starts and stops

Hi there. I'm home for a few days. The last week and a half has been full of travel. First to Florida for a trip to Disney with my siblings, then to Phoenix to see my grandma and other family. It's nice to be "home" but with most of my belongings packed and the rest scattered around the family room, it's not feeling very homey right now.

So the countdown is on. By this time next week, I'll be in Africa. I leave Sunday for staging. That gives me 3 days left here in Colorado. There is so much to do and so little time to do it. And to make life more interesting, we get an update from PC today saying, by the way, bring a sleeping bag or blanket because we aren't providing those anymore. So I'm now reconsidering my whole packing scheme. Like I needed something else to do!

To top it all off, I'm making an attempt at National Novel Writing Month (NaNo). For those who don't know about NaNo, it's the insane pursuit of writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I've completed it successfully the last two years and it just didn't feel right to not try it this year. While I'm nowhere near my desired 10,000 words for the day, I did hit 3,000. Not bad for only writing 75 minutes. Apparently, I've been itching to write and just didn't recognize it. Hopefully, I'll be able to charge up an extra battery and write some on the plane to Africa. I have no idea what sort of time I'll have once training starts, but it won't be a lot.

So, what does everyone out there want to know? What are your burning questions that I can be thinking about as I pack and prepare to start a new adventure. Tell me what you want to know and I'll do my best to oblige with an answer.

For now, I'm off to bed. I'm a very tired girl and tomorrow is a play date with the Myers kids, a lunch date with Dena, a massage and a kick-off party for NaNo. Not to mention writing another 3,000+ words and finishing packing!