Greetings from the O.C.

Hello from L.A. (or Irvine, CA exac-tic-ally)
Just a quick thing to say that crossing the country on American Airlines was a pleasant experience, other than the fact that the Chicago to LA flight had more children on board than a Chinese Nursery School. Thank God for beautiful iPod shuffle (thank u husband again, u are most awesome beautiful spouse) and ear buds.
Tried desperately during my 4 hour layover in Chicago to find a "Sudoku for Dummies" or "Tard-level Sudoku" or Sudoju Jr... or SOMETHING I could handle... my sis tweaked my interest in the numeral & square cult so I thought I'd give it a try at the self-serving, super easy level. All to no avail. Shall try and hunt one down in LAX while we wait for our flight on Singapore Airlines.

We (we being me and Sebastian's aunt Leela, hereby known as Aunty) will depart tonight at 11:30 p.m. and fly for a solid 9 hours over the Pacific (shudder) to Taipei, then on to Singapore where we get a 8 hour stop and a tour. I have a change of clothes hermetically sealed down in the bottom of my carry-on backpack that will be donned upon arrival there, to be a little more "fresh and clean" for our 10:30 p.m. arrival in India. We get there on November 30th. Not sure how all that works becuase of crossing the int'l date line.

Going with the 70 lb weight limit for international flights, I think I've got...
20 lbs of chocolate
15 lbs of saris
10 lbs of gifts
another 10 lbs of books to read (dear reader, go get Holy Cow, an Indian Adventure - quite nice. already finished but bringing along anyways for reference)
5 lbs of excess weight put on my ass while eating Manchu Wok and drinking root beer in Chicago O'Hare yesterday...
4 lbs of camera equipment, chargers, video, and other methods of bringing images and video back for posterity
3 lbs of paranoia-inspired medicines to counteract any possible problem with my stomach, bowels, inner ear, sinus, bum, back, or reproductive organs
2 lbs of Wal-Mart clearance sleveless cotton shirts,in fact made in India (I'll just be bringing them back "home")
and 1 lb of hairdye, as I am as equally paranoid about disease and malaise as that I wouldn't be able to get the right color over there and my ol' brassy bad bleach job will show through and give people more reason to think I'm a harlot ;-)

Just kidding, they don't think I'm a harlot.

Well, at least I hope they don't :D