Wrap it up. I'll take it.

Great news... for the most part. I have received word that a woman I had been wanting to work with has agreed to consult with me for my tour. Wahoo!!! The only bummer is that I will have to keep her involvement "under wraps" which puts a damper on the plan I had to access her readership for word-of-mouth advertising and tour sales. I had also wanted to access one of the publications she works for to get some exposure.

Oh well. I'll do it on my own with her on-the-ground help in Paris.

Man! The more I think about it, this secrecy thing really stinks. I was hoping to use her involvement as "leverage" for getting advertising money and as a sales point for potemtial clients.

This is just more fuel for me to do this on my own. I am happy to have her help, but I don't need "outside" support to make my dream come true. This has always been my tangle with getting this tour off the ground in the first place.

Time to shift it into high gear and boost myself up as perfectly capable of pulling this off.

Yay me. ;-)

Baby steps. Must keep going.

It's hard to get a lot done when your 9-month old is learning to crawl and doesn't sleep a lot. It's 8:41 right now and I've been ready to go to bed for a half an hour.

That being said, I'm getting a lot done. My budget is coming together. My neighbor very generously has designed the look of my soon-to-be launched web site for free and she's going to do my business cards. How wonderful is that? (It looks great too! I'm thrilled)

Let's see, what else have I gotten done?

_________

I actually just leaned my head back to think about how to answer that question and fell asleep.

This is going to be hard. I will be an excited and excitable stress ball until I get home from the tour in March.

See, not only do I have to worry about getting everything up and running for the sale of the tour (and then of course the actual tour), I need to worry about how in the hell I am going to do it with my baby girl in tow. I already have my dear friend coming as my nanny and assistant, but I'm just really worried about the time I will be away from her when we are there. We spend so much time together now that I'm afraid it'll be scary for her. I know it will be for me. I trust my friend absolutely, but I will miss my girl so much when we are there. I just wish she could be with me the whole time and experience everything we will be doing. I'm not sure my guests will be down for that, huh?

Oh well, she'll become accustomed to all of this over the years. IT could be worse; spending time in Paris with your mom and dear family friend a few weeks out of the year, every year when you're growing up.

Oy! It's 8:50pm. Off to bed.

Failing Forward

Failures are not final.

Perspective. It's how you look at failure that will determine the outcome. If you look at failure as a bad thing going into whatever you are going to risk, you won't take the risk. If you look at failure as a learning experience, or as something that is natural and a part of life, than you you will take that risk, risking not only failure, but success.

It's going to be OK.

Working, working, working

Things are coming together, namely my attitude about this tour. I am not letting myself get overwhelmed with how grand my tour company will be, I'm just focusing on getting my rear end and a few paying guests to Paris the week of March 22 - 26, 2010. I'm not even worried if it doesn't work our with Meg. I would rather work with her and I think my tour would be greatly enriched by her input, but I know my way well enough, I know what's what wnough to make it fun, educational and most importantly memorable and worth the money that people will be spending.

So there.

Fail-safe restaurants

In the December '07/ January '08 issue of Budget Travel, the publishers have asked their readers to send a recommendation for the fail-safe restaurant in their respective cities. I've been thinking about this for the Seattle area and I'm having the damndest time narrowing it down to just one. I, like most people, have my favorite haunts, but are they truly fail-safe?

Here's a list of some of my fail-safe (if not default) restaurants in Seattle and what you'll find there that makes it a destination for locals and visitors.

- The 5-spot: Bloody Marys
- Vera's, in Ballard: Salmon Benedict
- Market Street Grill: Awesome burgers and fries, their White Truffle Mac & Cheese, Bar Steak Frites, The service is awesome. It's a great upscale place that's a second home for many of the regulars (including myself)
- Coastal Kitchen: The Coffee Cake
- Wasabi Bistro: The best happy hour sushi!!
- Portalis: Excellant wines by the glass and great, though limited menu.
- Purple: Wine list and Coconut Prawns!! I'm a sucker for those puppies.
- Maritime Brewery's Jolly Rodger Taproom: Unexpectedly amazing food with great beer to match.

Ok, ok, I realize that this list is rather skewed towards Ballard, but hay! That's where I live, and these are places that I would go out of the way for anyway. So give 'em a try.