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.

Now that the party's over and the proverbial cat is out of the bag, I can now say that Jeff's graduation present was a DVD player. I was one of the last of our group of friends to be let in on the present-giving scheme.

Breathe, Amy, breathe.

Known: that I get nervous before trips.
Unknown: why I am so much more worried than usual about this one.

We head out in 72 hours. (O Canada…) Packing list: done. Clothes: not yet washed. Mind: not yet calmed. While it is normal for me to worry about takeoffs and landings a bit, it's been quite some time since I've experienced the sheer volume of worry and unease that's floating around my gut regarding this trip.

I'm going back into my book world. Let me tell you, a woman with James Joyce on the brain and Marvin Gaye singing antiwar songs in her ears is a woman buried to her eyebrows in lyricism.

I can't remember, exactly, when I started on Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but I know that I got halfway through it and put it down in favor of reading The Lord of the Rings.

Portrait has held the topmost spot on the bookshelf closest to the window, spine facing out, toward the living room. When I water my plants, my trek to refill my water jug takes me through the reading room to the back door of the kitchen. Every day I would pass the bookshelf, and with some degree of guilt I would see the slim paperback, waiting for me to come back to it.

Brad announces that he's getting ADSL soon. That means I have to get back to work on domesticat.

What many of you don't see is that Brad's been responsible for me doing many of the cool things to domesticat that I've done over the past year. The friendly design rivalry between us extends back for almost the entire time I've known him.It began as a geeky game of one-upsmanship: upon seeing what one person had done to their site, the changes inspired the other to make similar changes to theirs—and then go a step further.

Thus domesticat went from a static page to a dynamic one. PHP and strict style sheet usage got thrown into the mix. Song lists were shown. Favicons. Daily entries. Better graphics, quicker download times, more cohesive themes. Search functions. Webcams (I swear mine will return soon).

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.