You've Got to Find Your Own Happiness

...So I'm getting ready to take an overnight flight out to Casablanca, dreaming of Rick's Cafe and cramming in as much last minute American food as I can.

The preparations haven't been too bad, especially since I've had a month to do it, but I'm still panicked that I'm forgetting something.

I booked this trip because I was tired of waiting around New York City for something good to happen, and tired of dealing with all of the bad, but now that the trip is upon me, I'm a little scared. And it's ridiculous, because I'm not scared of plane crashes or kidnapping or malaria, but of mundane things that would just make my life even more unbearable like losing my luggage and not sleeping on the plane and sunburns and couscous-inducing tummy aches.

Thank God Michelle is coming with me, and that we're taking a group tour during which almost everything has been planned for us. But as much as I've travelled lately, I've gotten really comfortable with every area of the United State, forgetting that things sometimes work differently elsewhere. And I've got to excavate five years' worth of French out of the bowels of my memory. Or learn how to pantomime very well.

There won't be much I miss while I'm away, besides Edith and pizza and Lean Pockets and family and Guiding Light. I tried to buy a new VHS tape to pop into the VCR and replace my old worn out one that I tape over and over again every day, but Duane Reade apparently no longer sells them, and running around to a Best Buy or something to find one would cut my timing way too close. Apparently I am a luddite. Even though I'm a little panicked that my Blackberry won't work in Morocco.

I haven't really left the country in about a year and a half (unless you count a few hours in Tecate Mexico) and I think it's about time I do it again. Maybe I'll be happier when I come back. Or maybe, like my last desert experience in Death Valley, I'll just fall deeper into an existential crisis.