heather's amazing stuff

However...we had to unpack me because my suitcases smell like that "new suitcase/cheap material" smell...so we basically febreezed the heck out of it (basically 1/2 a bottle for 3 pieces of luggage) and I'll pack again tomorrow. Amazingly I had enough room left over that Rob was asking if I wanted to take more?? Who was I to say no? So now I will be roaming the streets of Australia very fashionably dressed! You can decide from the pictures if this is true or not!

After we packed, the majority of our day was spent running errands to get me a coat, or light jacket and getting Rob another piece of luggage. While he has a few, he feels they are worn from his other international travellings and wanted another. Of course at the mall we ran into some shady characters who wanted to sell us luggage that was very overpriced. We did not fall for the first person to try to sell us something...or the second. Once we found a great deal, we called the airlines to find out the baggage restrictions and in calling 411 they told us that there was no listing for Qantas at LAX. Could they have gone out of business 1 night before we were flying? No wonder they were willing to pick up the flight taxes!! LOL Well come to find out, the guy was spelling it w/a U after the Q and so of course they weren't going to find anything. Once we got that squared away, Rob found the luggage he wanted and we were successful on all of our errands and got great deals!

In addition to Rob's suitcase and my "light jacket" I got a really cool swiss army backpack that I'll be using as a purse...because you know me, I can never be anywhere w/o my purse. But the one I have right now isn't quite appropriate for roaming around foreign countries.

I had also purchased some suitcase locks at Target the other day and boy were they a great buy at $2.99 for 2. They came complete with rust and all!! LOL not a great deal at all! So...when we were getting my bag, I got two combination locks from Macy's. Now I was a bit skeptical when the woman had to put the return label tag over one that had already existed...meaning did someone buy these locks and not like them? However, that didn't stop me from buying them.... When we got home, we looked at the directions and it said to set them to 000 to change the code. I knew how to do this as I'd already done it with my lock at work for my computer. We took one each and set them to 000. It didn't work. I told Rob I'd feared someone had bought them, used them/not liked them, and returned them after they'd already changed the code. I was right...so now, how many combinations do we have w/a 3 digit lock that has 0-9 as its choices...quite a few.

Because we are both stubborn, we proceeded to try and figure this out. Of course I started w/trying 111, 222, 333...123, you get the drill. None of these worked. I saw that as Rob was turning the lock, he was listening to hear it click, so I started watching the little notch that was supposed to come out while I moved the #'s. I saw that it made significant movement between 0 and 9. I put it on 9 and proceeded with the other numbers. Rob found out that 6 was the bottom # so I put that on 6. Now all we had figure out was the middle number. Luckily I figured that out, told Rob and the code worked on both. We then proceeded to follow directions and change it to what I wanted it to be, all the while toying with whether or not I should keep it on this pre-determined #.

We were very proud of ourselves after this and started gathering items for our "electronics bag" while I filled my new purse. We also looked up our transportation options and came up with a great deal there too. By this time it was well into the night and we decided to call it a day....So time to sleep and get rested for our big day ahead of us tomorrow!

Stay Tuned...there's More to Come