The Big Countdown Has Started (I am gonna wet myself with excitement)

 T-Minus 54 hours 

It is Monday morning and we are T-Minus 54 hours until the car picks us up to whisk us away to the airplane headed for London. I have been looking forward to this day since I was about six-years-old. I love, love, love to travel. I think it is just in my DNA. I traveled home from Germany when I was just about one year old (I am not sure what one year equals using the metric system) and I traveled all summer long with the drum and bugle corps every summer from the time I was in about fifth grade until who knows when? Into high school I believe. I am a good traveler; I am pretty-much a go-with-the-flow guy on holiday (that is European for vacation). Maybe that is why I like to travel and go on vacation - because I don't feel like I have to be so up-tight.

I have had a cold all weekend. It started sometime Friday after my dentist appointment. At this point I am only coughing a bit now and again and I have a stuffed-up nose. I am pretty tired but I am pretty sure I will be good by lift-off. I really hope so anyway. I have had colds when flying before and the pressurization of the plane's cabin is a killer when you're congested. I will deal with whatever occurs.

I started a new Facebook page this morning called An Idiot and A Broad.  It's kind of an homage to my favorite author's (Mark Twain) book Innocents Abroad and the television show An Idiot Abroad from Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington (also with Warwick Davis in later episodes). If you have never seen that show, though I think a lot of the scenes that are supposed to be unscripted are scripted, you should check it out. It is pretty funny. Anyway, I started the page so that I can use it like a journal for our two-week European trip so Cha Cha and I can check-in at places and post our photos in one place. I kind of picture it as our 2015 photo album; why are we gonna have all of this technology of we are never going to use it? I did something that I never thought I would ever do. I bought a selfie-stick. I was on the fence about it but I can get a picture of the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower and Frankenstein's Castle and the Nuremberg courthouse anywhere on-line... What good are photos if we are not in them?  I want a photo of us drinking our ales on the deck of our suite on our tramp steamer. It probably won't be steaming and I, undoubtedly, will be the only tramp on the boat but you know what I am saying. We will not hold-up any lines for anyone like the people in the U S and A often do. We will take photos while we are not in people's ways and not standing in lines.

I know I am not going to be able to write about much more than the upcoming trip from now until we go. I have always been one who wanted to open my presents on Christmas Eve. Once, when I was young (not real young though, as I embarrassingly admit) I even unwrapped one of my Christmas presents and re-wrapped it because I was dying to know what it was. Actually, I think I was in college when I did that because I think my buddy Spiro was with me when I did it. It was a Blackhawk's jacket from my brother Marc. I still have that Starter jacket hanging in the closet I think. So, though I have much more restraint than I used to have, I still have that anxiousness and excitement in me always. I think having to not act on one's impulses comes from being married maybe? Inside, however, I am pretty much always as wide-eyed and excited as an eight-year-old. I call it youthful exuberance but most others call it annoying I think.

My parents came over for a bit yesterday and we talked about when I was a very young child in Germany. I asked about our address in Dossenheim where I first called home after the 130th USAH (United States Army Hospital) in Heidelberg. They could not remember the address but, today, when I was looking through some of my old things I found it on my "Report of Child Born Abroad of American Parent(s)"  certificate - see there is that term "a broad." It appears to read "Im Hassel #6, Dossenheim, Germany." I just mapped it and it is right in the MIDDLE of the block on Im Hassel between Heidelberg Street and Kirchstrasse. Dossenheim is only about 11 kilometers from Heidelberg so we may have to make that trip if we can manage it, huh? I bet my parents would like to see current photos of where they used to live right before their lives became more hectic with kids. I wonder if I will start an international incident by take photos of people's homes?

First photo taken of me on U.S. soil (excluding military bases)

I have so much to get done in the next few days so I had better end this now. Thank you for letting be blab-on. Be sure to head-over and like that new Facebook page so you can be the first to catch our antics trying to keep-up foreign relations. Thank you, so much, for continuing to allow me to get my excitement out. I think I meed to get a new SIM card for my camera for this trip - thank for helping me remember that. Have a great day and I will probably bore you more tomorrow. TTTT...MITM (out) TA!