Bad Blogger!

I have been very disrespectful of my duties as a blogger it seems. So sorry for that.

Of course, that doesn't mean that I haven't been reading all of your blogs, I just can't seem to keep caught up on my own.

I still haven't booked either of my flights (Calg - Hamilton and Toronto - London), as I'm still hoping for some sort of sale. However, as I do know myself, I have come up with a list of minimum requirements for me to buy a plane ticket. As I check places like Flight Centre and Expedia constantly, I know that prices change daily, if not hourly. When I do see a good deal, I tend to sit back and think "Well, what happens if there is a BETTER one tomorrow!" and pass on it, when really, I should've just purchased it.

So, here are my three minimum requirements for me to jump on a good deal:
1) The flight is under $600 for one-way
2) The seat width on the airplane is a minimum of 18" (and I'm not just trying to be a brat about this one.... I just can't fit comfortably in a smaller seat!)
3) No stopovers! (I don't want anyone losing my luggage again!)

I'm still checking daily, and hopefully will see a good one pop up soon!

I have some exciting news to share regarding those red progess bars on the right, but I will save that news until everyting clears. Hee hee.

My grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, and their two children, ages 4 and 8, are staying at my house for the summer. It's very hectic, but my youngest cousin drew me a picture today, and while I may be skipping rope with my hair and wearing a very ugly bright pink dress, it does make up for all the times they scream and yell.

I have a lot of things on my to-do list, and with summer quickly running away, I fear that the lasat couple weeks before I leave are going to be hectic. Very hectic, indeed.

Sorry for such a quick post, I just feel so bad everytime I look at this blog sitting all sad and empty!

Oh, and I'll also do the breakdown of the Seattle trip, in case anyone is hanging on the edge of their seat for that one. Hah.

I'm Ba-Ack!!!

Hello everyone! I'm back from Seattle/Vancouver! It was a great trip, and a lot of fun - not to mention horribly exhausting! Usually when I travel, I'm up at the crack of dawn... but at least I'm in bed by dinnertime! With these people, we were up around 9 or 10, but not in bed until 2 a.m.! Yikes!

Either way, it was a good time. Draining on the bank account, but still good. It was good for my mental health to get out of the city and away from my ever-longer to-do list.

We left Calgary around 8 p.m. and drove straight through to Seattle. We crossed the border just south of Cranbrook. Here is the route that we took:

We added about another 45 minutes of driving by not taking the northern route, but we opted for this route for a number of reasons. First of all, given that it was the long weekend, I imagined that the Trans Canada would have been packed solid. We barely hit another car heading south until we hi the I90. And second, none of us had really seen southern Alberta before. I vaguely remember driving through it, but the countryside was really beautiful.

And of course, lots of local wildlife... Hah. But really, come dusk, the countryside was beautiful: rolling hills and just lots of empty road. It was perfect.

We actually rented a PT Cruiser to get us there. We had originally reserved a Dodge something... but the guy at the auto place said that he was 'upgrading' us to the PT Cruiser. I still hold that they are very, very ugly cars, but it was brand new and worked just fine. It was good on gas, too.
However, it was NOT comfortable to sleep in. I've slept in my fair share of cars, and the back seat of the PT Cruiser was so stiff - good for sitting in, but SO bad for sleeping. I managed to find a couple semi-comfortable spots, but I probably only got about 3 hours of semi-sleep the whole night.

It didn't really matter, though, since the moment we got into Seattle I was full of adrenaline!

Really, Seattle was a beautiful city. I loved the contrast of the ocean, the city line and the mountains in the background. And the mountains were much closer than those from Calgary, so they looked more impressive.

The first day we headed to our hotel and attempted to check-in. Unfortunately they didn't allow check-in until 3 p.m. and it was around 7 a.m. Hah. So my travel buddy did a little flirting and the clerk man said that if we came back at noon he'd find us a room. Silly silly girl.

So we drove around and found a breakfast place, at there, then headed into Seattle. We visited the Aquarium and got to touch some fish! (Yes, we were allowed to touch the fish...)

