No, not a soccer tournament.

According to my countdown timer on my Facebook profile I've crossed the 20 day threshold and there are 19 days, 1 hour, 1 minute and a few seconds until 12 midnight on August 27th, 2008 when my seventh and final work permit expires.

Tonight I tried to un-mount (dismount?) two paintings that I picked up in Cuba a few years ago that HazMat Jenny had framed for my birthday back then so I could roll em up, put em in a tube and pack them for safe travel home. Those things are in there but good! I don't think Thomas Crowne could get them out without damaging them!

There was brown paper on the back, affixed with glue or thin double-sided tape. That covered up the little spikey things that held a piece of cardboard in place that made the back flush. 24 little spikey things to be exact which are flush/countersunk into the cardboard which made grabbing them with pliers a bit difficult. Once I got them out and removed the cardboard... there as another set of spikey things holding the backboard in place! I also saw at this point that the canvas had been glued to the board where it was wrapped around AND TRIMMED. So if I managed to get all those spikey things out, then I'd have to get the canvas off the backboard, get all the glue off it and then when I get them re-framed, it would be more difficult as there wasn't a lot of canvas to remount it with. What ever happened to staples??? Fortunately my yoga mat is exactly twice as long as the picture frame, so I put it between the two frames and I'll wrap em up in bubble wrap as-is and FedEx them home like that.

Speaking of FedEx, holy Christmas is that ever expensive! I took a box down there last week that had DVDs, Xbox360 and Wii games in it. 22lbs. FedEx only has one service out of the Cayman Islands: International Priority Air. The service that costs $34 to send one of those FedEx Envelopes. Gulp. She weighed it out and gave me the bad news: $228 CI Dollars! I guess that's cheaper than buying the games again when I get home, provided I could sell them down here for $20 each or something, but still, wow.

Pressing my luck, I asked for a couple of the FedEx flat-rate boxes and took those home with me. Checking the FedEx website for rates, I found that the 25kg box had a flat rate of $293CI dollars for up to 55lbs and then another $6 or so per pound if you go over that. Into that box went the few books (heavy) that I decided weren't replaceable very easily. Log books and some CDs went in as well and then because there was space, I put my Oregon Scientific weather station in there and then weighed the box. 58 lbs. I thought for a few minutes what I could take out of there that was 3 lbs, but in the end, scrapped the idea and just sent it at 58lbs and paid the extra per-pound charge.

Right now you're thinking "IS HE OUT OF HIS FUCKING MIND? It's only $100 to check an extra bag on most airlines!" and my answer would be yes, but not without conditions.

I've never mentioned this here on the blog, because you never know who's going to read it. Any time I've ever talked or posted about work, I've always referred to it as "at work" and never used any names, first, last or otherwise that may have led to an identification of where I work or whom I was talking about (or down about). For the last four years, I've worked at Cayman Airways. Sure the six people who read my blog (thanks Mom, Jen, Marion, Jason, Beth and Bobby!) already know where I work, and anyone who's got me added on Facebook can see it, but I've never posted anything "officially" on these intarwebs that are spidered and indexed by search engines on a daily basis for posterity (whether I like it or not!)

So if you're not one of those six people, and you read this once in awhile, suddenly all the travel-related stories and gadgets make sense! Along with cheap flights (on standby, which are sometimes more hassle than they're worth) there are certain other perks that I'm privileged to have honored. The most useful to me lately has been a substantial (and I mean HUGE) discount at FedEx. :)