Stuffed in a box

This morning Matt and I finished stuffing everything we own into a Packrat Pod with no serious injuries, crying, or throwing of appliances. I like to think I have some serious moving skills. This is my 3rd move this year, and doing archaeology is really just a sequence of moving stuff out of dirt into boxes and then between labs and museums. Matt's superpower is the Tetris of fitting oddly-shaped objects into square spaces. But. Moving is hard and we are tired. And we wonder things like, "What is that weird plastic thing in the storage closet?" "Are our hangers procreating?" and "Where did all of those baby spiders go that we noticed in the kitchen the other day?

Also, how would you store all of your worldly possessions without your friends? Thank you so much to Southy and Diane for all of those great boxes, Brian and Emily for babysitting skis and beer collections, and Shelby and Ross for pretty much everything else that is keeping us sane these days.

Travel Planning

Our trip is nigh, in 1 week we'll be in Hanoi. As we meet with people for what might be the last time before we hit the road, we're buffeted with more "When are you leaving?"s and "Where are you going"s than we can shake a stick at (I tried shaking a stick at some of them, but it didn't help). We've tried to keep our travel planning fairly flexible by design. Outside of our intercontinental flights and a hotel in Hanoi and Cairo, we have no concrete reservations. With that said, we've given a good amount of thought to the cities and sites we'd like to try to visit while we are traveling. Our flight plans gave us some structure that has allowed us to narrow down our itinerary without making it seem completely rigid.

I've gotten most of my inspiration for travel from just talking to friends. Some are prolific bloggers, like Jeremy who writes for Gadling (you can read his articles here), and another who while I don't think is currently writing but kept a substantial blog during a year long trip in 2008 through southeast Asia and New Zealand. Anyone who has visited any part of a country on our agenda has been more than forthcoming about sharing details about places to visit. We certainly won't lack for recommendations.

Email Scams while traveling

I know this is old news for many but I just wanted to remind people of a common email scam, and one that is all the more believable when you know people who are traveling:

Friend Mugged at Knife Point — or Just a Scam

Just remember that we won't be asking for money over email; if you receive an email from us asking for money you should ignore it.