the World of Webmistress Ming

It's late. I'm alone. And it's less than 48 hours until my 53rd birthday. Which, I must say, will be a less than stellar day.

For a December baby, it's situation normal: a whole lot of nothing. So what ... it's your birthday? Don't you know how BUSY we are? I've heard this since I was 5 years old, and here we go again.

I've struggled for nearly a year with a shoulder issue. Medical and PT professionals have weighed in, but nobody has pinpointed the cause precisely. Is it just age? Exercise? Work habits?

Two weeks into a vacation, that issue is now resolved: it's the keyboarding.

Starting about 12 days ago, I began exercising in a way not possible for all of 2008. Working an additional ten minutes a day into the routine--and taking bonus stretching and yoga classes--I'm now up to 1 hour, 10 minutes of vigorous tap-dancing.

Being an early riser has it's rewards:

sunrise on Bali

It was a remarkable day in many, many ways, but yesterday has to be a Top Ten in the "it is a VERY small world" category.

Early in the morning, we docked at Semarang, Java. We'd spend the day touring this Indonesian island, from port to village, rain forest to rice field to coffee plantation.

But the REAL story is about the CardPlayer magazine.

Truly, they're my favorite part of any cruise: days at sea between ports.

No pressure, no "but we have to go SEE stuff", no hurry. Just a smooth flow of activities from pre-dawn scrap sessions to late-night music.

Today’s the day. Despite being on the road for just over a week, the true vacation began 10 minutes ago: when my Internet connection went dark.

Oh, nothing problematic like a service outage. I’m simply too frugal to re-up for an additional day of access here at the hotel. My 24-hours of Internet service just ended, and I won’t spring for an additional expensive day. Not when we’ll be boarding our cruise ship later this afternoon. It’s time to let the true vacation begin.

What was the old saying about mad dogs and Englishmen going out in the noonday sun?

Add Ming and Martini Boy to the list, leading to a vacation day that can best be described as "memorable".

Backtrack 24 hours. I've just gotten up at 4 a.m., run the computer until the battery is drained, and woken him for breakfast.

Now Martini Boy is raring to go. Go where and do what, he's not so clear about, such things being my job, but he wants to get up and go. So we shower and change and prepare to explore Singapore.

36 hours after we arrived in Singapore, I'm well and truly caught up in jet lag--and waiting for my soul to catch up.

In "Pattern Recognition", a novel by William Gibson, the protagonista asserts that jet lag happens because air travel is too fast for the soul. While the body can hop a plane, the soul must travel on it's own schedule--and that jet lag occurs in that time between body-arrival and reunion with the soul.

My soul is still somewhere over Japan. Evidently, it's enjoying the trip and in no hurry to join me in Singapore.

Spending a weekend de-stressing in Seattle, I had a nice little list of want-to-finds for vacation ... and the shopping gods smiled.

Between the Nordstrom rack (Michael Kors light jacket, 90% off) to the most stupendous set of finds at Macy's, I made out like a bandit. Got every item on my list, all but one were clearanced, and even better, Macy's gave me 20% off with a shopping coupon and then--to my surprise--gave me another 20% in Macy's dollars. Free stuff! Free stuff!

Here we go, spilling last-minute luggage additions in our wake: on our way to our longest, farthest world travels yet.

Traveling from Seattle to Singapore, then taking a cruise ship along Malaysia and the east coast of Australia, we'll end up next month with a few days in Sydney before heading home.

The vacation mindset hasn't landed yet for either of us. Martini Boy has been renamed to Paranoia Boy as he frets over the house, the dogs, the luggage and the upcoming LONG plane trip.