A Little Blog-Keeping

A little blog/travel housekeeping (blogkeeping?) for you today.

First - Most of you know I'm not really working right now, so Tom is our one and only breadwinner. He is busting his buns to bring in as much $$$ as possible in this last MONTH (yes, just one month left, as of today) in San Francisco. So, for that reason, the blog is going to be heavy-Stephanie and light-Tom until we take off in early September. It's not that he doesn't have things to say...it's just that he doesn't have time to say them. (More on Tom's job later.)

Also - a few insider tips about the blog (by popular demand).


Some blog explanations:

• Where In The World: This page currently has our list of places on our list of possibilities and a detailed schedule for our cross-country road trip. If you live somewhere in the U.S. and want to meet up on the roadtrip, check out this page to see when we'll be in your area. At some point, this page will likely change into a list of the places we've been and links to reading our entries about each of those places.
  
  
• Pics: We'll keep this page updated with photos as often as possible. You can also go directly to our Flickr page to see our pics, which is likely to be updated more often.
  
  
• Follow by Email: On the right side of the blog, a few inches under our photo, there's an option to enter your email address. If you do this, you'll receive a confirmation email to that account. You must confirm. Once you've done so, you'll get an email each time we post on the blog. (So you don't have to obsessively check the site each day to see if we've posted.)
  
  
• Topics: Also on the right side of the blog, towards the bottom, is a list of topics we've discussed on the blog. Clicking on a link (for example "Gear") will pull up all the posts we've written about our travel gear.

Getting in touch with us:

• Email: stephanieswain2010@gmail.com and thomasswain2004@gmail.com.
  
  
• Skype: As I mentioned in this post, we've added a Skype button on the right side of our blog that will say if we're online or offline. If we're online and you want to chat with us on Skype, just click on that button. Our Skype handle is SFSwains. Add us now - talk later.
  
  
• FaceTime: We'll be available on FaceTime via our iPad. Our contact is my email address: stephanieswain2010@gmail.com.
  
  
• Phone: We won't know our international phone numbers until we get to our destination, and that number will likely change as we switch phones, SIMs, and countries. We'll be using prepaid SIMs and don't plan on using the phone a lot to chat with the U.S. However, you can add the Viber and WhatsApp apps on your Android or iOS devices and we can talk on the phone for free, as long as the person making the call is accessing the app with WiFi (and not your mobile network). You don't have to sign-up for a username or anything. You just need to make sure that I'm in your contacts list, and I'll show up in your Viber or WhatsApp contact list. 

And, of course, please try to be mindful of timezone changes if you decide to call/Skype/FaceTime. If you have any questions about how to get in touch with us while we're traveling, just email and ask!

Lastly - I added a countdown to the blog - also on the right side of the blog. Today, it says 31..tomorrow it will say 30...and the next day it will say 29...you get how that works, right? After we've taken off, it will show the number of days we've been on the road. But you can change the descriptors in your mind if you'd like...something like, "Days until Stephanie & Tom Forget They're Grownups," or "100 Days of Funemployment." For me, the countdown in my mind goes something like, "HOLY CRAP WE LEAVE IN 31 DAYS!!!"