Today, I’m moving a few blogs to a new host, consolidating them into one place. I’ve been meaning to do this for about a year now, but I kept putting it off because something almost always goes wrong, and it winds up taking me 10 times longer than it should.

And this project, now that I’ve started, doesn’t seem to be much different from any of the other times I’ve had to do this. There have been server database connection errors, slow internet connections, DNS service problems, and a general grrr-ness to it all.

But, I’m getting there.

And, best of all, this move will save us about $300 this year (which should pay for most of one of the plane tickets for next year’s trip to New York.)

Trips for us take some serious budget planning. I’m not even kidding. In 1997, when we decided to get married in Las Vegas, we booked our vacation package a year in advance because it was going to take us a year to pay for it.

In 2007, we had decided that each year we would visit a city where we would like to live someday, so we started with Seattle. Then, in September of 2008, Cindy and I, with a couple of friends, took a six-day trip to Portland.

I’m not sure what happened in 2009, but we didn’t visit a potential dream city that year. The best we managed to do was a long weekend to visit friends in Lake Charles, LA. In 2010, we spent a weekend in Center, TX visiting friends; in August, Cindy went to New York, and I managed a couple of days in Orlando, FL.

Our big trip this year was our moving to Kansas City, MO. But Cindy’s also going to BlogHer again, which is in San Diego this year.

This evening, we were sitting on the couch watching TV, and Cindy informs me that she’s going to skip BlogHer next year (she says this now, but I’m waiting to see where it’ll be held before I believe her). Instead, she wants to do #91 on her Life List: Be at the Statue of Liberty on the 4th of July. This, of course, means we’ll have to go to New York.

The reason we have to decide this now is because if we waited until just a few months before July 2012, we’d be scrambling to fund it, and more than likely we’d come up short, and have to postpone it for another year.

As much as we love to travel, we don’t get to do it often. But we’re doing much better than we used to. We used to spend years thinking about taking trips — small ones even, like Portland — but we’d never have the money. It would cost too much, we thought.

But, in reality, maybe not.

When we went to Seattle, we had friends there, and we could stay with them, saving us hundreds of dollars for a motel for the week. With round-trip airfare, some meals out, and walking-around money, we made the trip for $650. Six days in Portland cost us $1200 for round-trip airfare for 2, motel (split four ways), rental car (split four ways), meals (lots of meals), and some activities (walking tour, aquarium, etc. ). That’s almost a week in Portland for $600 each.

If we had each started saving $1.00 a day (the price of a cup of coffee) after we got back from Portland, we could go back this year, with a few hundred dollars more in our pockets.

Just for fun, I looked up a couple of other trips I would have liked to have taken during these past few years. I found several 7-day all-inclusive resort deals in Mexico for $1200 (sometimes less) per person, and an air+hotel deal for a week in Amsterdam for $2100 per person.

If I put aside $1.65 a day for 2 years, I could go to Mexico every other year. If I put aside $1.92 a day for 3 years, I would have the money for the Amsterdam trip.

I know it seems like a long commitment, but those 2 or 3 years are going to happen anyway, no matter how little or how much we save for another trip. I think it’s natural for us to be overwhelmed with the idea of saving significant chunks of money in a short amount of time, which is why we don’t do it. But what about setting aside insignificant amounts of money over a long period of time?

I mean, most of us leak money almost every day because we think $2.00 (or less) doesn’t make that much of difference in our lives: a 12 oz. can of soda and a candy bar, a coffee, a 20 oz. bottle of Coke, using a few stamps when I could be using my bank’s Bill Pay service that I’m already paying for, etc. You get the idea.

But, it does make a difference.

I haven’t been to New York. And, I remember telling a friend two years ago at Christmas that, yes, we would go to New York “soon” to visit her, because we could stay with her, and all we would have to worry about is our plane tickets, and whatever money we needed for food, and getting around. Well, we never made it. Cindy went a year later for BlogHer, but we didn’t go to New York together.

There was no real reason for that trip not to have happened when you consider that $1.00 a day for a year would have flown my ass to New York and back. In fact, for $1.00 a day, I could probably fly round-trip almost anywhere in the United States every year.

What do you think? Does it make a difference, thinking about saving small amounts of money over a few years? Given everything else going on, is it even possible to scrounge $2.00 a day for 3 years. And, if so, is that enough to get you where you want to go?

Okay, you know how you’ve always wanted to take two weeks off and travel to some far-away place? And you think, yeah, I’m going there next year…or the year after…but then it’s 5 or 7 or 10 years later and you still haven’t done anything to get closer to taking that trip?

Where is that place for you?

For me, it’s Amsterdam.

Saturday morning, Cindy and I drove to Tulsa for an overnight trip to visit the family and see the To Live Forever exhibit at the Philbrook Museum. We’ve been having some problems with the car lately, so we decided to take Route 66 instead of the turnpike. And somewhere along the way…

Cindy
Did you see that?

