David: Ready to Take Off . . . I Think

Local time is 10:42 p.m. as I start to type this. In the past few hours we've finished the bulk packing, washed the kitchen floor and cleaned the bathroom, and I've periodically spread out a new set of damp pages from my scrapbook/portfolios to air dry so they won't mildew and mold while we're gone. (They were soaked in our storage closet last weekend from a Safeway chiller leak.) Once they're wrinkly and crackling dry, I slide them back into their clear plastic slip-cover pages. The final seventeen sheets are spread up the hall, across the back and seats of the sofa, and down onto the living room floor behind me, and should be dry in another half hour, perhaps. Scott Joplin's Collected Piano Rags is taking a lot longer -- even though it spent many hours in direct sunlight yesterday afternoon -- and will just have to lie open while we're gone.

We left the dog and cat with a caretaker at our vet's office this morning at 10 a.m. Pixie is terrified of strangers, and even though the woman is fabled for her ability to calm and befriend shy animals, we worry about how our dog will make it over the various humps of the first night and following few days without us. Maybe she'll finally learn the rest of the world isn't out to get her. Not in that way, anyhow.

We'll set the alarm for 4 a.m. and hope to be on the MAX to the airport by 5 for a 7:30 flight. A little nervous about a 45-minute transfer in Seattle, but our luggage will have a couple days to catch up to us in NYC before we board the ship on Tuesday if it doesn't make the switch on time.

I had a fun two days pretending to be an illegal arms buyer on an oil pumping ship docked in North Portland last Sunday and Monday, as part of the season two finale of the TNT cable series "Leverage"; I have photos, but those will just have to wait until after we get back.