Ready to go

Sitting here in a quiet house at 4:20... all packed, documents, equipment, copies of software, little luxury items. And things that remind me of the people that are important to me, and reading material, and a well-wrapped slice of (rather intense) birthday cake to save for Monday.

I hate leaving Pat and the kids for so long... three weeks. Like ripping a hole as I walk away in 5 minutes. She was a hero yesterday, shopping and doing errands to the point of exhaustion without complaining.

Time to get going, to start...

To Edmonton

Airports, travel. More luggage than usual... got to have a quick lunch with Nancy in Minneapolis (after switching to a nonstop flight, sweet-talking the Northwest gate agent). One more brief cuddle before three weeks of touch-deprivation ;-). And I had a much easier time making the connection to Edmonton.

Once there, I (surprisingly) wasn't diverted by passport control over for questioning to the Immigration Canada office -- it had become almost a ritual of passage. But, as usual it was raining in Edmonton when I arrived... therealjae and minnaleigh met me at the terminal and drove me to a dinner with about 12 people. purplejavatroll was there, as was handslive, purplecthulhu (who was jet-lagged) and mouseman. With two hours of sleep and lots of travel, I'm afraid that I wasn't a sparkling conversationalist... rather the opposite. Dropped off at the Varscona (site of alt.polycon 6), I felt a bit sheepish, not in my best form. Oh, well...

Tomorrow, I'm up at 7am and off to Resolute and probably to Devon Island. The air freight arrived Wednesday, is now on Devon, and apparently the wireless network is working well. Tomorrow there will be a dry run in preparation for the science evaluation simulations beginning on Monday.