No, that's not my hand and yes, that's an anemone and a starfish! The anemones felt sticky, but that was really them spiking you with poison! Not very nice, I'll admit. The fish man said that we only feel sticky because the poison doesn't really affect us - we've got something like 7 layers of skin so the poison can't get through. Fish, on the other hand, only have 1 or 2, so the poison stuns them.

After that everyone (except me!) was feeling pretty beat, so we returned to the hotel. We checked in and the three of them promptly fell asleep. I, on the other hand, had an awesomely long, hot shower, sent people e-mails and surfed the web. I work them up about 3 hours later and we all got dressed and headed out to the outlet mall. This was probably the best shopping that I did - I seriously love outlet malls! Had I known that I wasn't going to come back to one I may have bought more crap. All in all I only bought two scarves from Coach. Either way, I love them and I'll take pictures of them later!

We came back to the hotel only to do some research on a good dinner restaurant. We ended up at a fancy little sushi place downtown. It was good sushi... but it was very "white-people" sushi. Things like odd meat and mayonaise sushi, very 'hip'. Some of it was good, but I think I would've preferred good ol' unagi and salmon skin rolls. Mmmmmmm.

After that we got back to the hotel around midnight. This is when we decided to stay the extra day in Seattle. Originally we were supposed to fly out Monday night around 6:15 p.m. from Vancouver. This would've meant that we would've been rushed all day Monday before arriving in Vancouver only to fly right now. We spent the next hour or so on the phone to WestJet changing our flight from Monday to Tuesday morning. They were really good about it, and the change only cost us $30.

The next morning (Sunday), the two other girls wanted to go (back) to Hollister (barf!), so me and one of the girls' bf went to the Pike Place Market.

I love markets. The energy was amazing. It was very crowded, but any market would be on a Sunday. We saw the guys who throw the fish (just look it up), and all sorts of neat shops. We munched on mini-donuts (so good!), beef jerky, the best peaches ever!, and garlic jelly. Yum. I would've loved to buy some bouquets of the flowers that they had there, because they were so beautiful and cheap, but what would I do with flowers? I bought a scarf instead.

I also saw the original Starbucks - which was pretty cool! Note that the logo is different. I could've boughten a unique cup with this logo on it, but then I thought - what am I going to do with yet another travel mug when I don't even drink hot beverages! So I didn't....

We met up with the girls for lunch at this place called the Crab Pot. They do something there called the "Feast" which is what we did. Basically they cover the table with paper, give you all plastic bibs, and dump a giant bowlful of assorted, seasoned fish, sausage and veggies directly onto the table. They then give you a little wooden plank and hammer and a little fork and let you have at it. The prices of the thing were dependent on what kind of fish you had - ours had oysters and scallops and king crab legs. Then we also had corn and potatos and spicy sausage. It was very good and very dripping-with-butter, but it's probably one of the reasons that I now feel ill just thinking about all that damn fish.

After our very filling meal, the gals bf and I wandered over to Pioneer Square and Chinatown to check it out. Pioneer Square was very beautiful - leafy and funky. Chinatown was sketch. Sketch sketch sketch. But that probably has something to do with the fact that we were there on a Sunday night.

After that we returned to the hotel and napped again. We got up about 10:30 or so and headed out in search of food. We didn't really want to do all the way into Seattle again, so instead we drove to the Tulalip Casino. The casino was beautiful on the inside - it'd never really been in a casino that big before! I bought a $10 voucher for the penny slots and left with just that - ten bucks. At one point I was up about $3, but I gambled it away. My friend S won about $20 bucks, though, although her bf lost about $60 on craps (A game I still don't understand). We ate at the 24 restaurant in the casino, and I had an awesome salad (I couldn't bear the thought of eating something heavy again... bleh).

Monday morning was a lot more relaxed. We slept in (a little), got ready, and headed out to do some shopping in Seattle. We visited another mall where the girls went to Hollister... again. (Double barf!), and I went to the Container Store. Seriously, it was like my heaven. If I could have a shopping spree there, I totally would!!

