The week in review
1. Have consolidated all belongings into shippable and packed for carrying. My return ticket is booked for August 19th, and on the 31st they pick up my belongings.
2. I am vagabonding from place to place, never staying anyplace more than three or four nights so as not to outstay my welcome. This is a pain in the ass, FYI.
3. On Friday, 1330 kids under my direction broke the world record for the Longest Game of Chinese Whispers. We go in the book, unless someone else does it before publication.
4. We've also raised £120,000 for charity, which is not the official total since we're still raising money.
5. Next Friday, I become an unemployed slacker for the foreseeable future. Haven't done that since February 1998. It is both terrifying and exciting.
6. Big moves make me wish I wasn't such a people person. Once I make the decision to move on, the regrets always revolve around missing people, and they have kicked in once again. I'm still moving to Chicago, but now that the wheels are in motion I am both excited to get home to my friends and family in the US and weepy at the thought of leaving the ones here.
7. I never thought I'd get to the stage where I craved settling down so much. Not the whole spouse/kids kind of settling down. I just want to sit on my sofa again, which is exceptionally comfortable and currently being wasted in a storage crate in Eden Prairie. And I want to unpack my stuff and not go anywhere for awhile. I long to be comfortable. Adventure and seeking one's fortune is great, but it is never "comfortable". And that's never bugged me before, but it is now.
8. One of the things I am most looking forward to is going out to dinner with my brother and my youngest nephew the night after I get back to the states. By sheer coincidence, Bob and Nick are in Chicago on a baseball pilgrimage at the same time I'm arriving, and so I step right in to one of the perks of moving to the midwest. Proximity to family. I always enjoy spending time with my brother and his family, and it will be especially fun to see Nick in the midst of a baseball tour - he is a complete geek for all things baseball, and he's on the local Little League all-star team this summer so I'm sure he will have many extremely dramatic tales to tell of saves at the plate and strike outs. Nick is a spinner of tall tales, bless him. He's also the nephew most fascinated by the travelling I do and the urban life I have in contrast to his family's suburban one...he's been fascinated by cities for as long as I can remember, and unless his teenage years are squeezing all the enthusiasm out of him, he will think it's pretty awesome to be visiting me in my new home. Which will make him spazzy and animated even if he IS trying to be cool, which always makes me laugh hard.
9. I'm at a little coffee shop, and a girl just walked past wearing shorts that were so short they looked like denim underpants, or maybe those little denim diaper covers that moms buy their babies to make it look like they're wearing designer jeans. To her credit, though, they did not have a cheek hanging out of the bottom like many of the hotpants wearers do these days.
10. The first thing I'm buying when I get my first paycheck in the US is a Wii system with Wii Fit, Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
2. I am vagabonding from place to place, never staying anyplace more than three or four nights so as not to outstay my welcome. This is a pain in the ass, FYI.
3. On Friday, 1330 kids under my direction broke the world record for the Longest Game of Chinese Whispers. We go in the book, unless someone else does it before publication.
4. We've also raised £120,000 for charity, which is not the official total since we're still raising money.
5. Next Friday, I become an unemployed slacker for the foreseeable future. Haven't done that since February 1998. It is both terrifying and exciting.
6. Big moves make me wish I wasn't such a people person. Once I make the decision to move on, the regrets always revolve around missing people, and they have kicked in once again. I'm still moving to Chicago, but now that the wheels are in motion I am both excited to get home to my friends and family in the US and weepy at the thought of leaving the ones here.
7. I never thought I'd get to the stage where I craved settling down so much. Not the whole spouse/kids kind of settling down. I just want to sit on my sofa again, which is exceptionally comfortable and currently being wasted in a storage crate in Eden Prairie. And I want to unpack my stuff and not go anywhere for awhile. I long to be comfortable. Adventure and seeking one's fortune is great, but it is never "comfortable". And that's never bugged me before, but it is now.
8. One of the things I am most looking forward to is going out to dinner with my brother and my youngest nephew the night after I get back to the states. By sheer coincidence, Bob and Nick are in Chicago on a baseball pilgrimage at the same time I'm arriving, and so I step right in to one of the perks of moving to the midwest. Proximity to family. I always enjoy spending time with my brother and his family, and it will be especially fun to see Nick in the midst of a baseball tour - he is a complete geek for all things baseball, and he's on the local Little League all-star team this summer so I'm sure he will have many extremely dramatic tales to tell of saves at the plate and strike outs. Nick is a spinner of tall tales, bless him. He's also the nephew most fascinated by the travelling I do and the urban life I have in contrast to his family's suburban one...he's been fascinated by cities for as long as I can remember, and unless his teenage years are squeezing all the enthusiasm out of him, he will think it's pretty awesome to be visiting me in my new home. Which will make him spazzy and animated even if he IS trying to be cool, which always makes me laugh hard.
9. I'm at a little coffee shop, and a girl just walked past wearing shorts that were so short they looked like denim underpants, or maybe those little denim diaper covers that moms buy their babies to make it look like they're wearing designer jeans. To her credit, though, they did not have a cheek hanging out of the bottom like many of the hotpants wearers do these days.
10. The first thing I'm buying when I get my first paycheck in the US is a Wii system with Wii Fit, Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
Comments
To wit, my brother who has long been a video game expert (and has a Wii with lots of other ones) will be buying an Xbox just so he can play the fully functioned Rock Band.
If you play Rock Band on Xbox add me to your friends list as lotalota. If you ever play online we can hook up and you can hear the sweet perfection that is Gäsmastêr. I have over 200 of the DLC's too, so no need to play the same stuff over and over again.
While the Wii is alleged to have some downloadable content in the future, the fact that it has a very small hard drive limits it. Quite honestly, I get really sick of playing the disc songs. There is some great stuff I've downloaded that is a lot more fun.