in an hour...

in an hour, i will be going to a 31-year old's memorial service. it's at a theater - that should tell you how many lives he touched. i feel strangely numb at the moment. i don't know how this will be... but i know i will regret not going over going.

in happier news, amelia and i began planning the trip to europe last night. originally, i was thinking we should fly in july - however, tickets to london in may into june are roughly half the cost of tickets in july. so yeah... may 19 (the day after my birthday) until june 6 are what we're looking at. i just have to request the time off, and then we are going to buy our tickets to heathrow.

so here's the plan:
5/19 - drive up to chicago, have one of my parents drop us at o'hare.
5/20 - morning - arrive in london. hang out in london and spend the night with our friend, adam, who's doing a postdoc there now.
5/21 - head out to oxford. spend the night with our friend, andy, who is also doing a postdoc there.
5/22 - since we've both been to england before, we're going to hop right on a flight from london to paris in the mid-afternoon! or get there some other way.
5/23-5/25 - paris! baguettes and wine and the eiffel tower and the louvre and all sorts of other stuff amelia has planned for us.
5/26 - fly / bus / train from paris to barcelona.
5/27-5/28 - barcelona and costa brava... ah, beach time.
5/29 - get from barcelona to venice somehow (we were looking at ferries, but they're pricey and it would be about 20 hours on the ferry to get to anywhere in italy... then an additional bus or train ride to get to ferrara/venice/florence).
5/30-5/31 - stay with amelia's friend, andrea (a boy, but his name is andrea) in ferrara. take the bus to venice or florence if we want.
6/1-6/6 - this is where we need the help of a travel agent. flights to and from athens are RIDICULOUS. like, $200 to get from athens back to london, and a lot of money to get there in the first place.

so plan a for our last days, assuming the travel agent can find us cheap flights:
6/1 - get from venice to the greek islands somehow, some way.
6/2-6/3 - kick it on the greek islands (i'm leaning towards mykonos and santorini, but i should talk with my parents since they've been there).
6/4 - athens. stay with my cousin, michael, or uncle, ulysses. yes, i have an uncle named ulysses. he used to skindive for octopus in the mediterranean.
6/5 - get from athens to london somehow (or just stay another night in athens and take a flight back to chicago from athens). spend the night in london with adam if we get back there.
6/6 - fly back to chicago.

plan b for the last days:
6/1 - venice to slovenia.
6/2-6/4 - slovenia and croatia. we could hop on a ferry to get down the coast of croatia, which is supposed to be the best way to see it.
6/5 - flight from zadar, croatia, back to london (SUPER cheap flights via ryanair). spend the night in london with adam.
6/6 - fly back to chicago.

so yeah... we have the cities mapped out. now we just need to talk with our travel agent friends and see what we can figure out to get from one place to the next. THEN we need to figure out where to stay (we were even thinking of camping certain places to save money). then... oh, lord, then i need to figure out how to pack less than 30 pounds into a bag, since ryanair is cheap but makes most of its money off of baggage carrier fees. i will be investing in a black knit dress that can be worn for any occasion, is easily washed in a sink, and won't show my inevitable dirtiness.

and so this post isn't entirely non-craft-related... i finally got a very belated birthday gift shipped off to san diego, but as per my usual, i forgot to snap a picture of it before sealing up the envelope.

i also just finished my very first baby sweater and promptly began a second one. this first one is for my cousin, who's having his second little girl in march (well, his poor wife is, but you know what i'm sayin'). knit up with patons soy wool stripes in natural pink. i love the yarn, but i had to shorten the sweater AND use the very last scraps of yarn i had to bind it off, even after buying two skeins of the stuff.


and then i started another for my boss' son. he's 21, and he and his girlfriend were dating for about three months before she got preggers. yikes! so, since he is a little of the young/hip age, i decided to use up this camo yarn i've had in my stash for a while. here's baby sweater #2, very much in progress. oh, and a blurry cat head.


also? i will yet again profess my undying love for my hairstylist. new haircut, y'all!