Sunday, December 30, 2012

Video Log 1!

Hey team, sorry for the lack of embedded video - as it turns out, Sudan is super touchy about YouTube, so it took me ages to get even this far. Enjoy!
Love,
S & M

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Smashing It

A number of people have asked about the origins of this blog's name: Smash Adventures. Here's my answer to that question. First and foremost, it's a fun combination of my name and M's (and he gets 100% of the credit for coming up with it). Other options that tripped off the tongue less daintily were Sashthiah, Matthasha, and the very cumbersome Masashathiah. A few too many consonant digraphs in the latter, in my opinion. Second, the word 'smash' has some fun connotations. Let's take a look at them, courtesy of our friends over at thefreedictionary.com:

smash  (smsh)
v. smashedsmash·ingsmash·es
v.tr.
1. To break (something) into pieces suddenly, noisily, and violently; shatter. See Synonyms at break.
2.
a. To throw or dash (something) violently so as to shatter or crush. See Synonyms at crush.
b. To strike with a heavy blow; batter.
3. Sports To hit (a ball or shuttlecock) in a forceful overhand stroke.
4. To crush or destroy completely: smashed all resistance.
v.intr.
1. To strike or collide suddenly, noisily, and violently: The car smashed into a tree.
2. To break suddenly into pieces, as from a violent blow or collision.
3. Sports To hit a ball or shuttlecock in a forceful overhand stroke.
4. To be crushed or destroyed.
5. To go bankrupt.
n.
1.
a. The act or sound of smashing.
b. The condition of having been smashed.
2.
a. Total defeat or destruction; ruin.
b. Financial failure; bankruptcy.
3. A collision or crash.
4.
a. A drink made of mint, sugar, soda water, and alcoholic liquor, usually brandy.
b. A soft drink made of crushed fruit.
5. Sports A forceful overhand stroke, as in tennis or badminton.
6. Informal A resounding success: The play was a smash on Broadway.
adj. Informal
Of, relating to, or being a resounding success: a smash hit on Broadway.
adv.
         With a sudden violent crash.

Obviously, there's a lot going on there, but I'd like to draw your attention to a couple of the entries. First, to smash means 'To break (something) into pieces suddenly, noisily, and violently; shatter.' Words like break, shatter, and violently usually carry a negative connotation, but that connotation assumes whatever you began with was healthy and whole. 

[Side note: If you're reading this blog, there's a good chance you already know that my mom passed away at the end of September after a year and a half long battle with cancer, and my father passed away last year. If you didn't know that, my apologies if this blog just got a lot more serious than you expected. Earmuffs for this next short section.]

My experiences have left me seamed, criss-crossed with hairline fractures. Those of you who know me know that I'm a doer, an action person. Rather than waiting for those fractures to turn to breaks, I've taken matters into my own hands and rather suddenly and noisily dismantled my life in SF, starting with leaving the job I've spent the last five years in, subletting my apartment, and buying a ticket to Africa. Of course, I'm incredibly lucky to bring a very important part of my life with my on the trip: M. We are so lucky to both have been in a spot personally, professionally, and financially where it made sense to make this decision, picking up and leaving most everything behind.

Smash also means 'to strike or collide suddenly,' which is what I'm doing with my trepidation and hesitation: staring them down, heading them off at the pass. At the end of my last day of work yesterday, some of my colleagues spoke about things they appreciated about me, which obviously left me a wet, snotty mess. One person in particular said she admired my ability to look down the throat of the beast without flinching. I'm doing what I can to make that true today.

Looking down to the noun definitions, I'd like to gloss over the bankruptcy and financial ruin section, apt though it may be, and head straight to the informal 'resounding success.' There's hardly been enough time between making the decision to leave and actually leaving to work up a healthy amount of anticipation, but now, just a few hours before our flight to Boston, I'm starting to get excited. This trip is going to be amazing, and we are going to crush it


Thursday, December 6, 2012

Leaving on a Jet Plane

I wish I could say all our bags were packed and we're ready to go, a la John Denver, but so much remains to be done in SF before we take off in just twelve days. My lovely subletter is moving in four days from now, and the my second  bedroom needs to change from its current state as a throw-everything-you-might-possibly-bring-on-this-trip-into-this-room-explosion to a clean, Zen, and most importantly empty room between now and then.

Other major to-dos have been taken care of: giving our jobs notice, buying tons of tickets with airline miles, finding/purchasing the one pair of pants each of us is bringing (mine and his), selecting the elusive perfect subletter, taking care of that speeding ticket I got in October (d'oh), putting my Running Times subscription on hold, figuring out how to get Verizon to save our phone numbers for us for when we return in July, applying for credit cards that don't have huge international fees, spending large sums of money on vaccinations, donating mountains of things to Goodwill to clear out space in my apartment, planning our going-away party...and the list goes on. No matter how many things we accomplish, however, it seems like there's always more to do. For example, figuring out precisely how to pack for a trip that includes Christmas in Massachusetts, a Muslim wedding in a country where the highs routinely reach the mid-nineties, February in Istanbul (not Constantinople), and 98% humidity jungle hiking. (For any of you attempting to plan a similar trip, fear not: I've gotten enough questions about this that I'm planning a separate posting entirely about our gear list as soon as we've figured it all out ourselves.)

As a details person, it's easy for me to get sucked into the nitty-gritty of leaving without spend a ton of time thinking about everything happening on the other side of that December 18 line in the sand. It's hard to wrap your mind around a trip that amounts to something like 16 consecutive vacations that need planning. However, we just sent out an email to almost everyone we know asking for advice/secret tips on the places we're going, and that definitely served to make things a bit more real. We're lucky to have an incredibly well-traveled and well-connected set of friends, and we got a few dozen replies on destinations from Idaho to Borneo. It's always great when you get corroborating evidence on how cool a place is from multiple people: two people wrote us back about diving in Sipadan, seeing the orangutans in Sabah, and climbing Mt. Kinabalu within five minutes of each other.

Anyway, we're delighted that lots of people seem to be interested in what we're going to be doing. I, for one, know that having a posse to report to will keep me honest about documenting everything that goes down. More to come later!

Signing off,
S & M