T minus 5

Wow... five days to go before the end of my YB career. Hard to believe.

This past Thursday, I gathered up all the books I had kept hidden under my desk at the tutoring center, stuck them in a box, and carted them home with me. Today, I'm planning to finish removing all the books from my living-room bookshelves so as to cart all of those shelves over to YB before it closes at 5PM—my humble Donation to Education. If I fail to get everything off the shelves and packed by 4PM, I'll just have to ferry the furniture over during the week. Last night, I tape-measured my car's hatchback to make sure the bookshelves could go in; they could, with room to spare. Most excellent.

With my address changes completed, I have to turn my attention to certain cancellations. I'm going to visit the local Comcast office in Front Royal to cancel my Comcast service, which is the last thing that needs to be nixed. I've already taken care of electricity and Verizon phone service, so everything else is in order.

I've also begun the great process of cleaning up the apartment. Not that I live like a slob, mind you: I think I'm actually fairly neat. But even neat people aren't perfectly neat, and my bathtub has its fair share of shameful, mildewy, soap-scummy discolorations that need to be scrubbed and scoured away. So I worked on the bathtub today, and very soon, I'll tackle my toilet, whose flush holes are in dire need of serious grit-blasting.

All this prep before my upcoming Korean adventure puts me in mind of those science-fiction films in which a giant ship proudly launches from an orbital berth (name your film: "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," "Starship Troopers," etc.). My life is like those great vessels, and we're in the unmooring phase, detaching from the berth and readying ourselves to pull out and plunge into deep space. Just a little more unmooring to go before we hit those thrusters.


_