, it's a big and expensive trip so everything else will be scaled back. I'm thinking that will keep me from Budapest (again) and Scotland (where I'm dying to go to see my family!), and it will also keep me from swimming with the piggies in the Exumas. But maybe 2019 will have us going to all three of those dream locations!

I'm Planning to Win A Billion Dollars

So. I did not win $800 million in Saturday's Powerball drawing. Bummer. The good news is that no one won, so that sucker is now up over a BILLION DOLLARS. I have some of the money well spent already: firstly quitting my job, of course, and then on to the shopping. But the funny thing I realized as I thought about how I'd spend the money is that sure, I'd buy some new purses and shoes and all that stuff. And a Porsche. But the main thing my mind goes to is that with that much money, I could just travel the world forever and experience everything this earth has to offer.

That's when I realized that although I like "stuff" (as evidenced by my recent Konmari purge, which is still ongoing but has thus far resulted in my donating over 150 t-shirts...and I still have two drawers full that I'm keeping), I value experiences most of all. If you gave me a billion dollars (or even a thousand dollars), my first thought would be, "Where can we go?"

We are planning a trip to Captiva Island in the Spring with TJK's friend and her mom. As I looked at all the resort has to offer, I realized that this was a trip that would be full of experiences and not stuff. We can parasail. We can watch dolphins and manatees. We can watch one of the world's best sunsets from the deck of a yacht while sipping cocktails. The girls can take photography lessons, or mermaid-swimming lessons, or trudge through the muddy sand at the tide line for creatures who make their home there. With memories like those, do I really need a t-shirt to commemorate it? Does TJK need another stuffed animal? What more would we need, other than the photographic documentation of it all?

As I thought about all that money and what I'd do with it, my immediate answer was: this trip. At $132,000 per person, it's a trip I could only dream of being able to experience. And there are four amazing trips there to consider...all clocking in at over $100k per person. And what I love most about it is the experiences it would offer: flying on a private jet and staying in Four Seasons resorts would be experiences all their own, and hitting that many countries with that many sights to see...wow. And yes, I'd shop my wallet dry in the markets of Istanbul and Marrakesh, but the things we'd see and experience would outweigh nearly anything we could buy.

So while I can't see myself ever being able to afford that kind of travel (unless the gods of the lottery see fit to bestow me with a gift of $1b...which would be more than lovely), I can look at my own travel experiences, no matter how small or big, with the same eye to enjoy the moments. Get into the lifestyle of the place I'm visiting. Eat good food. Dance. Swim, Take chances and capture the memories.

A BearWolf Attacked Us in Asheville

I am petrified of nature. Like, I hate and am afraid of 98% of everything the outdoors has to offer. I don't like bugs or wild animals or dirt or walking on dirt with bugs flying at me and the threat of wild animals attacking at every turn. It's just not my thing. I am a city girl through and through. But about a year ago, my husband and I went to Denver and took a side trip to Rocky Mountain National Park. We stayed just outside the park in a lovely little town called Estes Park, in a lovely little cabin surrounded by woods and a creek and real live elk. Of course, the cabin was luxe and had all the amenities I could ever want, but I did enjoy that cabin in the woods. I even enjoyed watching the elk as it was mating season and the dynamics were fascinating. The male was in charge, sure, and he would bellow to keep his harem in line. But then you'd see one female roll her eyes at him and another female would be like, hell yeah, I'm eye rolling too, this guy is just too much. And they would stand up and walk away. He'd yell and yell but they'd just keep walking and there was nothing he could do. I mean, he still had like 50 more ladies in his crew so he wasn't suffering, but it was kind of empowering to see the ladies say, I've had enough of your yelling and I'm out.

When it was time to pick a place to stay in Asheville, we looked in the city itself at some of the more upscale hotels, and we also looked in the mountains for a pretty, remote place to stay. I agreed to stay in the mountains (in a 3 bedroom cabin with a wall of windows overlooking the view, 2 hot tubs, 3 full bathrooms, a flat screen tv over the fireplace, and a game room with a pool table...so trust me, we were not roughing it) because I had a good experience in the Rockies so I was willing to try it again.

To jump to the end of the story - I loved the cabin, I loved the woods, I loved the whole experience of coming back there at night and sitting in front of the fireplace under blankets with my family and watching a movie, and waking up in the morning to a house filled with natural light and a view of utter gorgeousness. It was really delightful. But back to the beginning of the story...

We got to the cabin at about 11pm, and it was dark as hell up there. This cabin was wayyyy up on the mountain, and only part of the road was paved. So for about 25 minutes of the 40 minute drive up, we were on a one lane, unpaved, edge-of-cliff road. In the pitch black dark. This was the route on the GPS, to show you how windy and remote this road was:

Who creates roads that curves and twist and jackknife like this? Mountain people, that's who, to torture city folk.

 We get to the cabin and need a flashlight to get from the car to the front door. It is that dark. I can't see if a bear or deer or mountain lion is about to eat me, and I am petrified. The front door has a light on, which is great, except that since it is the only light for miles, it has attracted every moth in Western North Carolina (WNC, they call it. The people call it that, not the moths. I was too afraid of the moths to ask them what they call it.). We fight the moths off and get into the cabin. Whew, it's really nice and the internet didn't lie when it said this was a great place to stay. We check out all the rooms, and I check every pocket of space for squatters who could be holed up there for the winter and find none, so I'm happy. Yep, I'm that brand of crazy.

I go into the bedroom to change into my jammies and I hear Hubby and TJK's voices raise a bit. I listen carefully through the wall and hear them talking about some kind of bug in the kitchen. I try not to freak out - I mean, we have bugs in NJ too and you can just throw your shoe at them and it's all good. Or you can be like TJK and usher them gently out the window or door so they can go haunt someone else's life. Anyway, I start to come out of the bedroom and TJK comes running in and tells me not to come out.

