we cannot believe it is actually almost time. we’ve been slowly and quietly getting out ducks in a row but couldn’t share the news until it was time to tell our jobs which we have now both done! that sure made it feel a whole lot more official!!!
and, just in case we weren’t feeling official enough, we went and got a total of 7 shots between us today… and that i am definitely feeling! as in, i can’t lift my left arm. : (
so why the shots? well, since we are cutting ties with los angeles and moving ourselves and out stuff back home to tampa, florida we really wanted to take full advantage of this moment in time when we will be jobless and homeless and almost completely bill-less (except a few car insurance payments here and there) and travel as much and as long as we can afford. so after many, many, many nights of cereal dinners, and charity lunches (my friend erica at work slips me food more often than is noble of me to accept), and driving without air conditioning in the car because that will save gas money (okay, i do that all the time anyways), and wishing i could steal a roll or two of toilet paper out of the office bathroom (not possible, they are on lock-down), all to save money for the three months to come where we will gallivant around south america and eat steak for dinner every night in argentina and forget the boxes and boxes of cereal we had to eat to get there. it is going to be great!
so here is the grand plan:
michael’s last day of work will be november 7th and he will have two weeks to prepare us for the big move. hopefully we will be able to sell a lot of our stuff on ebay and craigs list. we moved so much stuff out here from florida that just frankly was not even worth their weight in gas money to get them here. we are hoping to be lighter on our feet on the way back.
my last day of work will be november 12th and then i’ll join michael in the readying.
november 19th michael’s dad, larry, arrives to help get packed up and ready to pull out of los angeles on november 20th!
the three of us and the dogs will truck from west coast to east coast and make it home in time to enjoy thanksgiving with our families. then, we plan to leave for south america on or around december 1st. we’re planning on traveling around argentina, chile, bolivia, peru, and maybe ecuador.
we’ll talk a lot more about this in the weeks to come!!
but today’s trip related task was to go get injected with diseases.
michael got his final hepatitis B series shot, typhoid, yellow fever, and a flu shot.
i got my final hepatitis A series shot, typhoid, and yellow fever (i already had a flu shot just two weeks ago).
we also got prescriptions for a whole heck of a lot of malaria pills. we had two options between a more expensive, mostly-side-effect-free malaria pill, or a cheaper pill which can result in nausea and sun sensitivity and we’ll have to continue to take it for a full month after we return, but with a total cost difference of $1,100, we said bring on the sun screen!
685 dollars and 7 pricks later, we were declared immunized and ready to go!
