Unbalanced. (and rebalancing?)

I'd have to say that my life is a bit out of whack, maybe a lot. It may not be clear to most of you, as I have a pathological need for secrecy (Dan can expound volumes on this), but it is.

Work is currently insane. Too many projects. Too many deadlines. Too many expectant clients (not expectant as in child expectant - more like you work for me and only me expectant)

Home is dominated by a glacial remodeling project now heading towards completion of its 5th year. It was a noble endeavor that continued to expand beyond the initial conception until it consumed all that it could see. Certainly the movie Money Pit could come to mind, but it's not really that (nothing has collapsed), it's all generally to the good, but it dominates my non working time. There is light at the end of this tunnel however, as the project may not extend far into its sixth year. I will always be working on some project around the house, but nothing of this scale and scope.

So between these two masters I've (we, to a certain extent, though the responsibilities on the remodeling side are mostly on me - I'm the contractor, she's mostly the designer) done little in the way of adventures. Amazingly little perhaps for someone of my age, means, and lack of children. It always strikes me when MT calls and asks me what I've been doing, the only real answer I have is 'nothing' (secretive nature aside). It's essentially true. I still watch movies, read books, read blogs, etc, but other than the very rare outing (see post on seeing Wicked in Boston) my life is dominate to an unhealthy degree by work and...work.

So, in an effort to reclaim some sense of adventure, we are finally following through on a planned trip to Australia. This is something that has been on the radar for a number of years, but we always seemed to find a way to talk ourselves out of it. But not this time. We leave in about a month. It's obviously been in a more serious planning stage for longer than that, but due to bureaucratic and personal secrecy issues, this is the official announcement.

The bureaucratic issue related to the renewal of my passport. I sent it in 6 weeks ago using their accelerated process (and coughing up $60 additional dollars) that is supposed to take 3 weeks. Well, I just got an e-mail from the yesterday saying that it had been processed and was in the mail. If you didn't know, the passport system is entirely fucked up due to the requirement for passports when traveling to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. All sorts of people that traveled daily to Canada (maybe millions of people) now need a passport, and while one could argue whether this will reduce the likelihood of terrorism (which was the point), you'd hope the government was prepared to act on the laws they pass. No such luck. My 7 week time is not the worst case scenario for expedited passports. People have been known to wait as much as 12 weeks for a 3 week process.

Needless to say, we haven't gone full blast into the details not really knowing what the status of my passport was, but now that we know I'll get it in time, things are shifting into high gear.

We'll be gone pretty much the entire month (4 weeks). No problem with either vacation time or approval from work (we both have bosses that travel extensively). Now we just have to figure out what to do and see. It's a big fucking place, almost the same land area as the continental untied states, but with almost no people living between, say, easter PA and California. You may have thought Escalante was remote, but it has nothing on Australia.

Things/places to see:

The big cities -
Melbourne (Faith knows people there from her college semester spent studying there)
Sydney (Opera House, olympic stuff)
Perth (the most remote major city on Earth).

Nature -
Uluru (Ayers Rock) which is a long way from anything (300 miles to Alice Springs, the city you would fly to to visit it)
Great Barrier Reef -
Stromatolites - oldest living creatures on Earth
Giant sequoia-sized trees
Various oceans
Wacky and incredibly dangerous creatures (not necessarily one in the same)

• Kangaroos, platypi,
  
• Box jellyfish
  
• Salties
• and the list goes on and on

Aboriginal culture - the oldest continuous culture in the world
Etc...etc...

I'm not sure we'll manage all of this even in a month (imagine trying to explore the continental US in a month), but we'll give it a shot. We're looking at this as a place we'll probably never come back to so we're going to try to pull out all the stops, the economics will rear its ugly head inevitably.

Anyone who knows anything cool to see or do in Australia please comment.

And while there will be more on this later, I leave you with this...