August? Huh?!

As I woke up this morning, I looked at the small digital letters and number below the time:

FRI AUG 1

August?! Really? How did that happen? I didn’t think this month would be here for a long time. In fact, August sort of seemed like an urban legend in my mind as of January when I decided I was going to ship myself off to Spain in the eighth month of the year. Winter seemed long (like it always does in the northeast) and spring was short (as it always is now that global warming denies New Yorkers of pleasantly warm afternoons without humidity) and then summer arrived in the form of Memorial Day. Summer weekends ticked away doing all sorts of wonderful Brooklyn (oh how I love my new burrough) things; spending each Saturday and Sunday in the outdoors as much as possible. Now I can look at my calendar and see that I have a mere three weekends left on this side of the Atlantic.

Post-it notes are being filled up; as is my “history” on Google. Searches daily on all sorts of trip-related places (What is there to do in the Costa de la Luz in southwestern Spain?) and transportation (is it better to fly to Seville or take the train?) and items (What kind of shampoo do they have in Barcelona and where can I buy it?) take up any free time I have between design projects. If only my company were Spanish and not French (as it is) so when I am working on changing copy on moisturizing conditioner bottles I could be learning something too.

Pictures of Gaudi’s architecture (from my Barcelona guidebook; not from memory as I have never seen it in person) swirled in my head as I tried to fall asleep last night; as well as a reminder to myself to add “Call the gym and suspend membership next week” to my To Do List. While squeezing my tube of Crest onto my toothbrush this morning, I looked around my medicine cabinet to see what needed to be added to The Packing List (I had forgotten band-aids).

Today is the first day that I can see my departure date on my monthly calendar without flipping the pages ahead. In fact, I just switched the calendar above the printer at work and my jaw dropped as I realized that I leave in two and a half weeks (in my head, it was just over three).