Whoa...

I cannot believe that it's been almost a year since I've been here. Very sad. Still singing the same ole song...thoughts of writing pop into my head numerous times a day, but I don't act on them. My Africa Adventure on-line diary has fallen by the wayside. I am ashamed....

Today, in one of my moments of writing contemplation, I checked Craig's for possible leads or opportunities and found something interesting...

Semi-retired businessman and his wife looking for a Tagalong speaking assistant to do research in matters of a "gentle day." Huh? Does that mean they want someone to follow them around and help them to articulate their thoughts or accompany them in their daily routine? I do love researching stuff and maybe semi-retired and "gentle day" means laid back but still in the game, so I continue reading with some hope and interest. "Liaise with various professionals and vendors..." I can do that-I deal with professionals (sort-of) and vendors every day in my real job. "Drive to Manhattan..." Hmm. Maybe I could enlist Dennis to help me with that one. "Assist around the office and home. Welcome to live on property in guest house if needed." Wow. This was sounding better and better. Until..."Must have the ability to converse in Tagalong as the family interacts with business involvements in the Philippines."

Converse in Tagalong? Better re-read that..."Looking for TagaLOG speaking assistant...ability to converse in TagaLOG." O. M. G. They don't need a speaking assistant to tag along. They need a Tagalog speaking assistant. TAGALOG? A quick search in Wikipedia defines it as "...the first language used by a third of population of the Philippines and as a second language by most of the rest."

Oh, my. I do feel stupid. Maybe I need to brush up on my reading skills before I attempt any writing....

Back in the states...back at work....back to reality

My first day back at work. Laurie, my sub, was great...my desk has never been so clean and organized and she made my transition back easy and effortless. I like my job and in this economy, I'm grateful to have it, but I'd still rather be back in South Africa. It's a magical, wonderful place and I can't wait to return.

Now that we're home and have constant access to the Internet, I'll try to go back and tell the story of the last three weeks... they were the best of my life...they changed my life...

Later....

Cape Town

So I just spent the last 45 minutes here, trying to give a synopsysis of the last few days. Uploaded a pic, didn't like the placement, tried to delete it and the entire friggin' post was gone. No way to retrieve it. Dennis went down to the gym for a while and is back, so we're going into town. So now I'll see if I can give the details of the last 24 hours withhout screwing it up.
Sadly left Zulu Nyala yesterday at 8:30 am and took a ninety minute noon flight from Richard's Bay to Johannesburg. Left Johannesburg at 3:15 and arrived at Cape Town in the pouring rain. Hasn't rained here in hundreds of years ( well, maybe that's a bit of an exageration) and it decides to do it now. I guess we're good luck for the South African people. They are really grateful for the weather. We'll make the best of it.
Get to the Radisson Blu via a driver who met us at the airport, check in, and go upstairs. Uh-oh. No electricity on one side of the room. Call maintenance, long story, they give us another room, but not as nice---I'm tired, hungry and pouting. We decide to try and make the best of it and hit the hay at 9:00---without getting dinner. Dennis wakes me up at 8am---not too happy, as one of the lights over the mirror is out. He was going downstairs to see what he could do. Comes back not 5 minutes later, and tells me we're moving yet again. But he saw the room and said I'd love it. He was right.

See...

Ok-I still have to figure out how to place the photos on here but the idea is there....I love our room.
Off too explore....

WE GOT TO SEE MY ELEPHANTS!!!!

...AND TRIED TO UPLOAD THE IMAGES, BUT THEY WON'T COME THRU!!! DAMN.Briefly-went to another game park today-Hluhluwe National the oldest park in SA and they had =
---100's of them and we must have seen at least 60. Babies, teens, adults....beautiful.
Also saw a lion kill at the same park. Two females and 3 cubs...= one dead Cape Buffalo. Poor thing....happy lions....lots of pix
Also=3 cheetah-2 brothers with a female and her 3 cubs. It was the most awesome day so far. I'll try to put some pix on email for you guys....
xxoo

If at first you don't succeed....

It was really, really dark by this time, but you get the idea..I was in tears.!

Cheetah mom and her three cubs. Our ranger took us right up to see her, relaxed and eating after a kill.

Here we are sitting in a BAR (!) trying to stay connected. To the internet, that is so don't worry.

Try to do some more pix from here now---we've seen everything we've hoped---saw my elephants last night-but it was dusk---and getting dark quickly, so viewing wasn't as good as I hoped. Went looking again this morning with no luck and it's raining this afternoon so the drive was cancelled. No prob-try to get you all some info.