"You don't want to see what's out there, Mommy. You won't like it."
"What is it? What kind of bug?"
"It's a spider but not the normal kind, it's like the kind you see in books."
"How big is it? Like scary big?"
She nods. "Yeah, its like this big," and she puts her forefingers and thumbs together to make the biggest circle I've ever seen.
"You're exaggerating."
"No, I'm not. I came in here to stop you from seeing it because I know you will freak out, but if you don't believe me, go look for yourself."
"No thank you, I have chosen to believe you and will stay in this room. Is Daddy killing it?"
"Daddy says it's too big to smoosh and he doesn't know what to do with it. If he tries to hit it and misses it might jump on him and bite him and he'll die of poisoning. So he is going to trap it under something and then figure it out. I need to go help him, bye," and with that she left me alone to imagine myself covered in bugs and scratching myself like crazy,

So eventually, they got the thing under a glass, onto a plate, and flung him off the deck into the woods. Of course, I couldn't sleep all night because I was sure he was angry and had made his way back into the house to eat my face while I was sleeping. Thankfully this did not happen and I still have my face.

The next morning, the cabin was filled with light and the view was stunning. We could see the mountains in the distance, the changing leaves on the trees, and no one else around for miles. As long as I didn't remind myself that if I was murdered up there, no one would hear me scream or find my body, I was truly in heaven. TJK and I went out on the deck and just stood in awe of the beauty of the scenery, and then talked about whether we could live in a place like this if hand-sized spiders didn't exist.

All of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye I see a huge beast making its way towards us. It wasn't lumbering, as you would have expected of a bear that was going to eat you, but it was more barreling towards us like a big fuzzy freight train with an appetite for human flesh. We both screamed bloody murder and I grabbed her and ran into the house, trying to shut the door before the animal could make a solid breakfast out of us. Then I see Hubby's face - rolling his eyes and laughing at us from inside the glass doors, and I can't imagine why he thinks it is funny that we just barely escaped being murdered.

TJK and I turn back to see the beast we have just escaped, only to find that it was not a bear at all, but a big, fluffy dog that has now rolled over on her back so we can rub her belly. My heart is still racing and I start laughing, and TJK yells at the mutt, "I THOUGHT YOU WERE A WOLF! THAT WAS MEAN!"

The picture is facing this way because she was legit just laying on her back the whole time begging to be massaged. She looks like neither bear nor wolf, in reality.

We pet the dog for some time and fell in love with her. We found out from her tags that her name was, in fact, Bear. So I was kind of right that a Bear tried to eat us except that instead of "eating us" she "forced us to pet her by being cute." Same, same. And also, she has one brown eye and one light blue eye, which means she was really part wolf or at least part Siberian Husky so TJK says, same, same.

We didn't see any wildlife after that - not a squirrel, nor a chipmunk, nor bear nor wolf nor tarantula. The only wildlife we saw were birds, and me drinking a lot of beer and dancing a bit. Which is the only kind of wildlife I really like: myself.

All in all, I did love the cabin and I loved Bear and I loved the mountain and I did not love the spider but I got over it mostly. And I can't wait to go back.

2016 Travel Plans

Again I feel the need to map out some travel plans for 2016, so I'm taking to this here blog to get some ideas out:

• Portugal
• European cruise (would love something in the south of France/Morocco...or something in South America instead?)
• Dublin to Shannon via the North (vs the South route we took the last time)
• Maybe a long weekend to the Exumas in the Bahamas for Spring Break
• Maybe a long weekend/5 day trip to San Diego

And then Summer 2017 will be maybe a 2 week (maybe 10 day?) trip with M&S to Paris and perhaps elsewhere in France.

Travel Plans and Hopes and Dreams

We are *almost* done traveling for 2015. Just one more road trip coming up, which is going to be out of my comfort zone a bit. We are going to the Carolinas to stay in a cabin in the woods. Now, when I say "cabin" please don't misunderstand me. I found a cabin with a huge wall of windows looking out over the mountains, a pool table in it's game room, and a  hot tub. All just for me, Hubby, and TJK. I'm looking forward to it, just from the standpoint of getting away and relaxing. That's in November...and then we have nothing planned going forward. I HATE that. I need travel to look forward to.

To recap 2015, we went to:

• San Antonio
• Vermont
• Philly (more of a weekend away, but still)
• London
• Liverpool
• Iceland
• Ohio for the Football Hall of Fame inductions
• Bahamas
• Mexico (Cozumel and Costa Maya)
• The Carolinas

Some places I would really love to look into going in 2016:

• Portugal
• Budapest
• Istanbul/Cappadocia, Turkey
• South American cruise
• Northern Ireland (Dublin across the north to Galway)
• Cuba
• San Diego (one of my favorite places ever)
• Napa Valley with the 'Bombs
• New Orleans
• Quebec Ice Hotel
• European cruise (Spain to the south of France, or the Greek Islands)
• Hawaii
• Pittsburgh (to take TJK to a Steelers game)
• The Exhumas in the Bahamas (to swim with pigs!)

Obviously there is no way we can hit all of these, but I always like to make a wish list and then wherever we don't get next year, we can consider for the following year.

And a couple of longer-term ideas for perhaps 2017:

• The Galapagos Islands
• Norway cruise
• Paris and Giverny with TJK, Hubby, Shar, and Momo
• Scotland

And for 2018, which is a big wedding anniversary for us, so I'm hoping to do it big:

• African safari
• Hawaii  (if we don't get there before, since our honeymoon was there and I'd love to show it all to TJK)