TO DO--Eight days to go!

I have eight days until I head off to LA, and then nine days until I fly to Vanuatu. In short, @#$@SDASAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I both feel like I have basically done everything already (I have -- haven't I?) and also that there's an endless supply of little nitpicky tasks that I need to accomplish before I go. Things like:

1. Vote. Conveniently I got my emailed ballot last weekend, and so all I need to do is stop being hilariously lazy, print out the dumb thing, and hunt for a stamp.

2. Cancel my contract with AT&T. Allegedly, they'll let PCVs use the military pause on contracts and will let you take a timeout while still keeping your number, but you have to call them once a year to keep it active.

3. Find (or buy) new USB connectors for my DS and camera.

4. Actually decide what bags I want to take and start putting stuff in them. I was feeling pretty ambitious this morning and started to iron clothes, then proceeded to melt a bit of cheap plastic lace and get green bits stuck on a tshirt. Urgh. I now have a vision of moving to Vanuatu with everything I own covered in little stupid green bits. Clearly I'll be the classiest and most attractive elementary school teacher ever to hang out in my village.

5. Finish doing media things -- change all of my .epubs to .mobis and take things off of my laptop and move them onto my external hard drive. My CD drive is messed up so I currently don't have any movies on my drive, but other people in Group 25 sound like they have a bunch of stuff ... Hope so! Otherwise, I'm going to be relying on my kindle and In Our Time Podcasts from BBC Radio 4 (you seriously can hear every capital letter when they read it aloud) and I suspect that will get really old, really quickly.

6. Clean out my closet of all the clothes I think will look childish, dumb, or freshman girl on a night out  on a twenty-five year old. I'm also trying to get rid of basics, like white t shirts or leggings, since I think I'll probably just want to buy new ones when I get back.

7. Decide if I want to update this blog with a giant data upload once every few months or if I want to snail mail my blog entries to someone in my family and have them put things on here.

I guess that those are the main things that I have to do... That, and possibly say good bye to Houston. I'm not sure if my parents will still be here when I come back (they're not sure, either) and it's sort of bittersweet to think about every little errand being the last time I go here and everything. Meh.

I think I must have used up all of my nervous energy on worrying about whether or not I'd be accepted to PC, so I don't even feel very nervous about any of this. I've just had the longest summer of my life (May-October) and I really am ready to go. Just eight days, though ...