It actually worked out rather well, since they were having a travel sale, and I managed to stock up on lots of Eagle Creek packing cubes for my trip to London. I had bought some at a store here before I left and I just loved them on the trip. It was so great at staying organized! I had one cube for jeans, one for shirts, another for undies and socks, one for toiletries... I could go on and on! But yeah, the container store was marking them down to about 50% of what I was paying here, so I bought about 10 of them. I'm so very excited about using them in the fall.

I also saw a shopping basket there that I had been eyeing online. I love the idea of bringing my own basket to a market, and while it was a good price at the container store, I hesitated because it would be bulky to bring with me. Since the company is dutch/german??, I will probably just buy one there. Either way, I got to play with them and I really like them.

Either way, after we were done at the mall we headed over to a Target store to find out what all the hype was about. The GPS machine got us horribly lost along the way (somehow the GPS thinks that Target was a ranch in rural Seattle...), I wasn't really that impressed with Target. It looks like a Walmart or a Zellers. Yep, don't really know what to make of that.

We packed up at the hotel and I took one last picture out the hotel window before we drove off.

After that we took off for Vancouver. It was a nice drive up, and we only waited about 30 minutes in the customs line, which was way better than what I was dreading!

We arrived in Vancouver and dropped our bags off at a friend's place (they were at work), before we headed to what the friend's bf said was the best Chinese food place in Coquitlam. We ended up there (Now, of course, I can't remember what the name of it is!), and the food was very good. It wasn't westernized Chinese food, it was the original stuff. Think dumplings and noodles and strange meats and steamed veggies. It was very tasty, and a nice experience. As much as I hate to admit it, I really do enjoy the white people deep fried junk. Still good, though.

We drove back to Vancouver and wandered up and down Robson St doing some shopping, but not before our trusty GPS machine drove us right now East Hastings. Yep. That's great. I can't believe it's gotten to such a level! I was in Vancouver about 3 years ago, and maybe I wasn't looking properly - but hasn't it gotten worse? I'd be terrified to walk down that street - hell, it was nerve-wracking driving down it!

Robson St. was okay - nothing really of interest for me. We met up with the friends and drove back to the apartment where we got to sleep around 1:30 a.m. only to wake back up at 4 a.m. to drop the car off and catch our flight. It wasn't the most comfortable of sleep, seeing that I slept on a yoga mat on the floor but still, it was very nice of them to open their house to us.

We caught our flight to Calgary and we arrived, luggage intact, exausted, but very pleased. I promptly went home and slept for about 4 hours.

I'm really glad I went on the trip. I always say that you never really know someone until you travel with them and boy, that is the case. My friend S and I never really had any problems. Her bf started to get on my nerves after a while. He mumbles a lot and is so indecisive it's annoying. And S's friend A and I had some fun, but we're still not super close. I think by the end of the trip I was itching to spend time alone, but I didn't really hate any of them, which is good.

I haven't put together all the expenses for the trip yet, as A put all the gas, the hotel, and the car on her Credit Card and will divy it up and 'bill' me. I have some rough estimates which I will talk about later.

All in all, I enjoyed Seattle. I would probably go back again, but not right now. And I think i'd do it alone, at least for a while. Or with someone who enjoyed the same kind of shopping that I do. Because waiting outside Hollister or Forever 21 for an hour isn't really my idea of shopping. Hah.

Seattle

Okay, so I promised the financial side of my spontaneous Seattle trip, and so here you have it!

Here is what I am budgetting for the trip:

One way flight from Vancouver to Seattle: $165 after taxes and fees
Hotel (2 nights in Seattle): $80
Rental Car: $100
Gas: $80
Food: $150
Shopping: $150

Total: $725

Now, the $300 of shopping and food is completely dependant on how much I want to eat, where we eat, and what kind of stuff I want to buy. The fact that I am moving to London in t-minus 3 months still lingers in the back of my mind, so I tend to disregard most shopping because I wouldn't be able to bring everything that I want to buy with me.

I took out $300 USD today, which cost me just over $310 CAD. Which kind of hurt, since the exchange rate is pretty close to 1:1.

Either way, now it's time to pack!

