Just About 12 Days

Sunday, July 23, 2006

12 days until I leave for Miami. I don't leave for Japan until the morning of the 5th but I have to have everything completely packed and ready to go so I count only 12 days and not 14.

I'm realizing just how much time I don't have left. It's crazy. I can't make time go by fast enough and now I wish I had more...that's not true. I still can't make time go fast enough but I just need to get on the ball and finish what I started so that I don't have any loose ends lying around.

I have to finish up the home movies that I'm making into DVDs which is taking WAAAAAY too long (story of my life...one of them) and I also wanted to copy all my DVDs so that I can just take a CD spool with me instead of all the boxes and then worry about shipping them back home when I'm done and making sure they don't get scratched or broken. If I make copies, I can just leave them in Japan and not worry about them. I've also heard that it's harder to ship things back here from Japan than it is to ship things to Japan. Or so I've been told.

I packed one of my suitcases. You should see them, their huge!!! Will post pictures when packing is complete. Right now it just looks like a mess. I have two suitcases, one aqua and one pink. This way, I'll never had to look very hard to find my luggage among the black bags on the conveyor belt. The aqua one is 28" and the pink one is 26". I can only hold 70lbs each and after packing the larger of the two already, it ended up being 74lbs. Damn. I might be a small person, but it's still difficult to pack my life into 140lbs!!! I'm going to have to ship things via Sea Mail which is going to get pricey really quickly. It's no longer a matter of space but an issue of weight. It didn't even need to sit on my suitcase to get it to close and it's almost too heavy to lift! Besides, I don't trust my scale. I have it down to 67lbs now but I really hope that's the truth! I don't want to get to the airport and have it refused.

I also haven't gotten as many pictures of American things as I would have liked. I never did make it to Old Navy to pick up the July 4th sale stuff and I still haven't gotten my web cam to work, not because it's broken but because I haven't taken the time to figure it all out!!! I'm sure it's not that difficult.

Lastly, as emotions go, I'm not feeling the way that I've been expecting to feel. If I think really hard about it, I'll probably get sad over leaving everyone but it's not the first thing on my mind right now. I'm not excited either. I am to an extent but I'm not losing sleep like I thought I would be. I mean, I've only been waiting for this for...what...4 years?! I've lost sleep over it before and now, nothing. Before important trips, I usually have dreams about leaving suddenly without having packed properly and being completely off guard. They aren't the pleasantest of dreams but their actually normal and I've even dreamt about leaving to go to Japan before because it was such a large focus for me but now, I don't dream about any of it! As if it's suddenly something I'm not worried about. And I'm not! I have no worries about leaving things here that are important and that's crazy! I guarantee you that I'll forget something super important, I always do! Besides, you don't get a more important trip than this one.

Though I'm not reacting the way that I normally do, I'm still expecting this calm to crash down on me in the last week that I'm here (next week...) Right now, I'm just in work mode. I need to get things done. I have projects that need to be finished and loose ends that need to be tied up, like my bank accounts. I have a savings account that needs to be closed and moved to my checking so I have emergency money that is accessible to me in Japan. I don't expect to need it, but you never know. Better to have it than not.

Again, this is just the calm before the storm.