“If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.“

~ Juan Ramon Jiminez, the Spanish poet and winner of the 1956 Nobel Prize for Literature

Today our five-year-old, Madeline, approached me and asked when we were leaving.

“Leaving for what,” I asked her, sure she was thinking about a local park or Grandma’s house.

“For our journey,” she said.

Still not getting what she was talking about, I thought she wanted to pretend that we were on one of our make-believe adventures as pirates looking for treasure, superheroes fighting crime, or rock starts at a concert.

“What do you want to be on our journey, Maddy,” I said.

“No, Daddy, not one of our pretend adventures… when are we leaving for our real adventure?!”

Then it clicked, and something in my spirit threw a can of gasoline on the pilot light inside me. I want to go now. Not for me, but because my kids are getting anxious to go. My five-year-old wasn’t interestd in some made-up, fictional adventure. She wants the real thing.

We may not be digging up treasure or fighting crime. The odds are we won’t be performing for sold-out stadiums to thousands of screaming fans. But that doesn’t matter… traveling the country with my family, exploring places we’ve never been, teaching our children what true diversity and acceptance is, instilling in them a love for God and all His Creation… that’s more exciting than any adventure I can make up in my head.

Ok, new computer came yesterday and, drumroll, I love it. There are some tasks that I am convinced that is does better than my desktop could. In fact, Adobe InDesign and Photoshop are much more responsive on my new laptop.

There’s one thing that is going to take some getting used to. Storage.

This is the first time since I’ve owned a computer that my main machine is a laptop. I’m not used to having a “measily” 250GB drive to work with. In my last three desktops, I always had at least 1TB of storage and in my Mac Pro I had 2TB. Now, I have 250GB to work with and I’m using that up very quickly. That 250GB drive actually dwindles down to 233GB after formatting. I have a 32GB partition set aside for running Windows (I’m giving Vista SP1 a shot), leaving me just 200GB for my main Mac HD. It’s a tight fit. FInal Cut Pro Studio 2 takes up about 40GB, the fulle Adobe CS3 Premium takes up something like 33. Microsoft Office comes in around 15GB, and all of Apple’s iLife and iWork apps chime in with another 10-15GB. And these all have to be installed before I can really consider my computer “useful.”

Oh, and our family iPhoto library is 25GB. My iTunes collection is about 90GB, but I keep it on an external drive and hook it up when I need to sync new stuff to my iPod.

So after getting everything installed, the amount of usable internal disk space I have is… 81.3GB. Yikes. Still, though, that’s more than enough room to have several projects going at once.

Externally, I have a 1TB drive and a 320GB drive. The 320GB is my raw video drive that I dump my video camera’s hard drive to. I would like to be able to keep all raw footage I shoot, but that’s no possible because I simply don’t have the storge capacity or the money to upgrade my storage capacity. To that end, I usually delete all raw footage a few weeks a after a project is complete (just to make sure I don’t want to go back and change something).

Overall, the internal storage limitation is the only negative aspect of swithing from a desktop to a laptop, so far. There are many positives, not the least of which is that I am no longer confined to my home office when I want to work on something. I am a natural multitasker, so I am now able to sit in my recliner downstairs and work while still feeling like I am in contact with my family. My home office is nice, but its upstairs and away from all the action.

Most people are probably thinking, “Well, yeah, isn’t that the point of a home office?” It is, and that’s what I thought when I set it up. In reality though, I can’t stand it. I feel like I’m in a cave, locked away from my family. I just get antsy when I’m left alone to work. I can do it, but I’d much rather have the input of people around me, especially my family.

So I’m glad I’m downstairs working now. My kids are glad, too, and that doubly makes it the right decision.

My new MacBook Pro is on its way! I got a great deal on a new MacBook Pro through a bankrupty liquidation firm. If I had went to an Apple Store, this same laptop would have cost $2,700. Even if I had used my educational discount (my wife and I are both full-time students through Liberty University), it would have been $2,550. I got a great deal at $2,100. AND it includes AppleCare through 2011! So I saved not just $600 over the normal price, but another $250 for the AppleCare.

