Hello world! I am checking in at 11,270 miles above the ground on our Delta flight to LA! Everything is going great so far, and I can’t believe that this is the day we travel to the Land Down Under! Only 5 months ago, I was staring at my Groupon receipt and wondering what I had gotten myself into. And now the day is here. Before I say anything else, HUGE thanks to Matt Peters for getting us through CLEAR airport security in under 5 minutes. AMAZING.

John and I are having a great time already, finding plenty to be entertained by while we sat in Orlando International Airport (MCO). But I’ll write about our time at MCO later. I have a different story to tell you… My alarm went off at 5:45 AM and I staggered out of bed. As I finished up my morning business, a movement caught my eye and I looked up at the ceiling. My breath caught in my throat as I half-screamed/half-whispered “OH MY GOSH.” A MONSTROUS spider was crawling towards me across the white ceiling. This creature was the size of my outsretched hand, fingers included – NO EXAGGERATION. I’ve seen huge spiders at my house, but this was a definite record breaker. I started to panick; I was trapped and the spider was advancing! From previous experiences, I knew that these not-so-little suckers like to drop unexpectedly, so there was no dashing under it to escape. Thankfully, it decided to crawl up into the vent and allow me to run to John for protection. We retturned with HotShot Spider Killer spray (I highly recommend it! Works every time.) only to see that my mortal enemy was nowhere in sight. Instead, on the opposite side of the bathroom, his smaller (but still palm-sized) buddy scurried across the wall! It was no match for John, HotShot Spray, or the fly swatter though. That monster is still out there though…probably crawling room to room through the vents…yuck.

On a more pleasant note…I just received pretzels from the very nice Hispanic flight attendant. And it looks like my Coke is on the way! I’ll check in later!