Ant Farm

The dust. Oh, the dust. East/Central Africa at the end of the dry season... Dusty! The dust destroyed my cell phone. It did a number on my iBook as well. However, I think the dust damage to the iBook pales in comparison to the ant infestation. Ants. Lots of ants. I remembered seeing some ants around my laptop from time to time but didn't think too much about it. That is until I pulled it out of my pack during a 7+ hour layover on my way home. As I settled in to eat an airport breakfast and do some web surfing to catch up on world events, I opened my iBook and ants were crawling all over it. They were coming out from underneath the keyboard. It was quite the sight. One I could do without seeing again. And no, I didn't declare said ants when I went through customs.

I used this as an excuse to go to the Apple store and buy a new MacBook Pro. The sales person asked me why I was looking for a new laptop (presumably just trying to find out what my needs were) so I told him that my iBook was currently functioning as an ant farm. He said that he has been working for Apple for a long time and that was the first time he had heard of one becoming an ant farm. Leave it to me. :) I think that the ants are finally gone now.

Greetings from Amsterdam

Well, after lots of planning and research and running around like a crazy madwoman, I'm finally en route to Africa. I have a 4 hour layover in Amsterdam. This is not as long as the 7.5+ hour layover here on the way home.

It feels good to finally be travelling. I think it's less stressful than the anticipation of travelling. I've been busy trying to get everything that I needed for the trip, getting shots, etc. and it's nice to just relax. So, yes of course I did forget a couple of things, but I don't see any major problems acquiring the missing items.

For some strange reason, I forgot to pack my headlamp. Who needs it anyway... I'm only camping out for 18 of the nights that I will be away. But, I did get the important stuff done before the trip - like buying a new couch the afternoon before I left. Yep, it's important to have one's priorities straight.

I will sign off for now as this probably doesn't make much sense (I've been up for 22 hours now). It took me much longer than I care to report to figure out how to get all my blogger commands in English. I will update this when I can. I'm not too sure how often I will have internet access. Hopefully I will be able to post pictures of lions for you!