I am in placeholder time, the time between fully here and fully there in which one's thoughts are distractedly trying to root in both places at once and -- usually -- failing miserably.

The twitter repost script is turned on, so you'll see my increasingly nervous natterings as the trip inches ever closer. it feels real now, real like the fine layer of cat fur Tenzing deigned to place on my bags tonight.

Jeff is gone to Seattle already; words sneak back east of his doings and his travels. The stories await my arrival for the telling; all I have right now are Adam's snapshots of Jeff, so familiar and yet so far away.

The house is quiet without him here. We fare better in separate places than most married folk, but the sense of oddness is palpable. We chirp affectionately from different rooms when we are both here, a quick echolocation and confirmation that never quite merits a full-blown conversation, and I have always wondered if we or our sibling cats first originated the idea.

It has been miserably hot here, the range of 100F/38C that makes even the hardiest of summer dwellers long for cooler days. How disconcerting to pack jeans, socks, and a jacket, knowing I'm likely to need all three tomorrow night. how strange, when I had to wash today's sweat-stained clothes because I didn't want to leave them dirty for two weeks.

I'm ready to go, and increasingly impatient. There is the googledoc, which I've maintained in a lackadaisical manner for quite a few months now, and suddenly it is real and now and tomorrow, dammit, and do I have my flight information and oh god where do I go for the rental car and what do we do if I forget something?

We breathe, that's what, and we make up a plan B and we laugh about my OCD tendencies -- because it's vacation, dammit.

We have Mariners - Red Sox tickets. We have plans for spice shops and restaurants, of hunting noodles and bubble tea, of sitting out on the deck and giving the sun no particular reason to get in a hurry to set. We'll go to a cabin hidden in the mountains of Washington and laugh into our single-malt, and we'll hug our friends as, one by one, they trickle home before Adam and I get lost in the woods for a few days.

My bag is full and my camera is empty. It's time to go.

Almost.

I've found a few oddities, and it's not fully functional yet, but I've got a list of fixes and tweaks, and everything looks manageable.

It's strange, looking at my to-do list. It's unnervingly small. I remember years in which planning for d*c meant doing enormous Sam's Club food runs, in addition to creating large vats of tea to get me through the process of coding.

This year, though, the personnel check-in system is requiring little past tuneups and refinements. I'm rewriting the radio check-in system (which is much simpler) to take care of some issues we noticed last year.

I'm not doing two hundred individual Magic cards. I've made badges, yes, and Wendy's excitement is causing more Magic cards to be devised than I was expecting to do, but it's much easier than it was last year.

Someone else is keying the shifts into the shift grid, and the room managers are responsible for dishing out their own staffing needs. If I didn't know any better, I'd say we turned into a team when no one was looking. Clearly, we must stop being productive and go drink for a while, because this is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated.

Don't worry; I'm still me, and I'll still have my regularly-scheduled freakout next Wednesday night, but it hit me the other night while talking to new staffers: I'm excited. There is stress, yes, because this is a large endeavor and it requires a good deal of planning on all of our parts for it to execute smoothly, but we are starting to reap the benefits of years of planning, careful coding, and emphasis on staff retention.

I'm ready to go see my friends. I'm ready to pull out the plaid skirt and the funky shoes and smacktalk in Centennial V. I don't have any plans to attend any of the events, but I have this vague notion of wandering around with friends in the evenings.

I have a purple, green, and yellow stegosaurus hat that is begging to be worn over a radio headset. I have a desk that doesn't need me for a few days, and a set of librarians who know I'll come back with good stories.

In the parlance of tech:

"I'm bit."

I have a sweater to finish knitting for Saturday—if I'm diligent, I will finish tonight.

I am alternately excited and utterly terrified. Friends are flying in for this, for crying out loud. People are driving multiple hours each way. All this, for the promise of … something.

I'm not sure what it is we look for in parties like these. A chance to connect, to at last BE the in-crowd. How comforting it is to be a nerd in a party full of nerds; a party full of people who aren't ashamed to admit that yeah, quite a few of us went to grad school, and yeah, some of us have doctorates and kids, but we also know killer dirty jokes and toasts and blackmail on everyone else who will be there—and oh yeah, don't get us started on the games until everyone's had their two-drink-minimum.

So, excitement. All these friends, so many of them so much like family, all together in one house for one whirlwind weekend. All these friends, in the end trusting that I've got my domesticat game on, and that there will be the killer food and drink that—yes, I know, they aren't expecting, but they certainly are damn well hoping for.

Molasses spice cookies. Oatmeal cookies. Gingerpeople. Saturday morning pancakes and chocolate chip cookies. For the first time, a fully-stocked bar. Music. Christmas lights. Homemade salsa.

If we're lucky, I'll append "devil's food cake" to that list tonight.

The first arrivals pull in at midnight tonight. Tomorrow afternoon, I harvest another set in Birmingham. The locals will show up after work with food and games in hand, and the Atlanta folks will trickle in as they finish the drive.

By Saturday morning, this place that I have fussed over, tidying and prepping, will be full to the rafters with my kind of people.

Geeks.

Don't be surprised if I vanish until next Wednesday. The last guestfriendgeek doesn't go home until Tuesday.

Here's to a weekend to remember: the Pan-Holiday Extravaganza. Cheers!