The calm before the calmer

Those of you that know me at all know that the title of this post is complete fiction in my world. I am allergic to calm. I cannot handle serenity. I take moderation in, of course, moderation. So you can only imagine my current state as our trip to Italy looms right around the corner. Since I just read Kfluff's post, I am in the mood to award points to events contributing to this current turmoil.

• Bought airline tickets for trip 3 months ago (+5)
• Seats on plane may be the last row on the plane (-6) but are side-by-side (+2)
• Bought sound dampening earmuffs to wear on the plane so I can hear my iGadgets without threatening the integrity of my eardrums with excessive volume (+2 per ear)
• Had to move rifle ammunition, shooting glasses, and recoil sleeves to the side to find the earmuffs at the local general store (=)
• Already booked hotel in Rome for two days on our own surrounded by ... uh ... Rome (+3)
• Have no idea how we're going to get from the airport to the hotel (-2)
• Hotel is 1 block from train station (+4)
• Already have train tickets to Arezzo (+3)
• Know that M&E will meet us in Arezzo with a car to whisk us to the villa (+++ a lot)

Now to the technology category:

• Bought a voltage converter for all our gadgets (+2)
• Called AT&T three times, each time asking a slightly different question which moved me closer to my goal of having one phone work without gouging a hole in my wallet and unlocking another phone which we can put a pay-as-you-go SIM card in once we're overseas (+1, +1, +1, over the course of three hours)
• Headache from the automated phone system (-3, -3, -3, during the same three hours)
• Bought an amazing video camera with which The T has been documenting our daily lives so as to practice (+4)
• Discovered the vid-cam does not play nice with my Mac out of the box (-4)
• Read on discussion boards that a free application can translate video files to iMovie friendly files ... 
• but only if I pay $20 for a QuickTime module (~ a wash)
• Filmed Chaos yawning, transferred file to Mac, translated movie file, opened in iMovie and added a special effect (+10 and all hassle forgotten) (bonus!)
• Currently loading movies and books onto iPhone and iPod for flight. 16 GB holds a goodly amount of video. (+, nothing but +)

Folks, we and our gadgets are off to Italy. We promise to document the adventure well. No matter what the arithmetic above results in, we are on the plus side.