Me
No, what was it?

Cindy
That guy was walking around with one of those things.
(She makes a motion with her hands.)

Me
Divining rod?

Cindy
No.

Me
Tennis racket?

Cindy
No, you use it to look for things.

Me
Divining rod?

First, I need to tell you that Todd and I didn’t see any of the main events at Star Wars Celebration V: we didn’t see Mark Hamill speak (but it’s on YouTube…for now); we didn’t see Jon Stewart interview George Lucas because those people started lining up at 5PM the day before (but you can see it on YouTube, too…for now); and Carrie Fisher’s stage appearance was on Sunday, long after I had already made it back to Oklahoma City.

Okay, that said, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: Star Wars Celebration V was awesome!!! And that statement completely deserves three exclaimation marks.

As we made our way to the convention hall, we passed several people wearing Star Wars t-shirts and convention access badges, holding bags of swag, and a few people making their way from the hotel to the convention hall were dressed in costume. It was 9AM, and most people were getting in line because the doors open at 10AM. Standing in line is a show in itself. There were hundreds of people ahead of us, many wearing some pretty authentic-looking costumes, while other were majestically decked out as nerds, geeks, and dorks. Sensing a disturbance in the Force, we looked over at the line across from us, and saw Anthony Daniels making his way up the line, taking some time out for the fans, especially the kids.

The convention floor was jammed with vendors, selling any and every Star Wars thing you could ever dream of. We were shocked to see how much our childhood toys were going for these days. As we walked around, not sure of where to start really, we were amazed at everything, yet not surprised by much, which I think speaks to our own Star Wars nerdiness.

It all seemed perfectly normal. So much so that after about 15 minutes I stopped thinking about trying to get pictures of everything, and was just happy to wander around. I managed to get a few photos though.

We had tickets for only Saturday, but that one day had us worn the hell out. I think I needed more than one day (mainly just to pace myself, you know). I’m definitely planning on attending the next one.

About the only thing that could surpass this level of nerdy goodness is Comic-Con (Thursday-Sunday, July 21-24, 2011), and I’m hoping to attend that next year, too.

I better start saving my pennies.

And Todd’s got some Flickr pictures up, too. Check them out here.

I don’t care what it is you want to be, or do, or have, but whatever it is, do something toward achieving it before the day is over. Don’t talk yourself out of it. Don’t overthink it. It doesn’t have to be anything big. It just has to be something.

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VISIT THAILAND – Cindy and I are planning to take a two-week trip to Thailand within the next couple of years, so this is what I did today to help make that happen:

• I set up the bank account to transfer a certain dollar amount every week (for 52 weeks) into savings, which will be used for our trip.
• Bought Lonely Planet’s Discover Thailand guidebook so we can start figuring out what we want to do, and where we want to go when we get there.

I’ve been missing the scooter something fierce. It’s still odd not seeing it parked next to Cindy’s in the garage.

I’ve been thinking about how and when I can replace it, and what kind and color I would get when I do. The Vespa was awesome, but pricey…and pricey to fix, too, apparently (or obviously). Sometimes, I think getting a orange Buddy would make a nice replacement for the orange Vespa, but I don’t think I could ever replace that first scooter. It’s better to get something different, and just accept that difference.

So, here are some of the scooters I’ve been considering and the inspirations for these choices.

First up, the Buddies:

And now the Vespa:

I think any of these ideas would satisfy my inner dork/geek. What do you think?

For the last few years, Cindy and I have been trying to buy fewer things, but better things. This idea was a reaction to finding ourselves moving into increasingly smaller accommodations about every 3-4 years. Each time we moved, we just wouldn’t have room for everything we owned. Actually, we don’t have room for everything we have now. We’ve been renting a small storage unit for the past year. It’s the smallest one they have, and it will hold a shit-ton of your stuff. This isn’t necessarily a good thing.

We went through some of it last month, sorting out what to keep, what to trash, and what to donate. Shedding some of our processions, whittling it all down, felt good. It meant fewer things we had to physically and mentally keep track of. In another month or two, we’ll move about 20% of what’s there now into a friend’s attic, and stop renting the storage unit, which costs us $45.00 a month.

But physical clutter wasn’t our only problem. Last month, the big TV in the living room blew up, and that gave us the perfect excuse to ditch cable. We still watch TV (the small one in the office), but only about 10% of what we used to. We don’t channel surf looking for something to watch any more. And we don’t miss it that much.

For us, we just thought cutting back on some material processions and services like cable would save us some money (and it does). But it has had a nice side effect: we find ourselves saying yes to more experiences, more travel. Sure, it’s just small trips now, but we’re not spending hours each day watching other people on TV do stuff. We’re doing stuff. Before, we might have planned a trip as an exercise in wishful thinking. Now, when we talk about a trip, we see it as a real possibility. This isn’t a big deal for a lot of people, but it is for us. Normally, I would have blown off the possibility of going to Star Wars Celebration V because it’s not being held anywhere near where I live, and it would only be for one day anyway. This year, however, I said yes after thinking about it for about 5 minutes, because that one day could be awesome, right? I have a place to stay, tickets were easy to get, and I have months to buy a plane ticket. Why would I talk myself out of that?

