Seriously!  35 days until we leave for the UK.

I can’t believe it’s February already, and that I can actually say we’re going on vacation next month.

I am absolutely stressed out to the max (as in, I’m actually looking forward to going back to Nebraska next weekend), but holy crap it’s all going to be worth it once we get over there.

I’ve been picking up every single odd job and squirreling away every penny I can spare for this trip.  Website projects, DJ shifts, an old LMG event, you name it and I’m probably trying to do it.  The last details of the trip are getting booked this weekend (flight between London and Dublin and our soccer tickets), and you would think with me being such a Man United nut that I would TOTALLY be freaking out about the fact that our match tickets aren’t booked yet.  I’m seriously less stressed about that than booking the last flight we need…

So here is our ‘essentially set in stone’ plan for the entire trip:

Land in London
Go see Justin from Blue October play acoustic (which I JUST found out about, and I’m willing to get into Manchester stupidly late just to be able see him)
Take the train to Manchester at all odd hours of the night
3 days in Manchester, including a Man United vs West Brom match at Old Trafford
Take the train to London
4 days in London, including a trip to the Sherlock Holmes museum and The Who Shop in west London
Fly to Dublin
Rent a car, drive to Cork
2 days in Cork, where we will finally spread Chris’ grandma’s ashes
Drive to bufu
2 days at Kinnitty Castle, plus a trip down the road to Leap Castle (the most haunted castle in Ireland!)
Drive to Dublin
5 days in Dublin, where we will spend Chris’ 30th birthday getting hammered, and somehow stumble through the Jameson distillery and Guinness brewery tours
Fly to London
Take the train to Cardiff
3 days in Cardiff, including an afternoon trip to the BBC Wales studios where I will be able to STAND ON THE HONEST TO GOODNESS TARDIS SET THEY’RE CURRENTLY USING ON DOCTOR WHO!  Then we’ll be attending the first BBC-sanctioned Doctor Who convention the next day, including an autograph session with Mr. Matt Smith himself
Take the train back to London
Fly home

As with all of my trips to the UK, every.single.bit of the stress I’m going through right now will be 110% worth it once I step foot off the plane at Heathrow.

For now, head down and just get through the next 5 weeks…

The big surprise present for Chris?

Tickets to the Bears vs Packers game at Lambeau Field on Christmas Day.

I went through absolute hell trying to get those damned tickets, and ended up having to drive to Green Bay by myself last weekend to pick them up.

Then just when I thought things were going smoothly, my effing car breaks down again.  I had to have my car towed to the garage and have the fuel pump replaced.  Chris tried to convince me to ‘just take care of it after the holidays’, but since we were going to be taking MY car to Green Bay (which, at that point, he still didn’t know about the game), that wasn’t exactly an option.  An evening in the garage, a massive headache and $575 later, I had a functioning car.

But, I gave him the tickets on Saturday night and they certainly went over well  :)

Despite the fact that the Bears lost (which we were expecting anyways), it was incredible to actually be at Lambeau for a game.  He was able to cross that off his ‘sports bucket list’, and I was able to cross off another item from my 101 list!  Worked out for both of us  :)

My xmas present from him certainly shocked the hell out of me as well…

He got me an AUTOGRAPHED RYAN GIGGS JERSEY.

Holy. Hell.

I definitely shrieked a few times in the process of opening that package  :D

Not gonna lie, I’m ridiculously glad the holidays are over.  I’ve been stressed as hell, and now it’s time to focus on the UK trip in just over 2 months!

By nature, I’m not the most talkative person, and I’m certainly not always capable of talking about how I feel (which is why, during the winter season, I’m thankful that my boyfriend has the patience of a saint).  But the second I turn on a stove burner, everything comes pouring out.

I realized the other night that I was totally stumped on a Christmas present for one of my friends, until I had one of those “well, DUH!” moments while driving home from work (pretty sure it was complete with the little lightbulb going on above my head, too).

