19 Days...

Two days ago I stepped off of the shuttle from work for the last time. I grew quite fond of the ride home from work over the past four months. I can't think of a better transition from work to home: it's simply an hour to sit and be driven.

Yesterday morning I relinquished residence at the poorhouse. I wouldn't feel out of line in claiming that 90% of society would not categorize a single aspect of living there as normal.

I should probably be feeling more nostalgic at this point but I'm beginning to think that the anxiety which I should also be feeling has developed a synergy with any wistful sentiment as I feel strangely calm.

In fact, it isn't just calm but contentment as well. Things really are good in this moment: no working for a wile, epic skiing in the 5-day forecast, a flight to catch...all of my current obligations are sheerly for pleasure. I need to remember it--how better to bring perspective to darker times than the notion of such a velvety warm and washing moment.

1 - First Post

The fact that I'm leaving the country to live in another in 27 days is definitely beginning to sink in: this is real. School's up, I'm almost done with work, and Tyler packed his room with the intention of leaving the poorhouse for Albuquerque by the time I get home tomorrow. Now that all of the critical elements are in place, I find it easy to take for granted the effort required to get here. But it was certainly no trivial pursuit.

It's a little know fact that the only people in existence who posses a complete knowledge of how one arranges a foreign exchange are those fortunate enough to have survived the process. There is an obscene amount paperwork to be completed for a startling number of organizations. I would have bet my thumbs that the paperwork was finished on multiple occasions only to find that by turning in one application three more had become necessary...all of which required the approval of the same 11 people but in a unique and exciting order on each form.

But the seemingly endless succession of forms maintained a small distinction between the pipe-dream musings of two scruff-dog lunatics and the prospect of an epic Swedish semester. The minute probability of a mistake factored over so many forms more or less guaranteed a last-minute dream-dashing. However, that is no longer the case.

The last of the States-side paperwork has been submitted and is "Fine thnx, well received." That threat of a last-minute dream-dashing has become something of a mirage by now, the remaining modes of failure fading fast. The baddest-ass 5-month international mayhem spree on record beckons, no longer obscured by the myriad obstacles placed there to deter the sane. All that's left are the butterflies who multiply with the increasingly mired passage of the final 27 days.

It's definitely freaking real.