Pre-Packing

While I don't leave until Friday, today I started getting serious about putting things together. Lots of piles. Trying to figure out the best ways to pack for a trip that includes planes, train, car trip, Apple Festival, Rhinebeck ... it's a bit much, though that may be the-bit-of-a-headache-I-have talking. I truly am excited for the trip! But it will be a relief to be on the way, and past the stage of trying to anticipate all possibilities. There is, after all, very little I can forget that will be catastrophic, and the odds that I will get through the whole trip without wishing I had brought X or thought of Y are vanishingly small, so I just need to embrace that and move on. (Easier said than done, of course.)

It's going to be weird not to be hot, to be honest. I just pulled up weather.com, which says that here it's 90 and feels like 100. Switch to Syracuse and it's 62, feels like 60! Which is perfectly nice October weather there, just a big change to me. I'm well aware that looking at the forecast this far ahead is a waste of time, but of course I've been doing it anyway, and next weekend has gone from highs in the low 60s and lows in the low 40s to (just now) highs in the 50-60 range and lows around 40, which is a bit brr. Fortunately I already had coat-scarf-gloves-hat on my packing list, but it will be a shock to the system.

And fun! And possibly chaos! And a nice long break from work, which I am looking forward to after all the IT chaos we've been through recently (though that has settled down somewhat).

I'm already missing Maggie, though. Can you believe that I'll be sleeping in four different places, and not one has a cat? I  expect she will be velcro-stuck to me when I get back, and I will enjoy that very much.

I do hope she doesn't drive my mother too crazy while I'm away. She doesn't approve of me leaving the house in general, and she is sure to be vocal in her disapproval when Mom fails to produce me for her highness.