More semi-boring travel stuff

This has been sitting as a draft for days, and doesn't seem terribly interesting, but I decided to post it anyway. The Imp of the Perverse, I suppose.

I finally booked my plane tickets for the CCDE trip last week, and received them in the mail over the weekend. BA will only issue physical tickets when they're ordered using someone else's credit card, mailed to the card billing address. These were ordered with one of my cards, but, well, I can't seem to remember to have the last name changed on it; it amounts to the same thing. I also noticed that the envelope is addressed to the traveller at the billing address (in this case, to my chosen surname)--a nice side-effect being that the cardholder would know immediately who was likely responsible in case of fraudulent use.

The cost turned out to be not so bad as I was expecting after prior investigation; rates seem to have come down a bit, and I caught a special, so that Dulles-Heathrow round-trip fare worked out to $600.92. Still a tad hefty compared to what it would have been a few years ago at the same time of year, but considerably less than it was looking to be even a couple of months ago. (Don't worry; I only tend to sound money-obsessed when it comes to laying out relatively large quantities when I don't have much. ;) )

I should be leaving the 29th and coming back the 14th. Originally, I'd thought to stay about a week, but my crash-space provider (and hopefully more) was extremely vague on return dates that would work well for him--I didn't want to overstay my welcome--while obviously preferring that I stay longer on both ends of the date range. :) This suited me perfectly fine.

I still need to pick up a few items and take care of a couple of things, but am pretty well set. This is a relaxing change from the couple of weeks preceding my trip before Christmas, what with having to rush around and get a new passport and do a number of other harrying things, coinciding with the general pre-holiday rush. Christmas may not be one of my religious holidays, but I do celebrate in a secular spirit with family, and can rush around with the best/worst trying to prepare. Sort of like half my family, I suppose, considering I was mainly raised by people who fall somewhere on the agnostic-atheist spectrum. I fail to see the point in celebrating, even as saturated with it as our culture is, but it does seem to satisfy many of them for some reason. (Yet another tangent; I certainly am good at those. *g*)

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Something that's been bothering me recently came up in conversation with my mother earlier. It periodically flares up, but I'm feeling it particularly strongly lately.

Though I can only put my finger on one of the reasons behind it--my biofather's discouragement of preactically any endeavor after he passed into definite madness--I have not felt capable of pursuing almost anything artistic in nature since shortly after I started school. I have had a problem with feeling talentless, and not feeling comfortable even attempting things because I was sure this would become immediately obvious to everyone. I do recognise that this is seriously skewed thinking.

Here are just a few examples of how this has affected my behavior. When, in seventh grade, one had to take a semester of either art or choir in order to continue with a foreign language the other half of the year, I chose choir in hopes that my utter lack of ability would not stand out as badly. I feel, now, like I am a reasonably musical person, and have been told that I have perfect pitch, but I avoided trying to take up any instruments until I was into my twenties. Much less singing, which I have been given to understand I am actually good at, with quite a range. I have almost completely avoided the visual arts, even though one stagecraft instructor with fine arts education was impressed enough by my small-scale scenepainting practice work that she strongly encouraged me to pursue painting. (And, my, was she difficult to impress.) I avoided the performing end of theatre arts, and finally stopped studying even technical theatre, because of this overarching theme. The only thing in which I haven't been so crippled is writing, possibly due to the consistently good feedback my work has received, and I am still extremely touchy.

When I did get up the courage to try a musical instrument, I chose a

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