It takes time, and other things too, I'm sure...

I'm happy to say that I'm going to take a vacation in a few months. The last few vacations I've been on have been to San Diego or Los Angeles to visit friends; and they've always been in conjunction with my partner Rich's work conferences. They've been fun, but they haven't truly been a vacation. So when our friend Tyler told us that he wanted to go to Europe for his 40th birthday and wanted us to come along, we said yeah, why not?

That was over a year ago that he mentioned it, and we're not leaving for another 7 months, but it wasn't until last week that it really became real for us. We actually bought our tickets. We're flying out of Austin on May 1st and landing in Chicago where we will meet up with Tyler. From Chicago we are flying to Brussels and staying there for just a day. After that we begin our tour of Europe... we'll be all over the place. For a month.

So yeah... I've never been to Europe before and I don't even really know how to plan a vacation of this magnitude. I'm kinda making a list, and it so far looks like this: save money. get passport. save more money. think about lodging. save a little more money. pack some clothes. save money. find a house sitter. do something with money or something...

This is pretty much how I like to handle things though... I want to make sure that I have things in place when we leave to take care of the house, I want to be sure we have safe places to stay on our trip, and I want to be sure that I have enough money saved up to be able to pay bills when we get back as well as enjoy ourselves a whole lot during this trip. I'm pretty sure I can make it happen... this is going to be a learning experience.