This is it.

Getting on a plane in a few hours.

What does one say in what could possibly be their final blog post, given the now increased statistical likelihood of my being eaten by a lion?

Hmm.

It's been real.

(Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone, and Happy Birthday to me. I expect presents upon arrival home.)

So as of 10 am this morning it will be T minus 24 hours till my flight to Jo'burg leaves, which will then make it less than a day till we're on the road to Botswana (Boyfriend, myself and three other couples in two 4x4s, in case you haven't been following).

Can you handle it?

Excitement is being temporarily put on hold by the fact that I haven't started packing. If you know me, you'll know it takes about 10 hours of running around like Mike the Headless Chicken followed by thirty minutes of manic suitcase stuffing before I consider myself packed. And even then I forget strategic items, like underwear, or my toothbrush.

Not to mention, I spent the last four days drinking, staying at Boyfriend's place, catching up with the lovely Kat visiting from England and not really doing all that much in the way of getting ready for a mammoth cross country overlanding camping trip.

Whoops.

Must buy a hat.

Drunkity drunk drunk drunk drunk

Okay so that plan about being sober at the office party? Out the window somewhere between the third glass of bubbles and sleeping on Boyfriend's lap on the drive home. Open bars and I, we make the best of friends. I cannot count the drinks (mostly because of all the black spaces in my memory bank).

Nobody should have that much fun at a work function. For god's sake, we were drinking Patrone at one point (a fact I was only enlightened to last night). Oh yes. Then we got in the hummer and hit the jacuzzi with the honies and our bling (not really).

'Festive' is how I'm choosing to describe it. Festive, and oh my I'm never stepping on to the sales floor ever again. Those boys. Bargepoles from now on.

Had to get up frightfully early to go and have my Hepatitis shots for Botswana, and then a wax. Two things you really shouldn't do when hungover, so it's quite lucky then that I only sobered up a few hours later at lunch.

So don't feel like work this morning. I love my job, but am just in too much of a holiday mood.

You know you're old when one late night of awesomeness knocks you out for a few days following. And when the car guard calls you 'Lady' instead of 'Girrrrlie'.

Turning 23 soon. Can't I still be 'girlie'?

In other news, it's the company Christmas party tomorrow night. My very first opportunity to behave inappropriately and embarrass myself in a work environment. Not going to happen. I will be the picture of professionalism. I will be Grace Kelly meets the publishing world at a pretentious bar in Camps Bay.

Am I lame that I'm kind of excited?

Of course, that could be because Boyfriend is coming down this weekend specifically to escort me to said function. Very nice of him, especially given partners are only allowed into the damn thing at 10.30 (it starts at 6, kill me now, will have to protect myself from being engaged in conversation by anyone from sales for four and a half hours).

Barely working tomorrow either – we're disappearing just after noon to a celebratory lunch for one of the magazines, and not coming back (ever).

Love December. So much of party. So little of work.

Saw the Killers last night.

Hands down the best concert ever.

In a word, electric.

In five, holy god fuck me wow.

'I can't help falling in love with you.' (If you were there, you wanted to marry Brandon Flowers at this moment.)

Despite the mission out to Franschhoek and the killer three-hour traffic just to get out of the actual wine estate and then the long drive home ... I would go again in a heartbeat.

'Let me know, is your heart still beating...'

Again, holy god fuck me wow.

Oh how I chuckled...

If you're anything like me and are over the whole Cape Town cool kid phenomenon, you'll laugh yourself silly at this blog.

If you're tired of my low self-esteem stop reading now

So it's exactly two weeks tomorrow morning until I get on a plane, fly to the Banks, spend the night with Boyfriend and then we all pile into two '90s Hiluxes and set off on our two-and-a-half-week mission to Botswana.

And this time I won't roll the car like I did in Malawi last year.

Mostly because I won't be allowed to drive.

Getting very excited about it, but at the same time, shopping for suitable camping-type clothing is getting me down a little. For three reasons:

a) I must resist the allure of all the pretty floaty dresses and silky harem pants and flimsy sandals and body-con party dresses floating around.
b) It's taking me forever to amass said clothing – you'd think it'd be easy, but I've tried on about a million pairs of brown shorts and am now stumped as to what else people wear in the bush.
c) I am not the casually beautiful oh I just threw on a little vest and my bikini and some shorts and managed to look gorgeous girl.

Seriously, it takes advance outfit planning and heavy-duty grooming before I feel like I can reasonably be seen in public. I can only imagine what I'm going to look like after a few days' camping.

Not helping matters is that this time we're four couples, as opposed to the 8 to 2 boy-girl ratio of last year. And while I do play nicely with girls, this means I get to spend a few weeks comparing myself to a gorgeous blonde surfer-girl type, a British bean pole and one unknown, who, given the way things are going, is probably going to turn out to be an Israeli supermodel.

While I honestly like these girls (well, apart from the one I don't know of course), there's a special kind of downer that comes from knowing you're always going to feel like the ugliest person in the room (or desert, as it were).