Planning, planning, and more planning

We spent the better part of our evening tonight backwards planning from our expected arrival date in Dhaka back to now to figure out our leave dates, our transporation dates, and our everything else dates.  It was honestly a bit exhausting.  I'm not going to lie.  And we were left with a ridiculously long list of questions.  Like - Can we split the pickup of our consumables shipment from the rest of our pickups so we actually have somewhere to separate our HHG from UAB?  (household goods and unnaccompanied baggage for the uninitiated)  Or - When can we request our visas so that they don't expire while we're on leave before we even get to Bangladesh but we still actually have them in hand before we leave?

And since it's the weekend and I can't actually ask anyone these questions, what will I do instead?  That's right.  Go shopping.  I'm sure there's something else I can spend money on this weekend.  I've already been to Costco this weekend, but there's always Kohls and Safeway.  No shortage of things to buy.  Food for a year, anybody??  Add to that extra uniforms for Josh, new tires for his car, new brakes for mine (and the Disney trip we'd love to take while we're on leave) and I think I just want to put the credit card on auto-pay for the next few months.  Oh yeah - and let's just throw Christmas in there.  I almost forgot about that one.  Maybe Santa will buy me groceries for a year.  I promise I've been really good...

I hate to end on such a cynical note, so here's some good news.  When we got home from the store this morning, I saw a bright, shiny screw sticking out of my front tire (and HOW is this good news??).  First, believe it or not, I gave thanks that I found the screw today instead of on Monday when we're halfway to Anaheim and stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire in 100 degree weather.  Then, I called up Goodyear and took the car in to have the screw removed.  During my 45 minute wait (that somehow extended to just shy of 2 hours), I got to sit and read Game of Thrones totally uninterrupted - unless you count the really annoying customer who somehow felt like he needed to make comments to the entire room even though no one was listening to him.  And at the end of my wait, I found out that not only did I have one screw in my front tire, I had 2.  Yes, 2.  BUT - and here's the kicker - neither one of them actually punctured my tire.  This never happens to me.  So, I got free reading time away from the kids, and in the end, didn't have to pay a penny to have my tires back to normal.  Can't beat dumb luck...