God’s good.

Aaron has been getting on me to post on our family blog, so here I am, posting on our family blog.

He’s much more into this kind of thing than I am, so I can’t promise regular posts, but I will try to post every once in a while from my perspective. My husband talks so much, he pretty much covers everything for both of us.

See you on the road,
Hannah

The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.  ~St. Augustine

When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money.  Then take half the clothes and twice the money.  ~Susan Heller

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go.  I travel for travel’s sake.  The great affair is to move.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.  ~Lao Tzu

It is not down in any map; true places never are.  ~Herman Melville

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.  ~G.K. Chesterton

Hannah and I have started to mentally put price tags on everything we own. Which isn’t hard. We live pretty meagerly compared to most. Not counting our SUV or my main computer, we can sell everything and maybe get $3,000. The rest is junky toys and kitchen stuff you’re lucky to get a buck or two for at yard sales. Virtually everything we own is a hand-me-down that people passed onto us because they got something better. (I was grateful to receive everything that’s been given to us, but I want to be in a position in our lives to be able to give new stuff to people who are in need.)

Still, though, all this is our stuff. Once we get rid of our couch, we won’t own a couch. Same for our fridge. No fridge. Nothing to keep our food cold.

Then, there’s my computer. My powerful, lovely, upgraded Mac Pro. Purchased in February of 2007 with our tax return, my Mac Pro was our second Mac computer after buying one of the original iMacs for Maddy to play educational games on (which by the way still runs better than most PCs I’ve used).

I love my Mac Pro. It can do anything I throw at and still have unused CPU cycles. It’s got two dual-core 64-bit Xeon processors, 5GB of RAM, 1.5TB of internal hard drive space, two DVD writers, one of which is Lightscribe. This things tears through video rendering like a warm knife through butter. I love this monster.

But I have to let go and downsize. That’s part of the adventure, going smaller, trimming down and teaching ourselves just how little we can live with. Last week I ordered a TB external hard drive to put all my video projects and stuff on. Today I finished transferring everything. The drive is almost full.

So now I’m going to inventory everything I have for this computer and sell it off on eBay or Craigslist (hopefully Craigslist to avoid shipping charges and eBay & PayPal fees). I’m downgrading to either a used MacBook Pro that I can still get an extended AppleCare warranty on or a MacBook.

I am leaning towards getting a MacBook just to come out with more cash in the end.

Anyway, that’s my computer story. I’m basically selling my third child. If anyone reading this is interested in it, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Earlier this evening, my wife and I had one of those moments when you’re reading something, think about what you just read for a second or two and then your brain goes into overdrive with new ideas and realizations.

See, the spreadsheet I’ve been working on to crunch the numbers for the lifestyle we’re about to embark on checks out. With our current income, we can afford it, but just barely. There’s one column that dwarfs all the others combined.

Fuel.

Whether we go gas or diesel, it’s going to be expensive. Really expensive. I’ve read other traveler’s blogs and a lot of people are spending $1,500, $2,000, even $3,000 a month on fuel. That we simply cannot afford.

That was until I once again hit the ole’ Internet to do some more research. One of the blogs I subscibed to last week when I started planning all this was the Live Lightly Tour. Well, the light bulb went off for my wife and I when we read about their rig.

We’re still trying to decide on whether or not to buy an older RV that needs some TLC in October (when the lease on our house is up) or find out some other kind of creative living arrangement through February when we’ll be able to buy a $15-$20k RV. If we stay in our current house after our lease is up, we’ll be esentially throwing away $1,000 a month on the increase rent (month-to-month costs more) and utilities.

If we have to buy in October, we’ll have about $7,000. In February we can do a lot better. We’d like to wait until February to buy, but need some suggestions about where to live from November until we can buy the RV. Anyone have an RV or trailer we can live in at a park somewhere? We’ll take real good care of it for you!

Our little one Makayla turns 3 this week and we celebrated at my mom’s house with mine and my wife’s families. Our little princess had a great time!

Another great quote:

“…not all those who wander are lost…”

~ J.R.R. Tolkien