Everyone asks us what it's like to quit our jobs and launch into such a long trip. I wish I could say we were absorbing every glorious second, basking in the magic. It seems like monumental changes like his should be dramatic. I always imagined a flourish of orchestral music accompanying my last minutes of work as I threw aside my chair and strode confidently out the door for the last time. But things don't quite work that way.

The fact is, we're just ready to go. We've been planning and packing and dreaming and thinking about this for so long that we're almost sick of the trip, even though we haven't taken it yet.

If you've survived that tumultuous roller-coaster of strife that accompanies the last week before a wedding then you know what our last week has been like. In the week before your wedding, intellectually you know something good is about to happen but you can't quite see it through the frequent bolts of spousal discord. I guess it's to be expected given all the stress of packing a household and saying our good-byes, but I for one am glad to finally get underway with the actual event.

The other thing that has marked these final days is saying goodbye. At first our good-byes were lengthy, tearful affairs. These goodbye's start in typical Minnesotan fashion, staring at our feet talking small talk and generally avoiding the subject. Then comes the "well you guys are going to have quite a trip" talk, moving on to "you'll have to show us the slides when you get back", and ending with tearful "I can't believe you're going for a whole year".

That was a week ago.

Now -- after a week of saying goodbye to everyone from my hairdresser to the guy who installs the phones at my office -- a goodbye is just a quick hug, a slap on the back, and a cheerful "see ya!"

I desperately wanted to have everything done before today so I could enjoy my last day at home. We had a small last-minute crush, but I sort of succeeded. I was able to do two of the things I'm going to miss most in the next year away. First, I sat on the couch reading the Sunday paper, sipping coffee, and watched the Vikes win a close one.

Then I took my dog on a long, lazy walk on a sunny afternoon. We walked up over the top of Queen Anne and stopped at the park to look down across Seattle. We rounded the west side of the hill, and as I looked out at Puget Sound and the sun low above the Olympics I thought how strange it was that the next time I gazed out across the Pacific I'd be looking east instead of west.