I can safely say that my friend Matt is one of my BEST friends in the whole world.  We met less than a year after I moved to Chicago, when I started working for “that evil video rental company that went bankrupt (which makes me laugh everytime I hear their name)” aka Blockbuster.  After he left the company, he started working as a DJ in a bar downtown.  Of course, seeing as how I wanted to support my friends, I started going to the bar on the nights he was working.

2 years later, I started working for the bar.  Then another bar in the company.  Then in their management office doing little odd jobs.  Next thing I know, I’m the graphic designer for the company and its 10 bars.  In the midst of all this, I had moved from the suburbs and around the city a total of 6 times.  I wrecked a car.  I lost another one.  I ended up in the hospital multiple times.  I had a relationship I thought would go the distance crumble around me.  I took two trips to Europe to follow my favorite band.  I had ridiculous highs and the lowest of the lows.

Throughout all of this, Matt has always been there for me.  He’s helped me move, given me rides home when I had a bit too much to drink, loaned me money, called in favors on my behalf, been a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on.  He has single-handedly hooked me up with more friends, roommates, and jobs than I can count.  Most importantly, he’s also the reason I met my boyfriend Chris (he works for their DJ company, too!).

Needless to say, my debt to this kid is pretty substantial.  So this year I decided to give him something from the bottom of my heart.

I watch a lot of cooking shows (and I mean, a LOT), and I’ve fallen in love with a show on Cooking Channel called Extra Virgin.  The hosts are a husband (born and raised in Tuscany) and wife (an actress out in LA) who make unbelievable food and are constantly sharing it with their friends and family.  I’ve made several of their recipes on other occasions, like a batch of homemade limoncello that won me serious brownie points with my boyfriend’s mom, and there is just SO much love that goes into their food.

Knowing that Matt has always been a fan of my cooking (even when *I* was a little less confident in my culinary abilities lol), I chose my 3 favorite recipes from their show and website (www.underthetuscangun.com) and decided to give Matt some tasty, convenient omnoms for his busy schedule.

Despite having a rather crazy week myself, I picked up the supplies and knocked out all 3 dishes in a single evening.  I made him Sausages with “Fagioli all’Uccelletta” (kidney beans with a tomato sauce), Pesto Lasagne and Ricotta Pancakes.  I portioned and packaged everything (including pieces of french bread to dip in the tomato sauce and garlic bread for the lasagne), so he could just pull a container out of the freezer, reheat and nosh away.

He was THRILLED to receive all the food.  Not only did he immediately eat a piece of lasagne (despite it being closer to breakfast than lunch time) and call me later in the evening to say he had pancakes and lasagne for dinner, he begrudgingly shared a piece of the lasagne with his boss, just so he could share the awesomeness with someone.

Knowing that he will have quick, easy and tasty food in the midst of his insane work schedule?  Definitely makes me feel good to help a friend like that.  Knowing that he enjoyed my food enough to seriously tell me every time I’ve seen him since which of the dishes he ate recently?  Best feeling in the world  :)

The only present still on the table is the one for Chris.  Which I won’t post about in detail YET, because I still have to go pick it up (which is going to be an adventure in itself).  All will be revealed after the 25th, but I’ve gotta say that I’m pretty effing proud of this one if I can manage to pull it off…

Once xmas is said and done, I get to start massively stressing about our UK trip.  I have a feeling it’s going to be like the last two trips, where the only thing I do is work, sleep and save money (the less I go out, the less money I’ll spend).  I turn into a hermit in the winter anyways, so it’s not much of a change.

Plans once we’re over there have changed a bit.  Despite *really* wanting to make it back there, we’ll be skipping the side trip to Teignmouth in favor of spending 4 days in London.  Which I’m still ok with.  I also recently purchased my birthday present to Chris, in the form of 2 nights at a castle in Ireland.  Bonus?  20 minutes down the road is Leap Castle, said to be THE most haunted castle in Ireland.  So not only are we staying in a.freaking.castle for 2 nights, but we’ll be able to go on a ghost hunt.  I’d say that’s a win-win!

Plane tickets purchased: prices dropped over $100 for each of our tickets.  Buying Monday.

Savings account started for the trip: check!!!

Tickets purchased for the 1st official Doctor Who convention in Cardiff on March 25th: YES YES AND YES!

