Speedbumps And Such

Hey all. Just a quick check-in and update.
First, some may know, my computer died last week. I was able to recover all of my data, but the laptop is not repairable. I can receive emails at work and check Facebook. But my Skype is out for now. Without a computer or a television, I have had to fill my time in other ways. I have been journaling constantly and, believe it or not, reading! Ironically, it took a computer to get me to read a book. Don't anyone do anything crazy like send me a book- because once I am back online, I expect to be happily book-free once again. One of my upcoming journals is a book report on Anthony Burdain's Medium Raw. 
Second, I leave tomorrow for a one week vacation with my sitemate, Erin, to the city of L'viv in western Ukraine. The train will be 23 1/2 hours (plus the couple of hours it will take me to get to the train station). And that's just one way! I have heard so many great things about this city and am really excited to check it out. One of my biggest challenges, I fear, is that L'viv is a Ukrainian speaking city- as opposed to a Russian speaking one, and I know a grand total of 5 words in Ukrainian (yes, no, hello, thank you, and tasty). I have never let the lack of knowing a local language stop me from traveling, and this will be no different. I will have my Ukrainian phrasebook and my Russian should hopefully be understood by some of the people there. I'll do the best I can. I always do.
It is kind of funny about my journals, in that I have been writing them on an old PDA (personal data assistant) and saving them to SD card- no problem there. The issue is that even though SD is a pretty popular format in America, NO ONE here seems to have an SD port on their computer and the PDA has an outdated interface that I cannot transfer from PDA to computer in any other way. So, be prepared that in the next weeks I will be posting a flood of blogposts, when I can get them off of the PDA. (I think I was at 10 entries the last I counted)
Until then, I just wanted thank you for your support and tell you I have not given up on the posting- it's just a speedbump. I'll get over it. I always do.

SIM