My trip to India becomes more and more real as the hours tick by. The past two days I've woken up before my alarm, completely unable to sleep, and all day today I've felt just on the verge of throwing up. Yeah, it's awesome. I don't feel too stressed--at least not a fraction of how stressed I feel is appropriate for this upcoming trip--but my body is saying otherwise. I don't think I've felt this way since last April when I was in the last few days in Paraguay and was pretty freaked at the idea of returning stateside after two years.

 On a totally different note, I randomly received a letter today in the mail from some church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was just addressed to the "Current Resident" at my address. It is essentially religious chain mail. Included is this random "prayer rug", which has an image of Jesus with his eyes closed (though I don't know of anyone who could actually kneel on it), a "Sign from the Lord about your future", which one should apparently only read if she has already prayed on the prayer rug, filled out the "prayer request form", and written a check to the 61-year-old ministry. There is the image of a woman with the caption "Blessed with $46,000 After Using Prayer Rug", and then her narrative which explains that her husband listed 7 things he wanted God to do for him, and then he got $10,700 somehow. There is then a page where you check boxes for what you prayed for--these vary from "my soul" to "a money blessing" to "a new car" to (my favorite) "less confusion in my home". If you know me at all, you should know that I suspect someone is pulling a prank on me. A prank I deeply appreciated.