No, really.  Thanks to a quick-draw purchase this afternoon, Chris and I will be attending the first BBC sanctioned Doctor Who convention in Cardiff, Wales.  Not to mention that I purchased an add-on for the Matt Smith autograph session that afternoon.

$370 well spent.

While Ten is still my favorite Doctor (sorry Matt, but I have a long standing soft spot for David Tennant), I’m stupidly excited to be meeting A Doctor.  I even went and bought a TARDIS lunchbox from ThinkGeek this afternoon to have Matt sign!

The rest of the trip is quickly coming together, at least as far as the planning process.  Me and my massive OCD are kicking into full swing, and other than finding specific places to stay in Cork and Dublin, I pretty much have everything mapped out as far as lodging and travel around the UK.

On a fabulous note, as it stands we’ll actually be spending the day of and the day after our 1 year anniversary down in Teignmouth.  Doing absolutely nothing.  Which is brilliant, because Teignmouth is such a tiny little seaside town (and who knows what the weather is going to be like at that time of year), it’ll be the perfect place to hole up for a few days and relax.

Yes, this is Teignmouth as in Muse’s hometown.  Yes, I’ve already been there before (UK trip last September).  And yes, I totally want to go back  :)

While I realize that it’s kinda silly to complain, as it WAS my idea to get repeatedly poked with a needle over multiple days and multiple hours, I just felt like sharing.

The TARDIS has entirely peeled at this point (not surprising, since it’s constantly rubbing against my side), and the MK Ultra artwork is starting the process.  I’ve pretty much had a tub of Body Shop’s vitamin E body butter at my side for the last two days to help the healing process along.  Putting nice, cool lotion on a healing tattoo = the best feeling ever.

Earlier this week, I started training under the always amazing Matt Nolan to take over a karaoke gig at a place called The Spot on Wednesday nights.  For the most part, it seems like a pretty straightforward and fairly easy gig, since they have quite the following there.  Matt was pretty much doing non-stop singers (as in, not even playing music between them) for most of the night, so as long as I have a small, dance-y playlist waiting in the wings, I should be good to go.  It’s just going to be interesting dealing with the crazy, pushy karaoke people like some of the crazy ones I had to deal with doing Rock Band.  Matt and Chris both have a fabulous hashtag they use on Twitter, called #ihatekaraoke.  Let’s hope I don’t have to use it often…

I’ve never actually run a karaoke gig before (done DJ gigs for them, yes.  Then of course there was the 2 1/2 year run of Rock Band down at Mother’s), so I’m a bit nervous.  I’m not exactly what you’d call ‘comfortable’ on a microphone, and if you saw how good Matt is you’d understand why I feel like I have a lot to live up to.  But, as I’m not only a fast learner but incredibly stubborn, I WILL get the hang of it.

Since I’m going to be taking this gig over, I’m also making some changes to my normal work schedule.  Trying to work out a deal with Diana to swap Sunday and Thursday with her.  She’s wanted Sunday’s off since I started so she actually has a day to hang out with her husband, I want a day where it’s relatively quiet so I can get our website work done, and now that I’m working in the bar til 2am on Wednesday I need the Thursday off so I can sleep (getting up at 7:30am after being at the bar til at least 2?  Noooo thank you).

Only downside for me is that now Chris and I will only have Thursday and part of Saturday to actually hang out and do stuff (he’ll be working Wed, Fri, late Sat and Sun once they sort his schedule).  But, we’ve gotta do what we’ve gotta do to make that $ and pay the bills.  All the money we’ll be able to save up for the UK/Ireland trip in March will be soooo well spent tho  :)

The half sleeve currently consists of star sign constellations for my grandmother, mom, dad, myself and my boyfriend/soon-to-be fiance.  The orb artwork seen here:

…is album artwork from Muse’s “The Resistance” (specifically on the liner notes page for the song MK Ultra).  The lyrics are “spread our codes to the stars, you must rescue us all”.  It’s the chorus of “Exogenesis Symphony: Part II” also from The Resistance.

