OK, I'm not dead.

I don't have internet at home yet, for various reasons, and I don't want to do frivolous things at work even at off-hours. So I'm at the library.

We drove to our new home on July 20 and 21. Packed a U-Haul with stuff, and if we had it to do over we'd have given ourselves a lot more time to do that. We wanted to pack the stuff ourselves b/c having been at that house for 17 years, we had a lot of stuff, and I didn't want to bring old crap to Florida. Wanted to choose everything that went. That part was OK, but physically packing the truck took forever.

The drive was mostly OK. The cats started out in their carriers but F let them out to roam the car after a bit and they were fine except for wanting to get under my feet, which I could not allow. We had a small-dog carrier for the tomcat and a medium-size for the girls to share, so that they had room to move around. Riding in a car is a bit different from being shipped, so it wasn't necessary to keep them very still, only confined. At one point Molly was ready for a nap and she crawled into her and Bonnie's carrier and sacked out. Bonnie chose that moment to try to get under my feet (again) and I fished her out and threw her over into the back seat. F shoved her in the carrier with Molly. She didn't want to go but wasn't given a choice. Himself was in the passenger side foot area (can't think what to call that) and felt that he wanted a change of scenery so he clambered arthritically over into the back seat, bypassed his carrier, and crawled in with the girls. F tucked Molly's dangling leg in and closed the door and we had peace for a while.

They were very good in the motel. Freaked, but no barfing, meowing, or peeing on the carpet.

I'm skipping over a lot of stuff.

We got to our rental house in the evening, put the cats' things out, went over some stuff with the landlord, and were starving and snapping at each other and couldn't agree on what to eat for supper. I made an executive decision, pulled into a grocery store, and went to the deli and bought roast beef sandwiches, chips, and drinks. We sat on the fireplace ledge and ate and became human.

Returned the U-Haul on the morning of the 22nd, and took R to the airport to fly back to Memphis.

He said it was traumatic, coming home to that empty house. There was a bit of furniture left, b/c he had to stay there, after all, and F before she went back to school, but it looked like it had been ransacked.

F stayed with me until last Saturday, when she flew back to Memphis by herself (new experience for her) and was moved down to school by her dad on Tuesday. She went back early b/c she'd signed up for Welcome Week and had to get trained.

So it's just me and the cats, until R gets the house sold and can join me.

What other adventures can I report?

My boss and I went to Boston on the 25th and 26th, to meet the folks at the home office. The office is right on the harbor, at the USS Constitution. My boss and I walked out in the morning to look at the boats and all, saw about a million jellyfish (very cool) and were there to see the cannon they fire every morning at 8:00 and their flag ceremony, Star Spangled Banner and all.

And I saw the space shuttle go up the other night - when was that? It's all running together. I stayed at work a bit late and pulled up nasa.gov to see the countdown, waited until about 30 seconds to launch, and walked out into the parking lot and looked to the northeast. Because the sun was behind me, it glinted very nicely on the shuttle and I saw it move slowly up into the clouds. I'm saving that memory for "why am I here" moments.

Because I am having them, and I anticipated that I would. I gave this move a lot of thought, and R and I discussed it at length, but that doesn't keep me from questioning myself at odd moments. I miss him a lot. If the house doesn't sell PDQ we may button it up and let the realtor handle showing it and all, and he can come on and join me. There's a lot of exploring that I want to do on the weekends when I have time, and I don't want to do it alone.

The job is - well, I'll save that for another time. Everyone is being very nice.