And thus it begins

Launch is less than two weeks away and preparations are beginning slowly to commence. Between two weekends ago in Philly and this last weekend in New Jersey, I have said my good-byes to all my dear friends ("good bye" if I didn't run into you to say it in person). I'm also beginning to accumulate enough portable technology to get cast as the dork side-kick in an action movie. Watch for me in the desert scenes of the fifth Indiana Jones movie ("Indiana Jones and the Enchanted Retirement Home") with laptops and DVD cases strapped to various limbs.

I begin this adventure with the usual mixture of excitement and my usual "what have I gotten myself into now?" feeling. The second is now so familiar after four years of globetrotter adventures that it's like an old friend. Of course, the welcoming of this old familiar dread/anticipation means waving good bye to the longest summer in Christendom and its lazy haze. Good bye, Comfort Zone, good bye, see you again in two years when it will be time to concoct a new one from sugared conformity and moistened apathy. Time to go out and see some of the world.