We interrupt our previously-scheduled chaos...

... to bring you a deer. Really, a doe - a deer - a female deer grazing in the yard of the kid's paternal grandparents' house outside of Atlanta. Flew down here from PDX on the redeye last night, and didn't sleep at all between the kid dozing fitfully on one side of me and a poor soul who was at least 6'5" crammed into the seat on the other side. We landed, were picked up by the kid's grandparents, and then went to a local BBQ joint for grits and eggs and sausage - totally surreal. I thought about taking a photo, at the very least of the life-sized cutout of GWB stashed in a corner - but thought better of it.

And then we came home, and saw the deer as we pulled in to the driveway.

I managed a brief nap before getting up to call in to my meeting at 8am, Portland time. I've been working from here, calling in to meetings and keeping up with email. I've a few colleagues who are out this week on vacation, so I'm their coverage as well. Email's coming in, and I'm doing my best to keep calls and such limited to times that coincide with the schedule here, three hours ahead. I'm dealing with corporate lifecycle discussions; my "not-in-laws" are making cornmeal-encrusted okra and grilling shrimp.

Such a different pace of life, and one that's increasingly attractive. We drove by housing developments with prices starting "in the low 100s". Substitute the "1" for a "3" and you'd have Oregon. And maybe for a "high 400s" - and it'd be San Jose.

I keep thinking that someday I'll have time to sit down and figure out what I want to do with this one beautiful, blessed life I have - and I realize that the life's happening now, while I'm zooming from airport to cube farm. Pretty sobering thought, all in all. Especially when my thinker's pretty jet-lagged as it is. Maybe tomorrow I'll go out and talk with that doe for awhile. I think she's onto something.

Another blogger in the sphere...

Wasn't quite his idea of how to spend his summer vacation, but the Kid is now a blogger. I'm not going to post the details publicly; it's invitation-only, and I'll be watching it like a hawk. However - if you know me and know the kiddo, drop me a note if you want to get an invite to follow his adventures this summer and over the next year while we're in San Jose. It's moderated and tightly managed, but it's a good way for him to keep in touch with folks while we're away.

If any of y'all are thinking about letting your kids start to blog and want tips on how to be an uptight, retentive parent (what to lock down, how to moderate comments, etc.) - drop me a note. I'm all about responsible and careful use of technology, and just like other areas of life, this is one that the kids will learn about eventually, and really - you do prefer that they learn from you, rather than elsewhere.

What did I say about "too real"?

Timestamp on this is Friday, but really written on Sunday morning, June 28. I'm sure there's a way to update the timestamp, but today won't be the day that I figure that out.

I can give this up - the back yard with the grass and dandelions that are a constant menace. In the middle of this green space we've put in a planting bed with tomatoes, zucchini, and basil all humming along.

But damn, saying goodbye to people sucks. It's so hard, something I've never liked. Friday was the amazingly wonderful woman, she & her husband truly gifts from God, who tend the kiddo after school and during summer. If I have any regrets about the past 11 years, it's that I didn't know them 11 years ago - he'd have been with them from the outset, as were a few of his friends. Instead, it's been barely a year and a half, but it's been wonderful. He'll be back for one week later this summer after his visit to the East Coast and before we head down to San Jose, and thankfully it's a week when she's here and will have her place open for kids.

Today - the young priest who was a seminarian when the kid started at the school. Given the choice of attending his ordination in Indiana or going to Disneyland when I would be attending the annual religious ed conference, the kid picked the ordination. At nine, the kid was way more interested in church and such than he is at eleven, but it was still an experience he'll remember forever. He was an altar server today too, at the last regular Mass that this priest will preside over at the parish. Definitely hard to say goodbye there, too - we don't agree on everything, but the faith and values that unite us are sufficient to let us exist with the differences, and with love and respect for one another.

I've never liked goodbyes much, and these weeks are full of 'em.

I'm repeating the mantra - it's just for a year, it's just for a year. If we were going to Mexico, it'd be a lot easier to cling to that "just for a year" statement - we'd have to return home, for immigration reasons at the very least. This time, we'll come back, and as inevitably happens, life will have moved along its course in our absence. I'm grateful for tools such as the Internet, Facebook, etc., resources that let us keep in touch with one another, but more grateful still simply for the gifts of these people - the couple who care for kids, Father Stephen - whose lives we've been privileged enough to share. God willing, we'll stay in touch as we all move through this next year.

All a little too real...

I spent the latter part of last week in San Jose - or rather, San Jose, then Folsom Friday with a quick hop of a flight over Mt Hamilton (?) and then a day's instruction to a group of senior developers at the company's site there. Flew back on the return hop, caught up on a few things at the office, and then headed back to my friends' condo for dinner.

After dinner we went on a little walk - down a few flights of stairs, around the pool, up several more flights of stairs, and down to the very end of the hall. We stopped at the last door on the right, a door I'll be seeing a lot more of in just a few weeks.

Home.

Or at least what will pass for "home" for the next year. I've been thinking a lot recently about that concept - "home" - and what it's meant to me, and how my unsettled relationship with that concept informs this upcoming move.

I don't know how many times I've moved. I know the longest I've lived anywhere in my life was the house in NW PDX where we were prior to moving to this one. We lived there from June 2000 - March 2006, even though it was under serious construction much of the time and wasn't really fit for human habitation. It'll be beautiful when it's done, but it was never fully "liveable" - and as such, was never 'home' - just a place to try to sleep, and to try to keep this crazy-@ss juggling match going. Much easier where we are now

The first house I've owned - this one - just over three years. And now we're packing up to go to California. There's no way we'll stay in the place there longer than a year; even if things change and we're not back up here next summer, I can't see living there indefinitely. In fact, I can't even wrap my brain around the idea that in just over a week, we'll be set there for a year. Unreal.

The past several days have been spent with much packing and some scheming, interspersed with the usual doses of work and such. Still haven't figured out if we'll do the professional movers thing or just pile it all into a u-haul. I'm blessed with friends here who want to help with packing and even transport, and friends in SJ who're ready to receive it - and me+kid+cats. A couple of the latter will fly up to help take care of last minute stuff, and to ease me out of town.

It helps too to have a mental image of where the condo's located. Getting the keys will be the next step, one currently scheduled for early next week. (Yes, I'm taking Yet Another Trip south.) I'm still not at the point of being able to really say yes, I'm going to be a Californian - but I'll have an address. It's a start.