PenNames on a Plane

Holy crap. I saw my dad over the holidays, and he was all "Hey, we're all in financial pretty-goodness, we should totally go to Iran and see all the family and whatnots. You want to go, PPN? All you gotta buy is a ticket, and update your passport. Maybe get a visa."

Well, let me tell you something, The Internet. I have wanted to go to Iran for over 17 years now, ever since my dad went and took PrimaryBrother instead of me & TwinSister when we were all little kids. PrimaryBrother can't go this trip, of course, now that he's old enough to be drafted into the army, but the rest of us kids are either too young or too ovary-having to have to worry about that, so yay for us!

Mr. PenName was invited too, but he said he'd be more comfortable staying here and looking after the animals. It's cool, I can see why he'd be nervous about going, and honestly having one paycheck still coming in while we're gone will make things much easier.

All of this, of course, assumes that I can actually go. Because we're going to be gone for (I shit you not) a whole goddamn month, I won't have enough vacation time, so I have to ask work if I can take an UNPAID month off. This request has to go through university red tape, plus I have to assure my boss that I will be back in time for the fiscal end of year (dad wants to go right as the school year ends), so not only am I going to have to save up for that plane ticket, but I'm going to have to save up an entire month's worth of rent & bills for while I'm gone. Which, you know, will suck ass, and make it so that I won't be doing a whole lot of the buying of yarn for the next 5 months or so, but again, that should be okay. I've got enough in the way of stash and roving to keep me occupied, especially if I spin up impressive yarn to knit with while I'm there.

I'm also going to try and finally do two things I've been meaning to do for a while now: lose weight and learn farsi. I hope to combine them, by listening to language tapes while walking home from work - maybe also to work, if I start getting in really good-type shape so I can walk it faster.

But hot damn. I am so excited!