Here goes...

Obviously we have not morphed into giraffe---I'm just not good at placing copy yet....A taste for you...we'll send more later-I want to quit while I'm ahead..

Pictures Speak Volumes

To go into detail would be impossible right now--when we get to Capetown I'll get down and dirty---for now here's what's been happening...

This is our "house". It's a Tent! When the wind blows the entire place shakes--it's cool.

Our first game drive yesterday afternoon was awesome--the mom and baby above are just one of the animals we saw, but because this connection sucks, we'll send others by email and see if they go faster...

Ready as I'll ever be...

That's it-I've done as much as I can do---at work, at home...we're ready. Packed. Need to try and get some sleep---didn't get much last night due to high winds, humidity, stress and excitement.

Hopefully we'll have internet service in Johannesburg. We'll see.

Until then......

Still Trying

....with pix and placement...who could resist this pudgie face?

Running out of time....

Quick

9:o1 pm...spent the last couple of hours trying to organize the essentials into some type of order...bathroom, first aid, in the bush, checked, carry on...there's not a lot of stuff, it's just a matter of where to put it. I don't want to throw everything into a bag and have to dig and search when we get there. Got most of it together, I think.

Busy day at work training my sub---she's got two and a half more days (yikes!!) to get it and she's on her own. I'm outta there at noon on Friday....Getting down to the wire...calling SAA tomorrow to confirm our flight...a few more ends to tie up and we're done!

No playing with pictures tonight. Bringing my computer to work tomorrow-maybe while she's doing my stuff I'll play, but for now I'm crawling into my bed with my book and hopefully will sleep....gym 4:30 tomorrow morning....yuk.

PS---is that my LauraL following me???? We'll talk tomorrow...xxoo

This is a test...

of the Fledgling Author broadcasting system...

Can I successfully link my Picasa web album to my blog? Can I figure out how to get a Picasa web album url to allow my family and friends to view said web album? Can I determine how to upload a photo from said web album to blog? Can I understand why it is that I am using said language? What is said language? Who said it? And why? Who cares?

Let me give this a shot..it is currently 8:24 pm...any wagers on how long this will take me?

....tick tock...

8:48....tick tock...

still trying...

damn it! It says image is uploading and nothing comes up.

WHERE THE HELL IS IT GOING????!!!!

OH-OH -OH---THERE SHE IS!!! Not exactly where I wanted to place her, but she's here...8:54pm---thirty minutes for one friggin' little dog. That's Sydney, by the way. She's an English Bulldog who owns our friend Doug. I took this in our front yard in June, when she was about 10 weeks old but she's a big girl now!

Let me try another...

OK-this is going to take some practice...thirty minutes to get the dog photo in the blog, ten more to get the sunflower, but I need to figure out how to control the placement. Glad I started this four days before we're in Africa and didn't wait until I got there. Too bad I didn't THINK of this 6 months ago. Oh well, with age comes wisdom...

"I am slowly going crazy...1, 2, 3, 4, 5,6 SWITCH

Sharon, Lois and Bram's ---OMG--THE ELEPHANT SHOW!!!!!! (Hope the link showed up...) If anybody gets this, it'll be Meredith and possibly John.....love you guys...xxoo

"It's 4:03 and I can't sleep..."

It's actually 5:06, but I've been awake for hours. These last ten days or so, I go to bed exhausted and sleep until 11 or 12, then it's been toss and turn for the rest of the night. Once my head starts going, I can't shut it off, thinking about the trip, and things to do before I go. This morning, I couldn't get the ideas of my mini voice recorder and Picasa out of my head, so I finally decided to get up and do something. Spent the last 90 minutes reading the recorder instructions and trying to make it work. Dennis got it for me for Christmas a few years ago, and it's been sitting in my drawer because all the options frustrated me and I didn't take the time to learn how to use it. Last time I checked, it worked fine, but this morning, it won't do anything. I put brand new batteries in, read the reset instructions and it seemed dead. I left it sitting while I tried to look up trouble shooting on line, and a few minutes later, I glanced over and the little red record light was on. But it still wouldn't do anything. I think it may be because I left the old batteries in too long from the last time. They weren't leaking or anything, tho, so I don't get why it doesn't work. Figures. I wanted to learn it now, and take it with us so I could record while we were out with our guides. I guess I'll have to either go without it or get another one. Shit.
Yesterday, I found out that internet use in South Africa can get a little pricey, so my blogging may not be exactly what I was hoping. Which led me to my other bouncing brain activity this morning---getting my friends and family on Picasa, so they could look at my web album. That 's my next project and hopefully it won't be too complicated. It's all this little last minute stuff that keeps popping into my head that's been making me crazier than I already am. I hope once we get over there, my brain slows down a bit. I'll probably crash and sleep for 2 days while everyone else is out on game drives.
Going to try and get a few more zzzz's now, before it starts getting light.

