I was going to say because, for example, I invited him to come to my little birthday get together to go see the musical Wicked here in Boston and without asking any questions he just says 'Let me see if I can get the day off from work.' That's because he lives a 5 hour drive away and works on Saturdays and we're going on a Saturday night so he'd have to take off work to drive up here. It's just funny that he doesn't even ask what Wicked is and I know he has no clue. All he hears is me asking him to do something and he'll just do it because I asked.

So he said he'd call me Wednesday to let me know if he can go. Turns out he can't go, not because of work but because his wife, my stepmom, has a 100th birthday party for her grandmother that they were already committed to going to and she wants my Dad to go to that.

Well now it doesn't feel so good. It's still one of the #1 reasons why I love my Dad but it doesn't have the same meaning when you include the stepmom.

He just got married this past Spring after being single since the divorce with my mother 15 years ago so I have yet had to deal w/ stepmom issues. Man oh man.

Guess I can start the countdown. A 2 week vacation. I've never gone on a vacation for so long, let alone out of N. America. I'm finally going to use my passport!!!

I'm not sure if I'm ready to go but I'm going anyway.

I had to give a presentation last Friday to my group so this conference I'm going to in October and it was kinda brutal. I have lots of work to correct the presentation so I wanted to go on vacation worry-free but I'm not sure if that'll happen. At least I have the rest of this week and 2 weeks when I get back before the conference. I'm trying to get more results from this experiment and it keeps getting messed up. I'm hoping the latest one I've set up is okay.

I'm leaving Friday night from Boston, flying Icelandair so stop over in Iceland and then to Paris. I've never flow this long before and I used to work myself into tears when I flew because I'd get so freaked out about crashing. Hopefully I'll be okay. I'll be drinking some alcohol I'm sure. I'm going w/ Jen and James, my married friends. I went to vet school w/ Jen and they happened to move to Maine after vet school, and they even lived in France for a year, so I'm kinda looking to James to help w/ the communication. I took 2 semesters of French in college but I took several years of Spanish in middle and high school so my Spanish is much better. Sometimes if I try to speak French I mistakenly throw some Spanish in there, oops.

So we'll get to Paris on Saturday and stay until Thursday when Jen and James fly back and I take the train down south to Orange to meet my Mom and Stepdad. They're also leaving this Friday but flying into Barcelona and then driving to the south of France and staying 2 weeks and then driving back to Spain and staying another week. I wanted to do the Spain part too but w/ this conference I chickened out and shortened my trip. So I'll meet my Mom in Orange and stay w/ them in Faucon until Saturday when we then drive to Poilhes, also in the south of France. Then I'll stay there until I leave on Friday, taking the train from Beziers back to Paris where I'll stay for one more night all by myself and then fly back to Boston on Saturday the 29th.

Have planned a little for the Paris part but nothing for the rest. I'm counting on Mom to have a plan. The rugby world cup is going on in and around Paris which might be cool to follow, I used to play rugby, and there's the Festival d'automne which is going on the whole time I'm there. I have to see the major sites of course but I don't want to do too many museums. There's a free tour that my friends recommended so that's on the list.

I'm not bringing my laptop or cell phone or anything except my new camera so no way of communicating back home really. If I find internet somewhere I can always try to post something.

I'm trying to hold my tongue but it's getting nearly impossible, especially with my 2 week long PMS. There is a natural flow of traffic, usually stay to the right, you pass on the left, at least that's the rule on the road. It should be the same when on foot. I spend most of my life walking around to get place to place. I have no car so rely on my feet to get me wherever I'm going. People need to move over. You cannot take up the whole freaking sidewalk, hallway, whatever it may be. Yesterday on Charles Street, which yes I know is kinda narrow as it is and full of obstacles, I kept running into people that were walking towards me because they wouldn't move over to let me have space to pass. I refuse to move over if I'm taking up one normal-sized person's width on the right of the sidewalk and you're coming at me two or three across and are oblivious to me being there until I don't move out of your way and you think I'M rude and at fault when we collide, though it's due to your asshole-ness.

Or, people walk so fucking slow and take up the whole sidewalk or hallway and don't allow for anyone to pass on the other side or even for people walking faster to get around them. I was just walking down the hall at MIT behind three dorky boys making jokes about the law of conservation of mass, however funny that could be, unfortunately I couldn't enjoy the punchline because they were making me so angry by walking so slow and taking up the whole hallway. I had to just stop and waddle on behind them and watch as oncoming traffic had to bump into the big guy on the end because he would barely move over at all.

Next time I might have to start yelling out my frustrations. Just stay to the right, don't take up the whole space, walk single file if you have to in a narrow space if you're with people, just pay attention! Everyone is in their own little world most of the time, which is fine by me if you can at least pay attention to the big world we all have to share at the same time.