My friend Flikr

I've started a Flickr account which at the mo is filled with various pics from SF and LA. Just go to Flickr & look for Jules_Maire.

Oh ok just a taster

New name

Helloooo! In honor of my recent hols across the pond I've decided to rename my blog to the above*. 'More on that story later...' as the Dead Ringers version of Kirsty Wark would say. Suffice it to say that I had a most excellent time and that I'm definitely going back once my finances have recovered. I haven't seen my credit card or mobile phone bills yet but I await them with trepidation. Oh and I've put on a few pounds thanks to the unending round of cooked breakfasts and burgers but hope to lose them again soon. I really must get back to that little diet plan I had a while back.

*Now do I change the blog address or leave it as it is? Hmmm. (any thoughts gratefully received)

Toodles!

Ok I'm off. Flying to sunny (I hope) San Fran early tomorrow morning and getting up at dawn's crack. Actually, come to think of it, Dawn's crack won't even be a partly visible cleavage at the top of her hipster jeans at the time I'm getting up. Dawn's crack will be completely hidden in her Bridget Jones stylee knickers at 2am. *groan*

The things we suffer to travel the world, eh?

Although, its not like I'm heading into the deepest, darkest tracts of the Amazon is it so I'll probably get to an internet caff at some point and post something along the lines of "Woo hoo!".

One less worry

The biggest, most pressing thing I was worrying about has gone. Hurrah. I was worried that I needed a Visa and hadn't arranged one but I'm ok. I knew that if my passport was machine-readable I was ok but how could I tell if it was? After a bit of a trawl on the net I found out that if the inside cover (where one's picture is) has a couple of lines of letters, numbers and chevrons at the bottom then it *is* MR. Phew. So now we know.

Had a bit of a rearrange of my packing tonight too. I won't go into details, I won't bore you to death, but I'm more or less done now I think. Just a bit of washing to do and a few bits to pack that can't really be done til the last minute.

And I've got a mission. Well, two actually. One is to bring back a particular chocolate bar, a Zagnut, and the other is to watch a mate of mine being interviewed and check he's slyly inserting certain song titles. Try saying that with a Zagnut in your mouth.

Note to self - must write lists.

Its never as bad as you think

The play went well. Pretty much. Despite my anxiety I managed to get through almost the entire run without a hiccup. Apart from Friday night that is. We usually run from Tuesday to Saturday with plays but with this one, one of the cast couldn't do that Thursday so we did a Monday performance instead. You may be wondering what this has to do with the Friday show not going well. We think it was because we had that break on the Thursday. It interrupted our flow. I'm 99% sure that in all the plays I've done I've never, ever got a prompt during actual performances (a prompt is when you forget your line and the kind soul in the wings with the script has to give you the line). This show was the first time I've ever got one. It isn't good when it happens but I'm glad to say its not quite as horrifying as I imagined. And everyone was a bit pants that night. It wasn't just me. Good job the girls from work couldn't make it after all. They were supposed to come watching me that Friday but two of them were ill and the other two decided not to bother. I was fuming at the time but in retrospect it was probably for the better.

Work hasn't been quite as disastrous as I thought it would be either. A couple of times it wasn't going well but we got through it. Its actually been fairly quiet this last week or so. Phew.

I sometimes like (well 'like' is a bit of a strong term for it) to imagine the worst case scenario with things. That way when the shit hits the fan it can't be as worse as how you imagined. I'm not sure whether this is a conscious decision to worry myself stupid or purely automatic but it works.

Before I discovered travelling abroad all by myself I imagined lots of bad things. The least of which was the plane crashing. Losing my luggage, missing my flight, forgetting something really vital, getting stranded, having to cancel, losing large amounts of money etc. Some of which have actually happened. My luggage has gone awry two or three times now, albeit on the journey home and only between London and Manchester. I was rather late getting to Heathrow once and just made the departure gate in the nick of time. I made an error with a booking (actually it was an error on the website) and lost £500 despite me arguing with the company, consulting ABTA and trying the CAB who were shite. So while I'm not blase about travelling, I'm much less of a worry wort these days. I'm still nervous about this weekend though. On Saturday I fly to San Francisco, the first leg of my hols. I worry that the taxi won't arrive due to a mix up, that I'll have not got a Visa when I really need one (despite me having been *told* that I won't need one), that I'll miss the flight or that it'll be cancelled or delayed due to the weather, that I'll run out of money while I'm there (this did actually happen when I went to Sydney but it was pretty much the last day of my hol). The list is growing rapidly.

Tonight I've had a quick check of my documents and made sure I've got all my tickets, e-vouchers for the hotel, passport. I'm still in the process of packing where I'm just randomly throwing things in my case. At some point I'll take it all out again, matching various things up so that I've got some co-ordinating outfits and such. Oh there's just so much to do. And here I go worrying again.

Did I say I was getting calmer? I think I lied.