Today was my work from home all day day. So much to do. We are trying to deal with all the last minute errands that can’t be handled any other way today. We don’t know if I will be getting another day at home during the week until we leave for New York and on to Europe. This is when you know that it is the home stretch, now we hit the “last” of everything before we go. We leave Texas one week from today. One week. I can’t believe it.
I worked on getting the bills paid today. Our tax return money has come in. That was one of the big items that we were really concerned about. Having that resolved before the trip is a huge weight off of our minds (and our banks’ minds.) So today we paid one of our big credit cards to zero. Whoo hoo! And we paid pretty much all of the other outstanding bills too. Boy does that feel good. Our finances have been really worrying us for this trip and they are still going to be really rough but this is the difference between rough and “what are we going to do?”
Dominica ran out to do trip shopping this morning. She went to IKEA to get some new luggage after having tested our old luggage the last few days and determining that it was not going to do. One of the pieces of good luggage that she had hoped to have used was partially eaten by the rat so that made using what we already had a little harder than expected. We can fix that luggage by replacing the wheels but we can’t do that anytime soon.
Verizon decided to take a stab at solving the European mobile phone problem again today (after I posted on Twitter about how we had to find another provider after twenty years with Verizon over something so trivial) and, after an entire day of trying, they did finally come through with a solution and Dominica has a replacement HTC Droid Incredible 2 World Phone shipping out already. We are supposed to have the replacement Android phone on Friday morning and she will still be eligible to move to an iPhone in late June as originally planned. That was the last big hurtle solved.
For lunch today I was at Brookhaven with John. I haven’t seen him since he left the office so we hung out for a while. The weather was perfect for hanging out outside at Brookhaven. We sat right on the golf course and it was warm but overcast.
After work the family went to YogurtLand and got dessert. Then Dominica decided that since we were out and since the phone issue was resolved (it got finally resolved while we were at the yogurt place and I was stuck standing outside getting the details figured out) that we should run back up to IKEA so that she could get a second piece of luggage like the one that she got this morning because it is so perfect for our trip. It is a convertible rolling bag and backpack so that we will have some flexibility in how we use it. So we ran up to Frisco and she made a quick dash into the store and back with the luggage. She was incredibly fast, maybe little more than ten minutes with Liesl, Luciana and I waiting in the Acadia for her.
One week until we leave and the big items are figured out. Not too much to worry about at this point. Just have to get all of the work items wrapped up and my school work all done so that we are clear to go.