Seattle... AGAIN

Okay, so now we ARE going to Seattle. OMFG. Make up your minds!!!!!

They called, gave me some $$ stats, asked if I still wanted to come. Wanted to say a big, fat NO initially (just to spite them) ... but said yes. First out of guilt, but now I am glad I said yes, because I am excited.

(And, as a small, midly 'too much information' thought, I am halfway through my 'time o' the month', so all that will be cleared up by weekend, YAY!)

My financial thoughts and budget for this trip will come in the morning. For now, I am tired.

My Pre-Trip spending...

So... seeing as I'm close to reaching my goals.... I thought about the many ways I'll get to spend my pre-trip cash! I'm looking forward to going on a mini-shopping spree, as long as I know exactly what I'm going to buy. There will be no impulse shopping here!

So, some of things that I had planned on using this fund for that I have already purchased (and don't include in the fund).

• Point and Shoot Camera
• Spare battery for DSLR Camera
• Major item of luggage
• External Hard-Drive
• 2 Plug Adapters

So, really, when I think about it, most of the stuff that I had planned to buy I have already purchased. I'm sure as time goes on I will find more things, but for now, these are the things that I'm thinking about:

• Spare battery for Toshiba laptop (assuming that I can get the damn thing fixed)
• Spare battery for new Nikon Coolpix D52 (Point and Shoot that I just bought)
• Packing cubes, Ziplock bags and other small packing accessories.
• Burnable DVD's (storage!)
• Smaller, carry-on luggage
• Rick Steves' travel DVDs and guidebooks (love him!)

At the moment I can't think of anything else, but again, I'm sure I'll find more.

I'm also thinking about what I want to do with the leftover money. I'm debating between putting it into different savings accounts, buying another large-scale item (camera lens or the sort), or use the money for whatever needs I'll have while out in Toronto visiting family.

Is there anything that I've forgotten on this list?? I can't think of anything right now...

Now that I'm really thinking about it, I'm glad I didn't end up going to Seattle... I would've had a lot of fun there for sure, but now, I'm so close to my goals that I can taste it. It's on the tip of my tongue and I can't (freaking!) wait!!!

As well, I'm a bit OCD with trip-planning. I make timetables and shedules and do probably between 80 to 100 hours of planning for every 3 weeks of trip or so. That sounds like a crazy thing to do, but trust me, it'll save you not only cash, but headaches as well. Either way, there wouldn't have been the time to plan enough for Seattle, and I would've ended up following people around, most likely to places and things I didn't care for. $1,000 is a lot to spend on a whim.

I can't wait to do my "Goals Accomplished!" post - and I'm already thinking of more for summer!

I still need to get my computer working again. It's stressing me out and all I want is for it to work reliably and properly. My father said that it should take less than an afternoon for him to walk me through downgrading to XP. (If you can call it downgrading, I'm happily calling it 'being rid of the monster!'). Now all I have to do is pin him down for an afternoon.

I also spent the better half of this evening photographing the items that I'm packing away for my kitchen box(es). I plan to itemize these things into folders and label the boxes appropriately, so that if I ever need an item, I won't have to sort through multiple boxes, I can simply look for a photo (which will eventually be in my Creative Memories photo-database software) and immediately know which box it is in. Yay for neerdy organization!!

Things feel a little more organized, and I'm pleased.

OMG

My laptop just died again..... So now I am updating via my iPod. WTF. Seriously. Punch me in the face. Stupid Vista.

I would hate to have to buy a new laptop because i've barely had this one a year but man, this is just killing me.

Hopefully this will get sorted out soon. I don't care if I lose compatibility with all my fancy crap (webcam, etc), i'm putting XP back on this computer.

I'm also thinking of writing a very strongly-worded letter to Microsoft about all this. Although I'm sure it is all old news to them.

Time to crawl into bed now.

So much for Seattle...

So my friends cancelled our proposed trip to Seattle without any warning or really (in my opinion) any cause. Apparently onw of the girls from the trip had to use up the vacation time that she had earmarked for this trip to visit her fiance who had gotten into a car accident in LA. That's totally fair to me - I would've done the same.

