trips i am taking in the next 6 months

• california (home) for christmas. it makes me really sad that working full-time and, hence, having 2 weeks of vacation per year allows me to go home only once a year. especially when horrible fires are raging basically in my backyard. check out the video below. it's of musicians driving from orange county to riverside to play a classical music gig. the apartments on fire at the very end are where my mom and my brother lived for 3 months before they could move into our house (when we moved from IL back to CA). they're all totally burned down now. luckily no one i know well was affected too badly, but my mom has packed up all of our photo albums in plastic bins for easy throwing-in-the-car capabilities and has started scanning them all so they're saved digitally. she also removed boxes of our baby clothes from the storage unit where we store all of our unnecessary extra shit - which weren't burned down but are exactly where the fires were - and moved them to the house so she can grab them if need be. anyway, i'm going home for xmas and all hendrix have agreed we're not giving any gifts this year, woohoo!

• washington DC for inauguration. hopefully this trip will include some combination of: tess brandon, david scrivener, katelyn lahr, stephanie o'cain, amanda davidowitz and/or emily miller.

• COSTA RICA! i'm seriously so stoked. and it's right after my birthday, so hello, the perfect present. even better, it's a 7-day trip where i only have to take 4 days off (thank you, president's day). in so far: stephanie, jenna, me. possibly: anna, carlina, raliza and aja. can you say, best trip ever? because i can.

trips i would like to take in the semi-near future

• edinburgh/london. right on the cusp of my 3rd year with the new 42, so i will have 3 weeks of vacation. would like to see/stay with caitlin and go to some shows at the fringe. and then of course: LONDON. my long-lost love. i miss it always.

• australia. i've been looking into BUNAC's services there and it's definitely changed since i last checked this program out. you can now go anytime between the ages of 18 and 30 get a visa to stay there for up to 12 months to work 2 different jobs. so excellent. am now working on cultivating my tenuous australian relationships: a friend of a friend i met once at a party when she was taking NYU classes last summer, and a girl i met at a theater networking thing last week who works at the australian consulate in the city, and who i basically accosted being like, OMG YOU'RE FROM AUSTRALIA??? un-smooth, but we were both 5 wine glasses deep, so who cares. we are coordinating a happy hour to talk about all things australasian and theater in the near future.