One way to stop obsessing about the epic tour in 13 months is to start obsessing about the burn in 8 months. I can’t believe how quickly my brain shifted over to planning this years burn. Who to camp with? What to wear? What to gift? How to make the perfect shade structure? (the winds at Shambhala kinda killed my existing one. me: “it’s not the desert, we can peg it down later, lets go swimming in the river!” wind: “haha, screw you! and instead of playa dust it’s dust of cow poo!” dimitri: “Natalia! Natalia! Come quick!”)
Current plans involve driving up on the west coast instead of my typical route through Montana and Idaho. Stopping in Phoenix on my way out to visit my cousin and send off my brother and his beautiful girlfriend on their epic tour through Central America. How much time in California depends on the travel arrangements. Possible stops in Palm Springs, LA and San Francisco.

After a frustrating wait and several panicked phone calls with my bro trying to get through, we got 3 tickets at $319 CAN each. What tickets are these you ask? Tickets to Burningman 2009 of course. My motivator to get my ass in shape and start thinking independent and self-sufficient for my world journey next year. And to keep me occupied while my husband is traveling on the other side of the planet. And to have a ridiculous time dancing to the beat of my own drum.

What’s with the new title? Once upon a time, me and some friends at work were having a discussion about our geek qualifications. I’m the only one not into gaming and lacking a lot of the geek lingo so I was questioning wether or not I was really geek enough. My friend Sean told me it was ok, I can still be part of the group because I was the Token Hippie, they have more geek cred, I have more hippie cred. I’m not really a hippie but I suppose I have more hippie tendencies than most of the crew at my office. I like structure, I don’t like pot, I don’t have dreads, I frequently bathe, I have a mortgage. But I want to travel, I like eating healthy, I’m environmentally conscious, I go to festivals, I like psychedelic music. As in everything, it’s all relative.

Past nicknames:
Petunia Leaf (Dad)
Natacha/Natachita/Natachourie (Grandpa DeOchoa)
Nattie (Grandma Fisher)
Nat the Brat/BrattyNat (Dad’s siblings and spouses)
Terminally Cute (Zac)
Token Hippie (Sean)

I finally managed to be coordinated enough to get my ftp login info sorted out, 3 months after starting to use this space. There was some back and forth to get the info in the first place but it was super vague and didn’t work and I just didn’t have the patience to deal with it so I put it off. Again and again and again. It’s not like it even took that long to sort out once I sat down and took the time to do it. About an hour judging by my twitter posts. It’s currently kinda ugly but I just wanted to toss up something other than the default theme just because I like the feeling of power I now have. I also upgraded to the newest version of WordPress which is pretty nifty. Hopefully this motivates me to do all or at least some of the things I want to do here. As a special treat, because I’ve been so boring, here’s a link to a blog I was recently introduced to: thisisindexed Enjoy!

P.S. I added some new links to the link page, I’m on a roll! Now time for bed.