So here I am - on a plane to my new life in Australia. Surprisingly, I've managed to sleep right through this 15 hour flight with a few stretch breaks to prevent those pesky blood clots you can get on long flights. My plane was delayed by 2 hours because of a "lighting issue". I had no idea what that meant - and hoped it wasn't lighting for the captain's control panel or the plane's headlights (if planes have headlights - do they?).

Apparently it was the lights inside the cabin that weren't working properly and they were afraid someone might get a hot coffee dropped on their head during beverage service. I would have rather been given a flashlight, thank you! After sitting at the terminal for 3 hours I was so tired I couldn't read or think, so I just started knitting my scarf mindlessly (Finny, you inspired me) and that preoccupied me for a while (in addition to some snacks they started passing around to quell the booing that rose from the crowd when the attendant announced another "15 more minutes").

Now that that's over they're serving us meals and keeping the lights low in accordance with Sydney time so that we adapt easily to the time change. My handy flight path dashboard tells me its 10:21 am on Thursday in San Francisco and 4:21 am on Friday in Sydney.

No wonder I'm wide awake. Now I'm at 32,000 feet and crossing the International Date line. It just went from Thursday to Friday in the blink of an eye. Pretty cool. But I lost a day of my life. Good thing I will gain that back when I cross back over in January for a conference in New York. Every day is precious. You know what they say - no minute gone comes ever back again.

I started this blog as a way for folks (yes, "folks" - I'm from North Carolina) back home to keep up with my adventures in California. Wrigley Rose is the name of my puppy dog - "Rose" for short. In case you didn't know she was adopted from Chicago Canine Rescue in the Windy City (where every dog's name is Wrigley) but she earned this name because a scalper was trying to sell her with tickets to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field when she was only 5 weeks old. Here's a picture of what she looked like back then.

Just a little ball of fluff and personality. She'll be a little delayed getting to Sydney due to some quarantine issues (they don't have rabies on the entire continent of Australia - not that SHE has rabies but the Australian Quarantine & Inspection Service prefers to verify that in their own, drawn-out way), so I'll ghost write for her until she arrives. I gave her a rubber chicken before I left and boy, oh boy, oh boy (as my Mom likes to say), she loves that chicken:

Barking her head off at the chicken

Eating the chicken

Killing the chicken

Wanting me to play with her & her chicken

Being cute with her chicken

Now I'm chronicling another adventure - one where everything is changing all at once. I've spent months preparing - I bought some new furniture to take with me (Google is paying for shipping and furniture is pricey in Australia - as is everything else I'm told),

I got some San Francisco memorabilia like a poster from everyone's favorite Alice Waters restaurant, Chez Panisse (this one is from their 32nd birthday),

and a painting of the 49 mile scenic drive sign from one of my favorite San Francisco artists, Eric at 3 Fish Studios. For anyone not from this fair city, San Francisco is a 7 mile by 7 mile city and the scenic drive is called "49 mile drive" because frankly all 49 square miles of that place is scenic.

I have an inkling Sydney will be scenic too and thankfully I have my trusty camera(s) to chronicle it all and share it on my blog.

So here I am - on my little Eat {work}, Pray {work}, Love {sit on the beach} journey. I hope to keep this blog going but I know I'll be getting busy very soon. I land in Australia today (Thursday for y'all, Friday for me), start work on Monday and then leave on Sunday for Singapore and then back to Sydney three days later. Jet lag will be my constant companion.

As Garrison says - be well, do good work and keep in touch.