(On a side note, this is actually my third piece of Muse related ink.  I have musical notes around both forearms that are the bass line from Hysteria and the piano melody from Starlight)

Then of course, there’s the TARDIS floating around on the inside of my arm.

The entire background, from my elbow to shoulder, will eventually be covered in blues/purples to make it look like outer space.

Once this is all said and done, then I get to start working on my Dark Tower themed half sleeve on the OTHER side!  :)

I have.  A freakin’ TARDIS.  On the inside of my arm.

AWESOME.

While the line work on the TARDIS wasn’t so bad (as in, it tickled like hell and then I nearly fell asleep), the shading hurt.like.hell.

By the time I took the plastic wrap off it last night, the entire area of the TARDIS was visibly raised.  By this morning, the entire inside of my arm is a lovely shade of light purplish-red.  My left side is definitely more sensitive than the right as far as tattoos, and even a few of the stars up near my shoulder are starting to bruise.

Regardless, it looks freakin’ awesome.

I’m giving it a few weeks to heal up, then depending on time and money I’ll head back out to have Jeremy start working on coloring in the entire background (hey, if the entire inside of my arm is covered in color, I can’t see the bruising!).

From top to bottom: Gemini (grandma), Cancer (mom), Muse album artwork from “MK Ultra”, Aquarius (dad), “Spread our codes to the stars, you must rescue us all” from Muse’s “Exogenesis Symphony: Part II”, Scorpio (me!) and Aries (Chris).

Oh, and on the inside of my arm?

A FREAKIN’ TARDIS!

The inside of my arm surprisingly wasn’t that bad.  More than anything, the damn thing tickled (I jerked a little bit when he first started for that reason).  I very nearly fell asleep on the table while he was working on that part…

Since it’s all line work, it should be healed up in about a week.  After which, I’ll be going back to get all the stars filled in, the MK Ultra artwork and TARDIS colored, and hopefully start in on the rest of the background.  Eventually, my entire upper arm will be colored in with pretty blues/purples so the whole thing looks like outer space.

So. Freaking. Excited.

I realized earlier today that 2 years ago at this time, I was getting ready to fly from London to Hamburg, Germany to see Muse for the very first time on my birthday.  Time flies…

As a ‘happy birthday to me’ present to myself, later today I’ll be making a trip to Tomato Tattoo in Lisle to get ink piece #14!  Starting on my left half-sleeve (the outer space themed one) with the fabulous Jeremy, who was responsible for Chris’ Chicago/pirate flag tattoo on his chest.  Needless to say, I’m pretty effin’ excited about it.  Another item to cross off the 101 list!

Also, on a more serious note…

Since I decided that I wanted to finally find my biological mom by the time I turned 30 (which is most certainly on my 101 list), and my mom had actually sent me a scanned newspaper clipping involving my biological mom this past weekend (we’ve always known her name, as they mistakenly gave my parents paperwork for an open adoption first before realizing that it was supposed to be closed.  My mom managed to catch her name on the papers before they fixed the error), I started hunting around online for any adoption registries.  Just to see if I could get lucky and find something.

Lo and behold, one of the first sites I find has a hit.

The entry is under her name, and the birth information matches perfectly.

So why am I freaking the hell out?

The entry was from April 6, 2000.

6 months before I turned 18.

Like she pre-emptively put the listing up in case I decided to try and find her when I turned 18 (which, thanks to the Nebraska law that says you can’t search through the adoption agency for biological parents while under the age of 25 unless you have your adoptive parents’ consent, I didn’t even think about at the time).

Anyways…

This website not only gives her address and phone number, but a place to send an email message.

So I’m currently losing sleep trying to figure out what the hell I want to even try to say to her.  For all I know, the email address doesn’t even work anymore (it HAS been over 10 years).  I’m trying to hash out a short draft right now, with the intention of sleeping on it and then sending it off tomorrow.  At this point, I doubt I’ll actually be able to sleep until I send it.

Hence why I’m writing this entry.  Trying to distract myself for a couple minutes…

Assuming she actually still wants to get in touch with me, how awesome would it be to get a call from her on my birthday?