Heads Up Warnings

Hi to anyone who received my message today about my new email address and blog! Keep in mind that when I write I try to keep as true to my own voice as possible. So if you tend to be offended at occasional --or frequent--colorful language, consider yourself forewarned--there will be obscenities peppered throughout the entries.
That's it for now...

Monday, 9/20 6am

Less than two weeks to go. I'm up early-as usual these days. Having trouble sleeping with so much on my mind and all the excitement of getting ready to go. One of the issues has been cursing myself daily, as I knew I would, that I didn't spend more time learning about our cameras. My husband is a "learn on the fly" guy, as he said yesterday, but I can see us out in the bush, trying to capture lion cubs on video, and him going-"DEN! How do you do this???!!!!!" I feel like I'm back in school cramming at the last minute for an exam. No wonder I wasn't a good student.

In addition, this laptop has been giving me problems. Now it's a matter of figuring it out myself. I don't want to have anything to do with calling Dell. I got frustrated last night after a few hours and just shut it off, but I'm beginning to suspect that it's this new Windows 7 and Internet Explorer, rather than Dell. My husband has neither of those on his netbook, and the old dinosaur upstairs definitely doesn't have them. Neither the netbook or old Dino have the issues this has. I don't need to be spending hours figuring this out right now. If I can't get it, it's going to have to wait until we get back.

I'm so nuts-getting back is a worry. Not the idea of coming home-I don't really have any worries about that-it's all the shit I'm going to have to catch up with once this trip is done...bills and changing closets to winter clothes-my two most dreaded things to do. I'd better learn to relax and live in the day I'm in at the moment or I'm gonna drive myself---and my poor husband---out of our minds...

6:21....time to start my day!

Spinning

Two weeks from tonight we'll pack the last of what we're bringing with us to the other side of this planet. Is it the other side? I don't know-I was never good in geography. Today, I doubt I could even point to Colorado on a blank map. I'm lucky I know where my own little state of Connecticut is. But no matter, I don't need to get us there, only to get through the fifteen hour flight and seven hour time difference. It's surreal, thinking that we're actually taking this trip. I've been buzzing day and night-physically and mentally-I can't relax. Last night I barely got four and a half hours of sleep. I'm hoping once everything is done--or at least once we get there and I adjust as much as will be possible in a new, strange, foreign country, that I will finally be able to get a decent night's sleep. We'll see.
My elephants. That's what I'm most looking forward to seeing. I call them mine-I don't know why. I have a special affinity for those beautiful, peaceful pachyderms. I don't know when it was or why that I developed the fascination, compassion and yes, love, that I feel for them. I can't explain it. But when the opportunity presented itself for us to see them up close and personal, in their natural habitat, we couldn't pass it up. It's something I never thought I'd be doing and it's so far out of the realm of our norm that I wonder if it's something I'll ever want to do again, once we're back on US soil. I hope so.

I'm Back

September 16, 2010
After months of frustration with Dell and ultimately contacting a big cheese at the headquarters in Texas, I have my third and hopefully, last laptop. At almost a month, this one seems to be working well and so far I haven't had any issues. I can't believe that my last post was in April... my favorite season, summer, is fading fast, and my countdown to days to South Africa has dwindled to a mere 15. It's been so long since I've been here that my elephant photo has disappeared off this page. That alone will take me another week to figure out how to fix, but in addition, Twitter stuff keeps popping up and I don't remember my password or how to stop the pop. One who knows might ask why it was that I didn't use my old desktop computer to fill in here while Dell From Hell was doing their best to rip me off. The answer is I don't know. The usual. Lazy. Fear. Lack of confidence. But I am going to South Africa in two weeks. From the start, it was my plan to use this--or another- blog to keep track of our adventure, post pictures, and make memories for myself and Dennis. If someone happens to stumble across it in the meantime and wants to follow along-that'd be great too. Don't know if any followers are still around--all FOUR of them, but who can follow when there's nothing to read. So as of tonight, I am making a promise to myself to keep track of the last days of the countdown, and the adventure thereafter. I'll need this time to practice and brush up on how this thing works.
Feels good to be here.

