less than two months to go

Less than two months from today, The Global Citizen Project will kick off. Ten of the twelve projects have been confirmed and I hope to have the few remaining nailed down as soon as possible. Several of the flights and program fees have been paid for, with strategic frequent flyer mile planning kept in mind to help cover airline costs later in the project. Despite going into this with a clear plan and a projected budget, the act of pulling all of the logistics together has required a tremendous amount of well-thought out (read: overanalyzed to death) decision-making. In real life, I tend to be a jump-into-the-deep-end-of-the-pool-sans-water-wings kinda gal, who just has a knack for making things happen. Planning The Global Citizen Project has required a great deal of patience and thought as I try to make the smartest decisions possible. While I’m still pinching myself that I was able to raise over $20,000 in 90-days (thank you), there is not much wiggle room for budgeting errors and I want to make sure that every dollar will have the greatest effect possible. Fingers crossed, I should have a final itinerary of where I’ll be and when, and a little bit about each project available in the next week or so to share with you. Thanks for bearing with me on this one. Once I take off in June, I need my plan to be locked, loaded and logistically squared away and I want to be as certain as possible that I'm making the best possible decisions for the project.


As I pull details together for TGCP, I’ve been catching up on non-TGCP related editorial work. Most recently, I wrote a travel feature for The Costco Connection on the ambitious culinary programs at Pueblo Bonito Resorts in Cabo San Lucas, worked on some press material for one of my favorite publicists in the whole wide world, Andrea Burnett, penned a top ten honeymoon feature for HotelChatter.com and articles on Montpelier Plantation in Nevis, B.V.I. and The Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco for Jetsetter.com (a member of the Gilt Groupe). I also started a loose outline for a book proposal on The Global Citizen Project (you never know) and have been lining up some TGCP-related writing gigs for pre/post projects.

The last few weeks have also seen a non-stop string of fantastic visitors, house guests and new friends. I absolutely love to cook, entertain and show off Seattle – even more so now that I know I may not see some of my favorite faces for quite some time. Sure, TGCP is only a one year commitment, and yes, I will be back and forth to Seattle over the course of the year, but the reality is that there are a lot of people whom I will miss dearly. The last house guest arrives Monday, a dear friend from Chile, followed by friends visiting from Alaska on Tuesday, before I take a red-eye Thursday night to New Orleans for a long-time friend’s wedding. There, in one of my favorite parts of the country, if not the world, I’ll get to see several close friends, many of whom I haven’t see for years due to great geographic distances. As an added bonus, the timing of the wedding also coincides with the French Quarter Festival. I'm one giddy girl just thinking about all of the free musical entertainment to be had just two blocks from my super cheap hotel (found on Hotwire, natch).

In other project related news, this past week I went to the University of Washington Travel Clinic where I survived the first of three visits to complete all of the necessary vaccinations for the next year of travel. Full disclosure: Despite a childhood filled with Friday afternoon allergy shots (for nine years), I’m a total baby when it comes to shots and blood. So, when Nurse Lisa spelled out exactly what would be needed to travel safely and my per appointment injection threshold, I almost fainted. (I’m not even going to go into the stacks of country-by-country printed material of warnings she sent me home with.) And here I thought I was all fancy already having Hep A, Typhoid and Yellow Fever vaccinations under my belt. Oh, how far my yellow World Health Organization card has come and I still have two appointments to go. I suppose a few pesky needles (and bruised/sore arms – every vaccination in the first round was administered intramuscle) is no great shakes compared to the possible complications should I pick-up the diseases in question. Plus, Nurse Lisa wields a needle with such deftness that my wincing really was kept to a minimum. That alone will make returning for round two all the more easier.

One last housekeeping issue as I’m in full-tilt logistics mode: If you have not received your backer reward yet, please send me your mailing address to cpfeuffer (at) yahoo (dot) com. There are still a few Chipotle Burrito Bucks, Theo Chocolate Bars and one lonely bag of Lighthouse Roasters coffee still milling around. Jennifer B., your Theo Chocolate is wrapped and ready to go.

Here's wishing everyone a happy Easter (if you celebrate) and a happy spring.

monday's inbox

Monday mornings never come easy for me, especially when I've been up fact-checking a guidebook until 3 a.m. the previous night. Throw in daily noon deadlines and I pretty much roll out of bed, head straight to the French press, turn on my laptop and hit the ground running. I usually fire up Tweetdeck, open Skype and plow through dozens of emails -- mostly from publicists pitching me story ideas. There's usually some confusion on how to spell my name (I get a lot of Cheryl, Karen, and Sharon), or they think I still live in San Francisco (haven't since 2003) and for some reason, think mother/daughter plastic surgery getaways qualify as a "travel story." Umm...that's so Real Housewives of Orange County and so not my beat. I usually just hit "delete" and move onto the next message. No big deal.

This morning, though, the inbox revealed a real gem. A Public Relations Coordinator in the British Columbia sent me a fully written article on her client in Costa Rica "free of charge, along with some excellent artwork to complement the story." Wow. Why have I bothered to travel the world, experience destinations first-hand and then report fairly when I can have access to spoon-fed material from the hired PR mouthpiece? Oh wait, that's because I'm a journalist. I was slightly less offended when I saw that the PR Coordinator not only managed to mispell her own name in the "From" line in the emaill address, but also the client's name in the email signature. Unbelievable.

I called out the agency's erroneous ways on the cyber super/social highway (a.k.a. Facebook and Twitter) and thankfully, my email response to "Sylivia" was far kinder than that of many of my colleagues who received the same slap to their journalistic integrity. Some journos may want to take the easy route. I'm not that gal. I seek a path of authenticity and I'm willing to work as hard as neccesary to find it.