Five Items and Two Lists.

Item the First.
I have returned from the UK. It was beyond awesome, and difficult to leave. I took several hundred pictures and a lot of notes, both of which I intend to share after some editing. I am now hanging out in Chicago and enjoying myself a good deal.

Item the Second.
I also took a lot of pictures at the Feast of the Hunters' Moon last weekend, which will also be shared in due time. I was expecting a sort of Renaissance Fair with pioneers and injuns, but it was about 78 times cooler than that. It is more authentic than SCA events and more relaxed than Civil War reenactments. I am really jealous that we don't have anything quite like it in the Pacific Northwest, because I would be So Into It.

Item the Third.
After the weekend, I got to witness two of my favorite sailors getting married to each other, and that was also extremely wonderful.

Item the Fourth.
So, remember that interview I kept mentioning? Today I found out that I got the job. As of October 21st, I'll be the Instruction and Electronic Services Librarian for Warner Pacific College. It's a position I was eyeing with envy way back when I was working for Cascade, and it is probably the only one that could have even motivated me to apply for a long-term library job at this point, so it's very gratifying to have actually landed it.

This means I'll be able to walk to work from my house. It also means a lot of other things, one of which is not being available for as much travel and crazy jobs and boat adventures, which is sad, but another of which is being present for a lot of wonderful Portland events that I've been missing out on, which is happy. For example, it probably means I'll be doing NaNoWriMo this November.

Item the Fifth.
I learned a lot from living out of a backpack for almost two weeks in the UK. I made some lists about packing, and I am putting them here mostly for my own reference, but perhaps also for your amusement.

Things I Wish I'd Brought:
- A more comfortable pack. Mine was plenty large and plenty sturdy, but the straps weren't padded enough for carrying it around all day, and my shoulders let me know about it. For some reason this bothered me a lot more than it did when I carried the same pack across Europe in '95.
- Chamois travel towel. I brought a thin, lightweight towel, but as we were staying in a different place almost every night, there were just too many times that towel got packed away wet. Near the end of my trip I invested in a synthetic chamois towel; it's tiny, effective, and wrings out nearly dry. Genius.
- Plastic shower shoes (flip-flops). I left them behind because I thought both flip-flops and Tevas would be overkill. But I don't dare use public (i.e. hostel) showers barefoot, because I pick up foot diseases way too easily. As a result, my Tevas were so funky by the time I got back to Chicago that, in my exhausted post-flight state, I convinced myself that putting them in the dryer would be a good idea. It wasn't. I am really missing those Tevas.
- One more t-shirt. I thought I'd buy thrift store clothes once we got there, but their thrift stores were really uninspiring. Lots of American labels, prices weren't great, and also the UK is going through this big 80s-retro phase right now. Ugh. So I spent more time than I wanted to in laundrettes (UK laundromats), when an extra shirt or two wouldn't have taken up all that much room in my pack.
- Google Maps printouts of all the towns we were going to. Easier to hand one of those to a local and ask them to point out your destination, rather than try to remember a rambling list of directions followed by the fateful phrase: "You can't miss it." Whenever we heard that, we knew we were doomed.
- Contact info for a couple of hostels in all of the cities/towns we went to, in case our host didn't work out. We had this for some places but not others. Once we were really glad we had it. Another time we really wished we had.
- Travel sized toiletries. A full sized toothbrush is just an awkward thing to have in a backpack. So is a half-empty full sized tube of toothpaste. Two tiny tubes would have been better.
- Melatonin pills. My travel buddy shared hers with me a couple of times, and it seemed to help with the jetlag, though it may be that I just like a good placebo now and then.

Things I'm Really Glad I Brought:
- A compression-type bag. Not the kind with the buckles and straps, but one that you can force all the air out of. I'm used to having less and less space in my luggage as laundry day approaches; with this thing, I actually had more.
- Inflatable neck pillow. I may never travel without one again.
- A book of short stories. Great for distracting myself from my immediate surroundings without getting lost in an extended narrative.
- Alarm clock. We didn't set it the first night in London, and we woke at noon sharp.
- Mom's iPod Shuffle. With its several limitations came the significant advantage of taking up basically no space at all. Thanks, Mom!
- Extra earplugs. Easy to lose, hard to sleep in strange places without.
- Extraordinarily compatible travel buddy. Have to admit I got really lucky there.