When I sit down to write a post, I can't keep track of all of the things I want to include so I kept a list. Here it is in no particular order.
1. Travel Insurance. The CBC wrote a
scary article about travel insurance about how nobody reads the fine print and how you can get pooched at the worst possible time. So, I did some research about my two forms of travel insurance, one through my credit card and the other a benefit from my job.
My credit card travel accident insurance is not so great. It only covers the first 15 days and only up to $500 000. But it includes trip cancellation & interruption, flight delay and emergency purchases, hotel burglary, and auto rental insurance which are all super-bonus.
Apparently my extended benefits emergency travel insurance from my job is great for the health part. I called them to see if I needed to top up (as per CBC) and the guy said 'to be honest, you have the gold standard of travel insurance, you are covered for up to a year of travel for basically any medical emergency'. Ok then. No top up necessary. Thanks past-union-negotiators for getting us the good stuff!
2. Getting the house ready. I don't really need to buy anything and I don't need to plan anything (thanks to Alisma who is busily working out how to get from one place to another) so I have to use my pre-vacation fretting somehow. When I started to think about Rob living at my house, I looked around and thought - oh my god! I live in a clutter palace. So I enlisted Lea to help me declutter. Lea is the best organizer in the world and for some reason feels I am worthy of her help. She's a saint, I tell you, a saint!
So far, we can gone through the kitchen and dining room (five boxes to the Village of Value) and the office (three blue bags of paper recycling, four waste cans of shredded paper, one box destined for VV). Next up, the bathroom and bedrooms. That should be traumatic.
Plus, my bathroom needs a bit of a facelift. Not the surgical kind, more of the botox injection kind. A bit of paint, a bit of spackle, a bit of drywall and hardware replacement (ok, maybe there will be some minor surgery but it is rude to point it out). I am working on convincing Chuck, home renovator extraordinaire, to fix me up before mid-September. He is the busiest contractor on the planet but I have my fingers crossed. But in the mean time, I am going to try to paint the wood cabinets and mirror. What can go wrong?
3. Ticket change. Oh this is great, you will enjoy this. I got an email from Flight Network who we booked our tickets with. Minor schedule change. You may remember that the last time I had a schedule change, it was for a full day on our way to Ecuador. So this time I opened it with some trepidation. But it was just a 20 minute change to our departure time from Victoria. No worries, gives us a few more minutes to drink our airport coffee.
But then I noticed they had also changed the departure time from Vancouver, to one hour earlier.
Wait! Now we arrive in Vancouver at 9:45 and we leave Vancouver at 9:30. Astute as I am, I know that doesn't work. So, I hunt down a phone number even though there is no contact info on this email (unless you count the return email address
noreply@flightnetwork.com) and call them.
I spoke to Shiva. She was very nice and agreed that this might be an issue so she would send our concerns to the scheduling department. Great, when would we hear back from them? A week..., she starts to say which worries me, but then she finishes her sentence, ...before you leave. What! I was not thrilled with the wait. She assured me that it would all be ok... several times she assured me. Now, I tell students all the time that it will all work out and they should just wait for the cogs to turn. Most times it is true (but sometimes not). Shiva was so sure it was going to work, she gave me her direct line. So I decided to believe her and not freak out. This is me not freaking out. I don't think I can wait until a week before departure but I will give it another ten days or so before I unleash my wrath and annoyance upon them.
4. International driver's license. Perusing the
Government of Canada Travel advisories to make sure my travel insurance (see above) isn't invalid due to travel restrictions. All good. But I also checked the law section (did I mention I am not that busy at work right now). First, no public drinking in Barcelona. So I guess I do have to buy something - an opaque 'water' bottle for our left over wine.
Second, Spain requires an international driver's license. So, despite reading that they don't really check it, I went and got one anyway. They are also recommended in France & Portugal. It is good for a year so that will also cover me for Costa Rica even though they don't seem to care (big surprise). This isn't mine but this is exactly what it looks like.
5. Spanish. No lo hablo. No lo practico. Espero que morto en Espania porque no puedo comprar comida o bebidos o un cuarto. Eh, no hay problema. Creo que los hospitales son gratis in Espania. Puedemos dormir y comer ayi. Horray por los medicos socialiticos!
6. Life pre & post trips. Now that this post is way too long and no one is still reading, I will whine about my privileged life problems. I have season passes to Belfry (with Dottie) and the Pacific Opera (with Tanya). I checked the dates for all of the performances. I had to change two dates at the Belfry. For one of them, I had to move the tickets to the opening night which is two days before we leave for Europe. The other one that landed mid-Costa Rica could be changed to something reasonable. But the Opera tickets are not great. Of the three, one of them is the day after I get back from Europe. Another is on the actual day I get back from Costa Rica (after my 17 million hour flight). I may have to change that one. Dottie and Tanya are being very nice about working around my ridiculous schedule.
Ok, that's it. For now. Alisma is working on our plan so I will let you know what's up when I find out.
Here are some key quotes from the link above (which will be the extent of my theological research into this matter).
