Normally, I love rain. I love grey, overcast skies and roiling storm clouds. I love the sound of rain, from a soft drizzle to the hard staccato of a downpour. I feel comfortable out in the wet -- normally. But this weekend I've been genuinely upset by the bad weather.

I'm still stressed out from the move, I suppose. Last weekend I could barely leave the house, and did no real chores at all. This weekend, I've been pretty productive, but I've been in a funky mood. I know at least part of the problem is I finally decided I was ready to do something in the garden, and the rain put the kibosh on that idea. We bought a lawnmower, and a grill. Haven't used 'em yet. Rain is supposed to continue through the week. Feh.

Work, well, you know how that's going. At least, do you? Maybe not. I haven't been bitching about it, haven't been updating much, haven't wanted to complain over and over. I need a vacation, need some time away from selling travel to an ungrateful public. Two and a half more weeks to go. Watch me grit my teeth. It seems like an awfully long time until we leave for Japan.

I'm out of patience with a certain kind of client, the ones who tell me I have a lot of nerve charging fees, and don't believe me when I say I've given them the lowest price. I always try to tell someone what they need to do to get the price lower, but if you say you won't fly on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, you positively cannot stay a Saturday night, and you have no intention of taking a red eye, then hey! Don't be surprised that your midweek round trip to Chicago is $2249, okay? It's not going into my pocket, babe. My company gets $50 of that, no more. I personally make the same money if your fare is $100 or $1000 because I'm salaried like most travel agents. I have nothing invested in charging you a higher priced ticket. So don't get mad at me, it's the airlines who are greedy. I'll tell you how to beat them at their own game, but only if you are willing to play.

Of course, my nicest clients are the people I've met through this diary. I love yacking on the phone to Diane, and Chuck, and Steve, and Shelly, and Edith, and the dozens of others who do a little travel with me. And I actually have pretty good, if shallow, relationships with a few of my regular salespeople who get to fly to exotic destinations like Columbus, Ohio and Little Rock, Arkansas on a regular basis. So it's not all surly morons giving me grief about paying me for my ten years experience and rejecting my advice. Just mostly.

The Italy trips are almost all done. I was shrieking like a Sidhe last week when Air France and I had a misunderstanding about ten seats on a flight between Paris and Florence, but I got that straightened out. I was hyperventilating about getting a hotel in Parma to confirm my clients' adjoining rooms, and called them about eight times. They finally faxed me the okay. I haven't got the family of five to commit to their air, car, train, and ferry trip around Italy, but I refuse to worry about the fare going up on them. The others are all booked, tickets and railpasses in hand. I still cringe mentally when someone asks for fares to Rome, but I'm getting less jumpy. Still, when it comes right down to it, I'm tired of explaining things to the public. I'm tired of talking all the time.

Now that my vacation is coming up soon I've taken a little time to do some planning of my own. We're spending the whole week in Tokyo. We're planning a couple of day trips, one to Nikko and one to either Hakone or somewhere in the Japanese Alps. But mostly we're going to enjoy exploring Tokyo itself, cameras in hand. Three years ago we spent one night in the city, and the rest of the time we were in Tsukuba and Kyoto. I'd love to go back to Kyoto, but I liked Tokyo a lot, and I don't want a vacation full of logistics and constant packing. I can't believe it's been three years since my last foreign vacation. I'm very excited about going back to Japan.

I'm very excited about being unable to talk to anyone for a whole week.

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