Checklists and countdowns

The to-do list is getting things crossed off of it, but somehow, it’s still not shrinking. With about three weeks to go before departure, this might not be a good thing.

It’s not that I can’t do stuff once I depart, but the ease of picking up the phone or whatever gets a lot more complicated with a double-digit time change. (It was 12 hours; now I’m not sure if it’s 11 or 13 … the international date line confuses me.)

Most of the money stuff is figured out and now I’m working on the medical stuff. I’ve been warned to get all the medical and dental out of the way before I hit China, so on Saturday I completed about $2600 worth of improvements to the pearly tea-stained whites.

This week, I also went to a doctor’s office to renew my prescription for a year. Getting the piece of paper wasn’t difficult, but now begins the hunt to get it filled. I need a mail order pharmacy, but after doing a bunch of research and deciding on one, I learned my particular brand of insurance doesn’t utilize mail-order pharmacies.

Great. Now it looks like I am going to have to switch medical insurance. Not what I wanted to do, but I don’t think it’s a big deal. I signed up for “basic” with the one place and should just have to upgrade to “standard,” although I am not entirely positive what that entails.

Really, every time I think I’ve gotten caught up, something else falls in the way.

But I do get things knocked off occasionally. When I got off work on Friday, I called the doctor in Minot to verify the fact that the knee bill was paid off. Two weeks ago, I’d called and the lady said yes but I was a bit skeptical because she was describing a different bill than the one I was asking about.

But praise God, both bills – topping $600 – have been paid. Oh, that was such a relief.

Tomorrow is a holiday, so I’m heading with some friends to an outlet mall, where I hope to cross off “get tennis shoes” and maybe some other assorted stuff.

My new apartment, of which I have photos, has an indoor pool, so I figured I’d get a swim suit. (In Jakarta, I wore a sports bra and shorts – that would likely not be appropriate this time around.) I took a chance, ordering one off Amazon.

It was the last available and I waffled on it, wondering if the size was right. I figured the bottoms would fit, but I have a lot of trouble sticking my shoulders in shirts so I wasn’t sure if the top would. I took a chance.

When it arrived, the bottoms fit fine. The top had to have been worse than any corset ever created. I couldn’t breathe.

Once I peeled it off – and boy, that was a feat – I caught a glimpse of the size tag. It was a smaller size than the bottoms!

So it’s going back. I was extremely disappointed because it really was awesome, but that was the only one they had.

If I don’t see one at this outlet mall in Delaware, I’m going to just cut my losses and take a chance on one from LL Bean. They have 10 percent off through tomorrow, so I’ll have time to order if I come home empty-handed.

Really, I’ve curbed the shopping. I just don’t know what else I could possibly bring with me. I wish I had some books, but I’m not going to lug stuff over there. I have access to a lot of periodicals through the department library and I guess I’ll just go with that.

The computer situation is what’s tricky. The laptop isn’t going to be coming back, and I am trying to make sure everything is backed up in case stuff gets weird. But my external, which I’ve hardly used, is crashing – or something – as I’m trying to make copies of stuff to put on thumb drives. I wanted to just leave the external and take off the music and the Thru the Bible series and leave everything else, but I started getting all these “failed to write” errors. And during the copying of U2, too. Bummer.

So in tomorrow’s trip to Delaware, we’re also stopping at Best Buy. The advantage of Delaware is it’s a no sales tax state, so I plan on picking up something else to back up, although I am not sure what. It’s just weird. It’s like the external is failing or something.

And it’s not a good sign when your backup is failing.