Yes, that, exactly.

Most of the past twenty-four hours have been spent in meandering preparation for canadatrek. The end result: I'm packed, and Jeff's packed. Everything that's required has been done, and the to-do list is down to more mundane things, like running loads of dishes and cleaning the litterbox.

The cats know that something's up. Every time Edmund and I cross paths, I receive a baleful kitty stare. Perhaps he has come to associate the smell of luggage with me vanishing from his life for a few days. If he has, he's a smart kitty. Tenzing, on the other hand, just wants to be played with.

Website-related news: at last, I have working code to make domesticat skinnable. I'm going to use the time while I'm gone to let the graphic-design part of my brain rest and rejuvenate. I'm working on a second skin, based off of a theme of storm clouds and lightning, but I'm waiting to get permission from the original photographer before I use the picture.

The time for leaving approaches. My attempts to whittle down on the to-do list continue. Slowly upon slowly, the attempts are succeeding.

Left:

• Pick up and photocopy passports
• Drop off white comforter for dry-cleaning
• Give Kat plant watering schedule
• Make mortgage and truck payments befure we leave
• Put out trash night before we leave
• Cut my hair
• Cut Jeff's hair
• Power down computers
• Clean up kitchen
• Buy film. (Lots.)
• Do final loads of laundry and dishes
• Clean litterbox

Hard to believe—a week from tonight the journey begins. Pick up Jeff after work on Wednesday, and drive down to Birmingham with Heather. Stay the night—neatly enough, in the same hotel we stayed in the night before we flew up to Victoria last year. We'll get up very early for an insanely early set of cross-country flights.

I am pathetic, I am funny, I am listmaker, hear me roar.

I make a lot of lists, although I occasionally like to smoke some crack and think that I'm not exactly ruled by my to-do list. My troubles of scribbling down multiple lists—and subsequently losing them—have been cured by my December procurement of a Handspring Visor—quite possibly one of the best purchases I've ever made.

Trips bring out the worst listmaker in me. Especially, in this case, when I will be travelling quite far from home, and will end up in a different climate than the one I'm beginning in.

For my birthday, my friends gave me this fabulous spiral-bound notebook that now contains everything from poetry snippets to plants I want in my flowerbeds to random sketches of my cats.

It appears that, once again, the world's ended and everyone forgot to let me know ahead of time.

I knew something had to be up this morning when I woke up and Jeff informed me that 1) he wasn't feeling well and 2) that he was taking a sick day. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the McSpouse that is only slightly more likely than me to continue soldiering on through dismemberment and slight cases of death, actually took a sick day.

I brought him the sandwich he wanted from Publix (foot-long, on white, no mayo, and all kinds of stuff that would keep me from snitching bites like banana peppers / onions / pickles), the particular species of chips that appealed to him, and the makings for more Kool-Aid.