I meant to post a little more often here, but between visitng freinds, trip planning, and the actual going on a trip, that never happened. I noitced my weight bounce back up a little after stopping waht I realized was over-restriction of my diet. After that, my loss has been mostly slow and steady.
Trip reflection: Since I wanted to drink while away, I essentially just started skipping a meal a day and trading in those calories for booze. My compromize on this was that I didn't eat junk food. Ever. Everything else that went into my body was nutritionally valuable to me. I do enjoy being aware of my caloric intake; it's enabled me to see how my food choices affect my weight and my health and gives me the information I need to determine what tradeoffs I'm making.
With a little over 2 days before weigh-in, I'm about .5 kg above my goal. This isn't too bad, since I just ate dinner and drank a hell of a lot of water. I think if I weight myself at my normal time I'll be very close. Reglardless, this feels a little bit like a failure to me. I wanted to be more concretly below my goal weight by the end of the month. But oh well. We live and learn.