Needing to re-think my goals

It's been almost two weeks since I've been here and more and more frequently I'm making excuses or commenting on the amount of time I've taken between posts. Even though I was down with some viral thing for almost a week, I was home from work and felt good enough to watch TV or check my e-mail. I should have been good enough to keep up with my posts. After catching up a bit today on Google Reader, looking at what others are doing, I've begun to re-evaluate my blog. I thought about dropping it entirely, but doing that will really make me feel like crap about myself and I feel bad enough already. I started this with so much steam, exhuberance and committment, and as most things I attempt, it's fizzled out to about nothing. I'm discouraged. In the beginning I thought I would write about writing, but that's not working well. I don't know enough about writing. Duh. Clue--Fledgling Author?? Today I concluded that I have no idea what I should be writing about. While perusing Karen Winters Schwartz "Maraschino Cherries" blog site and some of the blogs she follows, I took a peek at "Jeannie's Ramblings" which, at a glance, appears to be just that-ramblings about anything and everything. She gives book reviews, talks about the weather, and had a post about a mouse in her house. Different, quirky stuff. My stuff is boring. Should I write about an events in my life during my week? I could, but who the hell will care? I was up at four o'clock this morning, listening to some poor little animal struggle and fight for its life for over thirty minutes. It broke my heart and I wanted to run out into the woods to save it. But what is that? An emotional reaction from a tree hugger who has trouble dealing with nature's survival of the fittist. A nut. I don't know that that would hold my interest if I were someone else reading it.
It stinks when you're almost fifty four years old and have no idea where you're going.

Finally! All the bugs are worked out....(I hope)

One month and a day since I ordered my new laptop and today, finally, I think I have the worst of the issues resolved. I really like Dell and have had good luck with all the models we've owned over the years and which is why I chose an XPS over an Apple, but I've spent more time on the phone with them this last month than in the last ten years combined. I think part of the problems were self inflicted-they told me today I had a virus, but I think it really might have had something to do with Firefox and transfering files over from my desktop. It took them two hours today to diagnose and fix the problem by remote from India or where ever...but they were good-they did it.And now I can access my blog, it shows up so I can see it, I have Internet Explorer AND Firefox and I am a happy camper. Onward and upward! (corn-nee!)

More writing contests coming up. A real biggie with Writer's Digest-due in late April or early May, I think. Also a small just for fun- again with WD due April 10, and the Writer's Weekly 24 hour contest on April 24. Now that my machine is fixed, I have no more excuses, and have got to get back on the horse.

Which is where I'm-a headin' right now....Yee-ha!!(OMG I think I've been taking too much cough syrup these last few days--I'm way loopier than usual.)

Query letters

I had a conversation with someone today who, like so many, is out of work and looking for a job. He told me that he thought his resume was really good and that he had a lot to offer to potential employers, yet couldn't understand why he wasn't getting any interviews, or even responses like "Thanks, but you can take a hike". He had been receiving unemployment compensation and apparently the state thought he needed a kick in the butt, so they offered him the option to polish up his resume by taking some classes or stop receiving his checks. Nice choice, but I guess they need to do something to try and weed out the freeloaders. Anyway, the resume he thought was so wonderful, really wasn't, and the classes and his mentor helped him to clean it up to make him more saleable. But what he said has really done the trick is that he now includes a cover letter tailored to each job. It's made all the difference in the world, and he's now getting phone calls with a few "Thanks,but...." as well as some interviews. The conversation reminded me of the importance of a good query letter and how it needs to be informative, yet concise. When I worked in the advertising department of a newspaper, we were told that a reader generally scans ads on a page for a brief five seconds, so the ad better offer something to grab attention before the page is turned. In my humble opinion, the query letter is very much the same. It has to have that LOOK AT ME!!!!! quality in order to capture enough attention to invite further reading. Not an easy task but definitely worth the effort.

Before I lose more time...

I wanted to post a quick entry. I didn't get here last night because I went to my writer's group but I'm beginning to question if I should continue attending. The last three meetings have consisted of three of us, which doesn't allow for much feedback. The coordinator also has copies of articles that she passes around and we all take turns reading paragraphs. I can read on my own. I'm looking for help writing. I'll give it another couple of weeks and see if more people join or come back, and if not, I might look elsewhere...

Meetup.com is a website I checked out in search of other area writing groups. It offers a huge array of interests for those looking in their community and surrounding areas. I found a couple of other writing groups in nearby towns and if things don't improve, I may check them out.

I'm having a tough time tonight. I'm writing this on the laptop, so I'm on Firefox and this is so small, I can hardly see it. Plus, my modem and router are f-ed up and I keep losing my internet connection. I think I'm going to call it a night.