The Checklist

Let us remind you of what is probably already well known: Karen LOVES lists. And Brad HATES 'em.

To do lists. To buy lists. Honeydew lists. Whatever. Any kind of list you have, Brad will probably rail against.

Until today.

That's when he had a list with only two tasks to help prepare for this year's vacation. (Which is only 16 days away ... not that we're counting or anything):

1. Camera
2. Netbook

This is our first "official" photo from our new camera ... we are celebrating our purchase with glasses of Chandon Etoile (Brad doesn't put strawberries in his sparkling wine).

 

We've had pretty good luck with cameras in the past (as long as you disregard that whole brand-new-fancy-camera-taken-from-our-compartment-while-we-slept-on-the-overnight-train-from-Prague-to-Krakow thing). So it's a daunting task to find the "right" camera that balances our desire for easy handling with the ability to capture special moments to hang on our walls at home.

So we're keeping our fingers crossed that the Canon G11 will fill the bill for several years to come.

As for the netbook, during last year's trip to the Galapagos, we realized how behind-the-times we were when our boatmates would whip theirs out, download their pictures from the day and write their blogs while enjoying a glass of wine as the sun went down.

So this year, we'll be all caught up as we update our blog on our Samsung N130.

Now that Brad's got a comfort level with lists (at least those that pertain to vacation), he's busy putting another one together:

1. Notify credit card company so it doesn't shut the card down after big-ticket purchases (as it did after today's camera purchase, but before the netbook purchase. 
2. Notify the newspaper so weathered, yellowed copies don't pile up in the driveway. (Yes, we still get the old-school hard-copy paper ... remember, we only bought a netbook this week.)
3. Get in as good of shape as possible in the next two weeks to avoid collapsing into gasping heaps of flesh and bone while hiking and sea kayaking. (Yeah, right, a two-week fitness program ... wethinks we're in trouble.)
4. Figure out what we're going to do in and Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne and Hobart.(In other words, complete the planning that should have been done in September.)
5. Put geeky music on netbook so people will be astounded to know there are some still left in the world who rock out to Supertramp.
6. Get on plane on November 16. (Don't laugh ... we actually got on a plane to Cozumel one day late because we put it down wrong on our calendars. We were the luckiest people on Earth when we were the last two standbys whose names were called for that flight.)

Practice Posting

Since we're new to this thing called blogging (we know, we know ... we're dinosaurs), we thought we'd get the hang of posting photos, since you'll probably see a few of those in future posts.

So here are a few from past excursions.

First, here is a sunrise/moonrise sequence from Santorini, Greece. We had a glass of wine watching the sun go down, then lucked out by catching the full moon rising while on our stroll back to our room on the opposite side of the island. Absolutely enchanting.

 

And here's a day-and-night sequence in front of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. While we were setting up the night shot, the evening prayers came over the loudspeakers. It's one of those memories we'll always have tucked in our minds ... kind of like when the Sunday morning church bells peeled while we were strolling in the Botanical Gardens in Florence.

OK, so it may have taken us a couple minutes to figure out the whole "insert photo" thing, but we think we get it now. We hope you don't mind if we post a couple more along our travels.

Ciao.