Like A Well Oiled Machine

That's the de-I Travel and Work life these days.  I'd related a few posts ago that the whole new travel planning process was working like a charm. We've just about finished all the final details related to day tours we want to do in various places. Have all our photo and food experiences lined up. This trip is going to take us to Israel, Jordan, Greece and Turkey.

I have to say that one thing that has surprised me in our planning has been the almost universal lack of customer service in Israel at least during this the planning phase. Whether it is Airbnb listings that are woefully incomplete and inaccurate, tour operators that don't have accurate information, people who respond to requests with completely different information than what was requested, the general impression is way different than let's say Greece where the level of information and response is superb. Maybe Israel is just more oriented toward large tour groups. Everyone I know who has gone there has gone as part of some kind of organized group. Anyway I will try to keep my mind open.

Work equally is cruising along. I have this one job with a major national trade group that required a lot of writing (not my usual just talk and pontificate gig). But I have a colleague who is a professional writer and she has made the project go lightning fast. In fact I think the hours we work on this will be way below what I budgeted (and we are on a fixed price Yay!) All the rest of my projects are going so well, that I've decided I'd better start marketing again. At least get the pipeline going so I have something in the hopper for when I return.

For the first year in three years because of our change in travel timing, we are in Albuquerque for March and most of April. It is kind of nice to see Spring bursting forth here.

AND the camera divorce is final! Wife is getting another Olympus. Bye bye Nikkon. This will reduce our weight substantially and reduce duplication of lenses. We were pissed off to find however that the new Olympus uses a different battery than the one I am using. So we still need to bring two battery chargers.