A Ton Of Licks, originally uploaded by LeeLeFever_TwinF.

We Are Home.

Climbing into the car, originally uploaded by markksullivan.

As you likley know by now, Sachi's bro Mark is taking care of our dog Amos.  Amos is getting a little stiff these days and Mark has built him the old-dog assistance apparatus pictured above.  Perhaps this is to make up for the lawn incident? Either way, we know Amos is in good hands.

First, it looks like the we'll be able to use the Treo 650 smartphone from India. Yay!

Second, we were happy to catch Amos on the Skype video cam. To be in Mumbai India and see and hear live video of our dog so easily is almost unbelievable. We do miss that dog.

Third, I am a huge nerd.

Sachi's brother Mark, a super-gadget-geek, is taking care of our dog and house and has hooked up the perfect solution to allow us to get our Amos fix while on the road.  It's a video web cam focused on his bed that we can call "call" into using Skype 2.0.  Only one person at a time can use it, so we can't expose the feed.

We can even hear sound along with the video and if there were speakers, we could talk to him, but we figure that might drive him crazy.  Mark has been using it to watch Amos' movements during the day (he's a sneaky dog).

Mark, can you comment on the set up in terms of what people need to do something similar themselves?  Thanks!

As Sachi mentioned earlier, our full days in Seattle are almost up.  Tomorrow morning we leave for Banff, Canada for a workshop and we return on December 8th, and then leave home for the trip (New York City) on the 11th. So, we have today, and next Friday and Saturday as "normal" days.

The question is, what can you do in 3 days to feel like you've taken advantage of what home has to offer?  From talking to people, it's the small and seemingly insignificant things that you miss most.  So, we're taking some time to have a normal Saturday morning.  This involves getting up and making coffee eating breakfast, turning on the Dub-Reggae KEXP show "Positive Vibrations" and relaxing with the dog.  Soon enough we'll get in gear and get to work, but for now, home feels really, really good.

 Leaving this mutt is not going to be fun.  We're trying to enjoy the time we have, which often includes full access to nap-time on the couch and bed.

People have asked a lot what it feels like a month before this all begins.  We’ve been thinking about that too.  What does it feel like?

There are different ways to look at the situation over the next few weeks.  We could begin to wean ourselves from our daily rituals and work to ease the transition through practice.  We could minimize and prepare.

Or, we could live life trying to take advantage of every minute of our blissful domestic existence.  We could maximize and take it all in.

Our dog Amos is one example with an easy answer.  If we minimized, we could start to disengage a bit and try to get ourselves prepared for missing him.  That’s not too doable, so we’re going for the full-on maximizing- trying to take advantage of every minute.  He is more spoiled all the time.

Knowing that our food choices will be limited and we will long for the comfort of our home choices of food, we’re faced with a similar decision.  We could start experimenting with more healthy and practical options, minimizing our normal diet in preparation. Or, we could gorge ourselves on the food, meals and places we love and hope that it will help us appreciate their existence.  The way it’s looking so far, we’re appreciating the existence of a lot of home comforts, but not gorging, per se.

We’ve been thinking about Seattle (and the surrounding area) and how we can make it part of the trip by taking a look at it as a tourist would.  I’d love to maximize Seattle before we leave, but minimizing would save money and make more time for preparation.

Just tonight I was buying milk and remembered learning that people often miss having milk on long international trips.  I considered maximizing and going for the whole milk, but reconsidered and stuck with the 1%.

We could start to let go of our media habits by minimizing TV consumption and non-productive computer time. Or, we could take advantage of the media access and veg out with the TiVo while we can. 

It’s all about philosophy I suppose.  I think we’ll have a healthy mix of minimizing and maximizing with a leaning on the maximizing side.  It may make the transition a bit more harsh, but we’ll have peace of mind that we considered it and did what we wanted.

Planning a trip like this is an amazing experience, both for the building excitement and fun and for the amount of loose ends that must be tied up.  It reminds me of the Beck lyric from the song Jack Ass:

Loose ends tying a noose in the back of my mind  It's not quite a noose, but the list is quickly growing and shrinking every day.  Think about paying taxes... We're leaving on December 11th, long before our tax statements come in.  We're leaving before our year even comes to a close.  Dealing with taxes is a big deal for us and yesterday we spend most of the day sorting through receipts and the Common Craft revenues and expenses in preparation for a meeting with our accountant.

What we plan to do is have a big envelope ready and have Mark put any mail that looks tax-related in it and have it sent to the accountant before texes are due. 

Common Craft is a whole other pain.  It just occurred to me last week that I have a number of annual renewals and payments I usually make in the Spring.  Business License renewal, Excise tax, Seattle City Business Tax, etc. I had to call the offices and get special forms for renewing and paying early.

This is all in the name of more peace of mind.  The more we can do now, the less we'll have to worry about next year and that is a good thing.

We continue to look for ways to get things in our life prepared for our departure.  Of course, this includes our beloved dog.  He just turned 11 and he's slowed down remarkably in the last year.  He's still the same happy and healthy dog, just slower and less, um, jumpy.

 This morning I took Amos to the vet for a check-up.  I get anxious about such things and worry (too much) about things like cancer.  In talking to the vet, it became pretty clear that he is just an old man and like old men, he's stiff and sore.

We did get some blood tests for good measure and we'll get those results back tomorrow. So, I have another 24 hours of mild anxiety.  But, if they come back clear, I'll have even more peace of mind. (A priority in our preparation is peace of mind, if you can't tell).

Oh and we've got him on an arthritis drug that is supposed to make him feel better too.  As hard as it will be to leave him, it will be better if we can do so with him in good health.

You know, I'm not concerned with a lot about the trip. We've learned a lot so far, prepared well, set our expectations, etc.  I think we'll leave with as much confidence as I have as possible for a trip like this.

However, our dog Amos is on both of our minds a lot these days.  He's 11 years old and slowing down a lot. He'll be staying home with Mark, Sachi's brother, who is living in our house and there is no one we'd rather leave Amos with than Mark. He'll be happy here.

The problem is us.  Already, I dread leaving that mutt and I'm sure Sachi does too.  As he's gotten to be an old man, he's gotten even sweeter and Sachi makes sure that he is spoiled every minute he can be spoiled, including being covered with a blanket when he lays down.

We're facing not being a part of one of his last years, and that's quite sad for us.  We have all the faith he'll be around when we return, but the thought of him not being here is almost too much to bear.  The last thing we want is for our goodbyes in a couple of months to be the last.

Alas, we know he's doing well now and will be very well cared-for while we're gone, in his own bed (and maybe Mark's sometimes).  As we reminded ourselves last night, he is a dog and not a human and we shouldn't assign human emotions and rationality to him- we hope that he doesn't even realize how long we're gone and when we come back it'll be like we went on a really, really long trip to the store.