At the end of the evening

Many things on my mind today.

Grocery shopping done. I got my CDs in from SecondSpin—more CDs purchased because I found music on Napster and wanted copies that I could play on the stereo and not just on my computer. Got my knives resharpened. Talked with friends.

Oh, and trying to plan that trip to Victoria. I would really like to go back to Victoria (British Columbia, for the uninitiated). A calm, clean, and quiet town; close to the ocean; on the other side of an undefended border that makes everything just a little bit different.

For two years I've promised myself this trip: to spirit Jeff away for a few days after he receives his master's degree. A few days for him and I to relax with friends, to be somewhere else for a change, to not worry about so many things.

There's much organizing to be done in the meantime, if we're going to make it a group gathering of geeks. So many things to juggle: Heather needs to fly on Delta; we need to fly on Northwest. We're going to fly into Seattle because it's nearly $500 cheaper to do so; then we'll rent a car and drive from Seattle to Victoria [which requires an extensive ferry ride]. We have to get there early enough to get through the border crossing in time to catch one of the ferries, and then we have to navigate to our hotel. Then the same thing on the way back—check out early enough so that we've got time to drive, get through the border crossing, return the car, and catch our flights in Seattle.

But for now, I can't do any more until I talk to Brad. So I think settling in with a glass of Kool-Aid, a banana, and my copy of Lord of the Rings is the battle plan.