Looking at our piles of stuff, and asking ourselves, “Okay, what do we really want? What do we really need? What is essential?” has definitely spilled over into travel. Instead of thinking about all the things we need (or think we need) for a trip or getaway, we consider all the things we don’t need to make it happen.

Sounds simple enough, right? But how many of us overpack for most of our trips, lugging around suitcases full of stuff we thought we might need, but didn’t? We pack all that stuff into suitcases for the same reason we rent storage units: it gives us peace of mind, security. It turns out that being able to justify keeping a storage unit full of seldom-used items is no different than being able to justify packing everything but the kitchen sink when we travel (although Cindy and I have never been quite that bad). It’s what you want to take versus what you need in order to go. It’s the different between packing like the Griswolds and Bruce Banner. We plan for the exception, as many just-in-case moments as we can think of, instead of planning for the rule. And all we wind up doing is weighing ourselves down with stuff.

We all have attachments to stuff, or ideas or attitudes that serve no real purpose other than to make us feel safe and secure. The question I have to ask myself is, How many of these attachments are keeping me from doing so many things I’d probably enjoy, if I could just let go of them?

And, the funny thing is, for the last couple of weeks, we’ve been on the hunt for a good carry-on bag for Cindy’s trip to New York this August. She doesn’t want to lug the big red suitcase around, or spent 30-45 minutes waiting in baggage claim; she just wants to grab her stuff and go. It couldn’t have hit us in a more obvious way that the kind of experience we want to have in life depends largely on our willingness to get moving, and the amount of baggage we’re carrying.

So, over the next few months, I’m going to

• Continue to shed more things than I accumulate
• Plan a trip for next year that requires me to use my passport, dammit
• Commit to traveling with one carry-on, and one backpack

Where would you go?

I re-kindled my love of camping in 1993. I was in the Oklahoma Army National Guard, and we were doing our annual two-week training/summer camp. That year, instead of setting up the usual big-ass tent that could house my entire platoon with our cots and all of our gear, we bivouacked, which is basically forced camping. One evening, I was sitting on the ground outside of my pup tent and reading a book, and thought that some coffee would be good. I looked through some MRE packets and found packets of instant coffee, sugar, and cocoa mix. Meal, Ready-to-Eat (MRE) packets are widely despised except by me and 3 other people in the world. When some of my army friends walked by my tent, and asked what the hell I was doing, I would tell them. They were all skeptical of the idea of an MRE mocha, but after one sip, they were hooked. By the time the sun had gone down, there were 4 or 5 people sitting around my canteen stove, drinking coffee and talking about whatever. It was great.

A couple of friends and I liked it so much, we went camping a few weeks later, and that was it. No army uniforms, roomier tents, and a huge crackling fire. No phones, no work, no noise. (To this day, whenever I claim a campsite for the weekend, I feel like a big weight has been taken off my shoulders. Cindy feels it, too.)

Anyway, we would go on small hikes during these camping weekends, and we started thinking about doing longer ones. When you start thinking about stuff like that, sooner or later you hear about the Appalachian Trail, a 2,200-mile footpath from Georgia to Maine. The AT is like Route 66 for hikers. It would take lots of time and money to hike the AT, and if I ever had plenty of one, I had none of the other. So, I put it off.

It’s been 15 years since I first started talking about hiking the Appalachian Trail. I still haven’t done it, but I still talk about it a dozen times a year. A few years ago, I read A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson, and I really wanted to hit the AT…which is crazy because, if you’ve read the book, any sane person would have the exactly opposite notion.

Case in point: A couple of months ago, Cindy and I were sitting on the couch, and she was reading Bryson’s book, and after reading a section about bear attacks and missing hikers, she looked up and said, “And you want to do this?!” and proceeds to read aloud the section about bear attacks and missing hikers. “Are you crazy?”

“Well, I don’t want to do that part,” I said.

I still don’t have the time or money to thru-hike the AT, but that’s okay. I don’t really have the body for it anymore for it either. I think I would be satisfied with just spending 4 to 7 days on the trail, a section of it that’s not too harsh. I want to enjoy the experience, after all.

It’s on the list for 2010.

So, I have already taken steps toward making that a reality this year. I’ll keep you updated when everything starts coming together. I can’t say much right now because I have two friends that are going and it all requires some co-ordination.

I took the idea of the grape soda Ellie Badge (if you’ve seen Up, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t seen Up, go see it…take tissue) and changed it to better suit me and Cindy. I think Moxie is more fitting for us. Not only is it one of our favorite drinks of all-time, but it’s a quality we strive to bolster within ourselves.

And we’re going to need a lot of it to get us through the next couple of years