However, now the other girls don't want to go anymore - apparently it's not worthwhile to go with only three people instead of four. I think it is a lame excuse, but it is not my decision. I just wish that they could make up their bleeding minds. I hate this wishy - washy thing! I can't stand it whwn people make serious plans and back out at the drop of a hat.

Needless to say that I'm feeling a mix of anger, frustration, and dissapointment. I'm also feeling relieved since now I don't have to spend upwards of $1000 on some whimsical trip. At the same time, I really wanted to go. Boo.

Seattle

Well, I now have a bit of dilemna... some friends and I had originally planned a trip to Seattle for the Canada Day long weekend, but the plans kind of fell through recently. I had moved on and was planning other things for this weekend, when lo and behold the plans came back into being!

So... I'm going to go to Seattle with them, and it's going to be a blast... but I just haven't budgetted for this trip... yet.

So, here's my dilemna... currently my goals are sitting as follows:
Savings account: $8,193 (still need $1,807)
Pre-Trip Cash: $1,545 (still need $455)

So.... I will be bringing in around another $600 from fast-food job which will cover my Pre-Trip cash and give me about $145 to spare. I currently have $822 in my chequing account and will be getting another $1,100 or so from office-job. This will barely cover my savings account goal.

This is how I planned my month. This way, I would be basically at even at the end of the month and could start new goals next month. So... there's my problem. I'll either have to wait to accomplish a goal and use the cash for Seattle instead, or put everything for Seattle on my credit card, and pay it off next month when I get paid, which I would rather not do.

So far, the plan for Seattle is that we will drive from Calgary to Seattle (12hrs approx) on Friday, June 27th. We will arrive in Seattle Saturday morning sometime, and spend Saturday, Sunday and Monday night in Seattle. One of the gals has to be back in Calgary for 2 p.m. on Tuesday, and so we will fly (Air Canada most likely) back Tuesday morning.

Here's the proposed budget:
Flight: $260
Hotel: $200 (most likely 4-5 of us will share a 1-bed, king size hotel suite and some will sleep on the floor)
Gas for driving there and rental: $120
Transportation while in Seattle: $20
Food while in Seattle: $200 (most likely at least one fancy dinner.)

None of this includes any shopping I'll do, which probably won't be tons. Either way, that adds up to $600. In my opinion, that's a pretty expensive trip, but the airfare makes it much more expensive.

So..... I'm not sure what to do. I'll wait another couple of days to see if any plans get finalized (which they probably won't), but more likely than not I'll be winging it.

So.... now comes the decision. Do I wait to put my money into my savings account and continue to add to my Pre-Trip cash, or other way around??? Ahhh!

And again, I'm lucky since the Canadian dollar is doing so good against the US, that at least I'm not getting nailed in terms of the exchange, but again, I've never been to Seattle. Those of you who live in (or have visited) Seattle, what do you think about the Budget? Too much, too little??

Garage Sale!

Well, the garage sale I had yesterday was a success! I actually grossed about $120 for the whole day, which, funny enough, is more than I would've made working at Subway for the 8 hours that I usually do. But better than that, I actually got rid of a lot of stuff, and a lot of the big stuff. In a way that's actually more satisfying than donating it, as this way, I know someone wanted it and will enjoy it.

The only downside, is comming back into the house after the garage sale and realizing that I still have so. much. crap. So much. I'm still looking at between 5 and 15 boxes of my stuff to pack up, which is so much!

I always wished that I was one of those people that could sell all their stuff and just live out of a backpack forever, and in a way, I will be forcing myself to do that this fall. I won't be giving away my stuff, but I will be leaving it behind. But, the truth is, I love my stuff. I really do. It seems wrong, but it's the truth. My stuff is a big part of who I am. Hmmm..

On the computer front, I seem to have done nothing more than slap a bandaid on a missing limb. Hah. My computer is functionning better, but it's still not up to par. I will still try loading XP onto it later in the summer, but for now, I still have access.

Nothing new to report on the money front, I'm excited to see how close I am to my goals, and my brain is running around thinking of new things to save for once I've accomplished these!!