Scrapbooking and Trip Prep

I'm makin' waffles!

Sadly I could not don the shirt that reinforced such a proclamation. No, for it was far too hot for such a shirt. In the screened off outside I poured batter, worked machines, and transferred finished products into an oven set for two hundred. Forty minutes it took from batter mixing to plating to get four waffles cooked. No sane family would ever make waffles. If I ever want them again, I will ensure to obtain two to four waffle makers. Doing them in bulk? That I could handle. The only type of person I could see doing this is the stay at home parent who gets up early, and has lunches to pack while the breakfast cooks.

Still – there's something good about mashing up half a pineapple, and chunking a bit more to make a tasty treat. Waffles are the best place to get rid of fruit closing in on its final deadline. I've heard jello is a good hiding place too, but I wouldn't know of that – I'm too impatient to wait for it to set, and the ice cube quick set method listed on the back of the box? It's never worked for me.

Today was just a day to get some final things sorted out. While Katherine stayed behind to read, and not-do-yoga, I headed to the library to finish uploading my pictures to facebook so as people I've not talked to in years – and two people whom I'm not sure who they are, but have been on my friends list since two thousand and seven (they mystery of whom they are – same university, and they're friends with each other – was too great to cast aside.) - can see me travelling around the world. They can also see close to one hundred pictures from wrestling now.

The pain of getting them up yesterday was gone. As soon as I saw the small out of the way link for the Java photo unloader I was golden. The new one? No good. You just select photos and upload. Heaven help you if you have any in portrait, you'll need to rotate them all by hand – the old one lets you rotate the thumbnails quickly all at once.

But never mind this.

During the uploading process I had no more Scotty P to read, however I did manage to upload more blogs, get the photos added to those, an write a new entry while waiting. Closer and closer I come to completing the back log of entries that has haunted me since I stepped away from Port Charlotte. Luckily, now that I'm back the days have become far less interesting, consumed with television, and books, and eating. So much eating. Meals are not the annoyances that get in the way of the things I'd rather do. No, meals are the thing that I'd rather do – the things that let us know time is passing. I know, I'm disgusted too.

Still – it could be worse, we could be going to fast food places, rather than just making sandwiches, and what not.

After the library I headed back, and we had to take a look at our plan to make our way across America. We are a week behind, even though we cut the week off in Boston. Florida has taken longer, and we've added a day here (D.C.), while removing a day there (A.C.)

Now that we know how we travel, we can make a better guess of how long it will take us to get from point A to point B. For the most part, the next two weeks on the road have been mapped out. They'll take us through Louisiana, through to Texas, out into the middle of nowhere to find aliens at Roswell, continuing on until we hit Vegas. There are other stops – of course – but that's the general path we'll be taking. Fourteen hour days of driving, as originally planned, have been split up. Surely we'll find something of interest along the way. And if not – well then, we'll make up a day here and there.

Both of us are itching to leave the comfort of Port Charlotte, but at the same time have become quite used to it. A coin toss, so to speak, will determine when we leave. Vegas – we're looking to go there on a weekend, and see a Penn and Teller show. Tomorrow we'll head to the library and check out if we can grab tickets for the show, and also a place to stay. If going a weekend following saves money, then the die is cast and we spend one more terrible (read: relaxing) week here (I'll try to think of some things to do to get us out of this town) otherwise, we have just one final day...

It's hard to say how it will turn out, but here's hoping. Once Vegas is planned, everything else will slowly start to fall into place. Pretty soon after that will be the long, oh so very long, crawl up the California coast. And then? Then we're almost home. It will be August soon – who saw that coming?

It seems like, even though it was in the title, I didn't talk about scrapbooking. That was done too.