Journey/Adventures

Another week has come and gone and I find myself sitting in front of the keyboard yet again.  This week I'm not writing from my usual keyboard but it's my bright red travel keyboard.  Luckily though I am not writing to you from an airport this time but from my parent's living room in a chair right next to the Christmas tree we decorated last night.  This was one of the big things I mentioned last week that I had to prepare for but let's start at the beginning of the week...

I knew going into the week that I would have several large projects to take care of at work before coming on my extended vacation.  I had a few meetings, a couple of on-line trainings, had schedules to create/modify, had a list of things to go over with a relatively new employee who had to take on my responsibilities while I'm away, say good-bye to a coworker who was leaving, etc.  It was an exhausting week just from going to work alone...  Thankfully I got everything accomplished at work that I set out to do (and I even did an out of office email message and phone message - two things I have never done before) and I feel confident that things will run just fine without me for the time that I'm away.

Because I felt as if I had so much work to accomplish this past week, I was unable to accomplish everything I wanted to around my apartment before leaving on my vacation.  Honestly, I just plain ran out of time.  There were several things that I kept telling myself I would put off because I still had plenty of time before I left - and then, I simply had no time left.  I finished packing my suitcase at midnight the night I left because I hadn't taken care of that earlier (that wasn't one of my brightest moves since I needed to be up at about 3 AM to shower/get ready and then head to the airport for my very early flight).  Oh, well.  All lessons for next time I guess. Start getting ready for vacation earlier and that's that.  Granted, I can't worry about the things I feel as if I didn't accomplish before my trip because they will still be sitting there waiting for me to take care of them upon my return.

I'm probably going to jinx my return trip already by saying thankfully my flights to my parent's were uneventful except for having to inform a gentleman that he was occupying my seat on one of the planes.  I had upgraded one of my seats to an exit row seat (it was a few hour flight) and I informed the gentleman that it was my seat.  I could tell he was a big guy and would've probably enjoyed sitting in the seat with more leg room (he even tried to convince me to just take his seat since he "was already settled into the seat" and I stood up for myself and told him that it was my seat.  He ended up moving and I felt pretty good about not just giving into him.  =)

I've only been here for two days (three nights) and quite a bit has already taken place.  My parents picked me up at the airport and when we got back to their house, my sister, her husband and two kids were pulling up to the house and they were here visiting for a couple of hours.  Overnight we then got a "snow storm" and we woke up to a number of inches of snow and the snow was still falling.  In the midst of this blizzard, my sister came to pick me up and take me to the tattoo parlor.  It probably wasn't the smartest thing we could've done after all that snow but I am very happy with the result (more on the new tattoo in a minute).  Late last night I got a phone call from my (almost) 6 year old nephew asking me if I wanted to go with him to see Santa today so after church with my parents we went to see Santa.

So, about my new tattoo...  I have been sending messages back and forth to the artist who did my tattoo this summer with an idea I had for a tattoo for Gypsy's Quest.  I told him that it was the name of my blog, the types of things that I write about and that I wanted a tattoo representation of that.  I left a lot of the details up to him (other than me telling him that I didn't want the words in the tattoo itself).  He sent me a drawing this past week and I fell in love with his design and the imagery he came up with.  The tattoo is of a gypsy girl, holding a lantern and coming out of the shadows.  In my opinion she has a very determined look on her face and she seems ready to face whatever obstacles in her way.  The tattoo takes up my entire forearm and it's pretty sore but I am very impressed with it overall and it will always serve as a visual representation of me and my journey.

Well my dear readers, I should probably bring this to a close for this evening for tomorrow my Dad and I head off of another adventure and we drive about 12 hours away to see my Grandma.  I think it will be a very fun trip and I'm sure I'll write about it next week.  Have a great week along whatever journey life takes you on!