I'm a bit emotionally spent at the moment so am not up for giving details, but here's how creativity hit me tonight. For those of you know know what she's been going through, let's just say things have taken a turn for the worse the past few weeks. Now we just need the strength to get through this and come to an agreeable solution that will be beneficial to her health. And since the brunt of this will be on my shoulders, let's hope we dont' kill each other since I don't have Andrew's patience.

More trip plans

So on Friday I commented about not knowing how we were going to deal with the whole camping aspect of going to Scotland. I started thinking of the various options- bring our own gear with us, ship stuff to the UK office, ask people from the UK office if they had anything we could borrow, buy new while we're there... None of these seemed like good options.

I posted on the James forum about my quandary. One person offered that if I wanted, I could have stuff shipped to her, and she would bring it along. Nice offer, but probably not something I would choose to do- sending things to a random stranger. And then someone else mentioned about Tangerine Fields.

This is the best option yet! You book through them and you get a tent, air mattress, and brand new sleeping bags. When you're done, you can take the sleeping bag with you, or if you leave it, they'll donate it to charity. Also, they do all the set up and take down of your tent. This certainly isn't an option I would choose had we actually been living in the UK, but it's perfect for us since we'll be flying. So I booked a tent package this morning.

Hmmm, what's next on the planning list?

I've started to look at flights, and they're all ridiculously expensive. We'll probably fly in and out of different cities- either fly into Edinburgh and out of London, or vice-versa. However, finding direct flights to Edinburgh, or anywhere near there, is proving to be impossible. And like I mentioned, everything is crazy expensive. Flying RT from the same city doesn't really help anything.

And realizing that we're going to have to pay for a rental car to be parked for 3 days while we're at T seems like a waste of money, but otherwise we're not going to have anywhere to stash the rest of our luggage. I'm somewhat concerned about leaving a laptop in the car for 3 days as well, but not too much we can do about that. I know I'll need it for back-up for my photos. I'm sure I'll be taking way more pictures in 2 weeks than my memory cards will hold.

Active Weekend

So skating has been a lot of fun lately. Although my waltz jump is still really sucky, my teacher has realized that I'm better than the other students on other things. So last weekend she taught me to do a spread eagle, and then yesterday she had me doing a lunge and a 3-turn simultaneously. Yeah, not so easy. And I was doing so many lunges that I'm in a bit of pain today.

But then since the weather has been so nice (upper 50s, low 60s) Chris and I went for a bike ride today. Only about 6 miles, but that was enough. I don't think we've been on our bikes since we went to Acadia back in August.

Too bad tomorrow it's supposed to snow. I guess we're back to winter for a bit longer. too bad the garden didn't get that memo. I've got bulbs popping up all over the place.

Mel, you can call me crazy now...

So a week and a half ago when I first mentioned it to Chris, he seemed to think I was crazy. I guess somewhere along the lines I wore him down. Would have been cheaper if he had said yes a week ago though. :)

James is playing at T in the Park in Scotland in July. If I had gotten tickets last week when they first went on sale, we might have just been able to get a ticket for Saturday. However, he didn't approve the purchase a week ago, so tickets sold out, without me getting any. And then yesterday I saw that a limited number was going to be re-released. (Ticketmaster had a limit on how many could be purchased, so these were some of those extras now going to the public, etc.) No mention though of how many tickets, what types, etc.

Tickets were going back on sale at 10 am. 10 am UK time, 5 am in Boston. Blech. I dutifully set my alarm for 4:30. For those of you who know me, I HATE mornings. But I was even semi-awake before my alarm went off. Hit snooze a couple of times and got up.

First I tried for tickets for Saturday only. Tried a few times and no luck. Tried for weekend with camping, and found tickets right away. So now we're going for the whole weekend and somehow we have to figure out how to get a tent and other camping gear over there. I guess worst case we skip the camping and find somewhere else in the area to stay, but who knows.

And we all complain about Ticketmaster fees, right? Well the service charge on the tickers and the parking ticket are expected. But for ticket delivery, when purchasing internationally, box office collection is the only option. Why does that cost me £2.25? It's not like they are sending it anywhere. Actually, I gladly would have paid to have the tickets sent to me, but that wasn't an option.

So yeah, we're going to Scotland. Now we need to plan the rest of our vacation. :)