There are some crazy cheap airfares to Europe right now (through March). I saw Dublin, Ireland for $268 round trip and there were still seats available. I tried to convince The Scientist that we should go to Ireland for my birthday (in March). The Voice of Reason prevailed, however, because the timing isn't that great. The Scientist could be interviewing for jobs, I would be right in the middle of some design work for my job, and we should really save our money for moving this summer.

We just declined to re-sign our lease, so we need to be out of this apartment by August 15. The landlord has set up something like eight different appointments with me for people to view our apartment and so far not one of them has shown up. At this point it's rather ridiculous. Every time they call, I ask them, "Is someone actually going to come this time?" and they assure me that yes, someone will actually come, and no one ever does.

We are both going out of town in the next couple of weeks, although sadly not to Ireland. I'm going to my work location to put in two days there in person. I have back-to-back meetings both days, so it should be hectic. I'm going to stay with AR again and we have our usual plans for shopping and eating. I leave Sunday morning (to allow time Sunday afternoon for the shopping) and will come back Tuesday afternoon in time for some relaxation and then my Tuesday night tennis drill.

The Scientist is going to Omaha for his job on February 1st. While my trip is just two and a half days, his will be for over a week (I think 8 days is the current tally, although he mentioned he may be able to come home early if things go well). We realized last night that this will be the longest we've been apart since he went to Australia when we were first dating back in 1999.

I'm a little depressed about it, actually. Working at home and living in a place where we know very few people leaves me quite isolated except for The Scientist and my tennis. Plus, he's my best friend and I'm sad that he won't be here. I'll make sure to play tennis as much as possible while he's gone so I at least leave the house and speak to some humans in person (I talk to the cats all the time), but it will be lonely. The last time he went out of town I ended up going slightly insane and eating a terrible Lean Cuisine stir fry microwave dinner one night. I'll try to restrain myself from that this time and focus on watching the chick flicks The Scientist doesn't like. Ooh, in fact The Man from Snowy River DVD is heading my way from Amazon.com right now. So that's two hours down out of his 8-day trip.

Yahoo weather says it's currently 9º F and that the low last night was -5º F. I really prefer my temperatures to be in the double digits. At my work location where I'm going on Sunday? -12º F with a high of 5º F.