Friday Frenzy: Globetrotting Alpacas

This week's Friday Frenzy is brought to you by the letter H for hyper because I'M GOING TO BARCELONA, FRIENDS.    


That's right, at 7:05pm today, I will be overcoming the forces of gravity and watching what will probably be a god awful chick flick on my way to the land of tapas and cigarette smoke.  It's going to be legen -- wait for it, and I hope you're not lactose intolerant because the second half of that word is -- DARY.  


After visiting Spain twice, then living there for 6 months and traveling all over that ridiculous country, I'm so excited to be going back and not doing anything touristy.  I'm going to be visiting two of my amazing friends -- S & L -- who pretty much embody my ideal couple.  S is from Azerbaijan and L is from Spain.  They come from entirely different backgrounds, but they merge their cultures and constantly learn from each other.  They work like crazy and spend every penny they save on travel.  They've been to more places than I can even wrap my mind around and I'm so wildly jealous.  I live vicariously through them by stalking their Flat Stanley-esque photos on Facebook.  Judge me. 


They came to the BK for the first time back in October.  Here we are with my sister, RB, during a lunch break from the hell cave:

Clockwise from the left:  Me, RB, L, & S sitting down.

We here at Alpaca Clouds are broke off our asses, but certainly try not to be uncultured swine by zooming to unknown lands when we can.  Click the Read More button below to see where we've ventured!  

Balls. (of stress)

Apologies for the late post, alpaca readers!  I've been running around like a mad woman these past few days preparing for my killah Barcelona trip that I am zooming off to tomorrow!  (P.S. We're having a post all about it coming up so be sure to check back!)


Like most of my ideas, this one started out great and soon turned into a huge stress fest because this inevitably failed to go as I had hoped.  Do they ever?  Negatory.  I'm generally an extremely organized person and I like to be on schedule with my life, so you can imagine the freak out that occurs when things need to be rescheduled.  In this case, I planned as many activities possible to make the most of my short week away from the hell cave, and it turned out that two of them already presented conflicts.  While I do like to have a plan, I'm pretty flexible with moving things around as long as everything gets done.  

The stress beast came out once I found out that one change in plans would wind up excluding a friend who was traveling far distances to see me.  It's not so much the control issue, as that I want everyone to be happy.  This is why I fail at planning parties.  There's that one inevitable drunk girl that takes off her shirt and I'm the one who gets all the evil glares for it.  I'm getting stressed just typing that sentence.   


Usually, if it's something I can control, I deal with my stress by breaking things down into small bit and handling them one at a time.  If it's out of my hands, I get my loyal friends to distract me from thinking about it.  Their advice usually goes something like this: 

(courtesy of maggie123 via imgfave.com)   

My friend Bear recently shared his stress reliever and, despite being an avid lover of the disgusting, pee-ridden sidewalks of my beautiful Brooklyn who fears nature like it's the plague, I actually found it to be quite effective!  It's a little website called RelaxPls and it has rocked my world (in the calmest way possible of course).  


And, of course, when all else fails, there's always the fluffy bunny route: 

I WANT TO SQUISH THEM.
(courtesy of Nobody wants me via imgfave.com;
sidebar: the bunnies want you!)

What are your stress-relieving tricks?  


Leave your advice in the comments below and be sure to check back tomorrow for more on Barcelona & traveling!  (Please, you guys.  Our moms are tired of reading this.) 


-Beetle, xx