So last night as I was trying to fall asleep, despite my coughing, it hit me: I leave in one month. ONE MONTH! I haven’t gotten to the point where I go all “oh man, what am I doing?” but I’m sure that will come soon enough. At the moment I’m relatively calm, trying to plan my time for the next four weeks. Suddenly it seems like a month isn’t as long as I remembered it being. So far, I have two trips planned and I’m working on setting up a third so I can visit my family in Asheville before I go. That’s almost cut my free time in half. IN HALF! In the meantime, I’m kind of revelling in this strange feeling of not quite being gone yet, but not being totally here either. If this is anything like my last longterm stay away from home, I’ll be buckling in on the airplane and think, “Crap. I’m not coming back for a long time. (pause) Well, I guess I can always come home early if something goes wrong.”
In other news, I started what is probably my third packing list tonight. Maybe I’ll even come halfway close to finishing this one. It’s reminded me that I still have a few things that I need to order online so that they can arrive before I go. In particular, a case for my camera (so I can take it underwater) and an external hard drive for my laptop. I think maybe I’ll take a trip to REI today and see if I can’t find anything exciting, like another nalgene bottle.