You’ll recall that just yesterday I was mocking the fine art of overpreparation for a trip, lapsing into hyperbole about arranging doilies for the housesitter’s snacks. This morning found me arranging doilies. Literally. I swear -the word had not crossed my consciousness in… well, a long time. But a man’s gotta do what needs to be done. And having volunteered to help out at the congregational latke lunch this morning, what needed to be done was rolling out the tables, setting them up with chairs and tablecloths, and yes, arranging little gold doilies in the center of each one.

But that’s not really what I wanted to write about today. To be honest, I’m not sure what I did want to write about today, I just want to satisfy the insatiable curiosity the world (that’s you) must undeniably have about my every thought and activity (Did I tell you about cutting my toenails this morning? No? Good. Well….)

But I’m being fairly mellow on the trip planning at the moment. Easing into that “create a big pile of stuff you might need in the middle of the floor” phase. It’s like a nesting phase, where you make big piles: electronics (the GPS, the netbook, the transformers), equipment (snorkel, mask, camera), clothes (hats, sunglasses, goretex). Kind of fun at this point, because there aren’t any hard decisions to make – that comes at the “pruning and packing” phase, and I’m still oblivious to the actual necessities of the trip. Yes, I’ve printed out the recommended packing list, but looking at it would spoil the blissful ignorance of the nesting phase.

Anyhow – we’ve got a houseful of 10-year-old boys running amok below. They’re currently incapacitated by the TV, but the noise level below is rising, suggesting that some of them are breaking free. I’ll tell you more about Ecuador in coming days, and after that, there’s Liberia (yes, that’s right – Liberia), maybe with Ghana tacked on as an exploratory trip afterwards. Yeah, these coming months are looking prime for some roadtrip writing…