03/11 - finished Peru blogging

Well, it's taken me 11 days of sitting on Jim's couch to finish blogging about our Peru trip. During that time, I have finished watching Mad Men up through season 4. Season 5 is in the mail, and should be arriving any day. I have also watched many episodes of Star Trek (TOS) since they are easy to blog over. I've been drinking a lot of hot chocolate with Emmet's (which is like Bailey's), and extra dirty gin martinis.

I got a replacement phone from eBay for $15. It's identical to my old one, except it needs a new battery, and the flash timing is better. Every time I look at it, I think of the photos I lost. But I am happy to have a camera again, and it's a welcome change to have a flash that actually lets me take photos in dim light. I am not even totally sure that it can function as a phone, yet. There is no service out here, so I can't call Verizon and set it up until we go to the coast. I think we are doing that tomorrow. 

People I talk to are still asking "How was Peru? Did you take a lot of pictures?" And I have a violent urge to throw up on them, every time.

Another thing they keep asking me is, "When are you coming home?" And I don't know. I am hoping to figure some stuff out when we got to the coast tomorrow. I need to call some bike shops and see if we can pick up a bike-shipping box from one of them. I will fill it with everything I can fit, and mail it home. I hope that the rest of my stuff can all fit on a Greyhound with me. If I buy the ticket 3 weeks in advance, it's only $129, but will take 4 days of travel to get from Arcata, CA to Portland, ME. Yuck. Do bus stations have showers?

Also, Jim maybe still wants me to fly to visit Austin with him, maybe, if he even goes. It would be around that same time (3 weeksish from now), so I could Greyhound from there, instead. Either way, I need to buy that ticket soon. Every day I don't buy it means that my departure is still at least 3 weeks away.

Today, I submitted my self-appraisal for Pet Partners' annual employee evaluation process. It's automatically sent to me by email. They don't even know I haven't been at work for the past 5 months. I talked to my manager in Lewiston, and she said that I should just fill it out the same way I normally would. It's always the same questions: several pages of, "Rate your ____ skills on a scale of 1-5." When it was all tallied up at the end, I had given myself a 4.9. I think I deserve it. Sometimes I am excited to be going back to work soonish. Other times, not so much. But I guess that is normal.

03/01 - back to Los Estados Unidos

We gained three hours on the flight back to San Francisco, which was scheduled to leave Lima at 1:15am, but was delayed until nearly 3:00am. [So it turned out we didn't have to rush away from the cell-phone hunt, after all. But, if the plane had boarded as scheduled, we would have barely made it through security in time.]

Jim slept for most of the flight, but I couldn't. I cried on and off throughout, distracting myself with the first 7 episodes of Mad Men. They fed us something-- an omelette. It wasn't as good as the other airplane food I had had. We got off in California around 9am.

It took about an hour to get through all the airport stuff and out into the world. Jim still has about 70 soles, because we forgot to change them before we left Peru, and SFO wanted to charge a big fee. The truck was still where we left it, in a long-term airport parking lot, which cost Jim almost $400 for 3 weeks (ouch).

Since I can't drive stick, he drove us all the way back to Somes Bar. That's a 7-hour drive, but I think it took us about 9, since we made a few stops. I slept on-and-off for most of the car ride. I am so incredibly good at sleeping in the car. If I'm not driving, I'm usually sleeping. Jim stopped for fast food twice. I ate 2 McDonald's double cheeseburgers, then a Burger King chicken sandwich a few hours later. I was so miserable about my phone. I hated myself and just wanted to sleep forever, and I knew a belly-full of greasy food would help me do it. When we got to Arcata, we picked up some to-go sushi at Tomo, and I got a hot toddy, made with Crown Royal Maple, at a nearby bar. Jim was still mad at me.

I slept most of the way back to Somes. We ate sushi with Sam, who had been staying at Jim's place the whole time we were gone. Then we went straight to bed.