I'm still on the hunt for a good fare to Europe. I'm pretty flexible as to the airport - I could fly into Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, or even London - but all these dirt-cheap spring break fares mean I'm having a hard time finding something from May 9th through 25th, or thereabouts. If I'd gone over break, I could have taken Virgin Atlantic, a luxury airline, for less than $500, even with all the taxes. But the cheapest I've found for May is $640 on Delta. I was going to try to pull this whole trip off on $1000, but now I'm not sure if I can. It isn't really that the FARES have gone up - it's that the TAXES have gone up. They're in the $200s on every single booking I've tried. One more thing to thank Bushco for, I guess, what with the cost of fuel and all the extra security taxes. Oh, well, I'll let all the spring break hubbub die down a little and then try again.

In other news, my foot is finally starting to feel better. I didn't take any painkillers today and it's still MUCH better. Bearing weight hurts less - I don't have to walk on the outside edge of my foot anymore - and I have almost my full range of ankle motion back. If I took ibuprofen and tied my shoes really tight, I could probably do the sprint triathlon this Sunday, but I'm not going to - even with the tempting promise of free massages afterwards - because I don't want to push it. I'm still hoping I might be able to do the River Run. It would suck to have to bring Monique home to J-ville and carry out all the plans we made, except me NOT run while she does. So my fingers are still crossed. I'm not planning to run the whole thing - there will be significant amounts of walking mixed in - and I have absolutely nothing else on the horizon that involves running at all (except maybe to catch European planes... LOL), so I really do want to do this.

As to the rest of my health, my throat feels better - still hurts, but that swollen feeling is gone - and my congestion has been better since swim practice tonight. (Of course, the pool now contains gallons of the former contents of my sinuses, but nobody has to know that.) My voice isn't back completely yet, but at least it's somewhat more 'dependable' than it has been for the past two days. I was biking on the sidewalk on Tuesday (because there's too much crap in the bike lane) and opened my mouth to say, "Passing on your right," to this old lady... but nothing audible came out! So I hastily scooted off the sidewalk and into the grass to avoid hitting her, and almost careened into a ditch. Oops. ("You should have let me know!" she chided. "Well, I tried...")