12 hours til take-off

All packed, likely more than I really need. Dog is ready. Cat is ready. Truck is parked (and hopefully won't freeze into one solid block while I'm gone). A few last minutes things done at work today... And we're off!!! Flight is at 7:30am tomorrow morning, which means a 4:30am rising to walk and feed Rebel before grabbing a taxi. Although this year is easier as I'm not flying through the States so no customs to deal with at 5am in the morning.

I don't suspect a greyt deal of sleep will happen tonight. I always fear that my alarm will not go off and I'll miss a flight. It's never happened, but...

Although I have had one very near miss of a flight - flying back from Paris after my post-doc. I went out that morning, wandered up the street to my favourite cafe for une petite noir sur la zinc, then wandered down to the internet cafe. That's where I decided that I should check the departure time on my flight, which I thought was the NEXT day. I had dinner plans and everything for that last night. I opened up the ticket only to realize that my flight was THAT day!! And in about 2 hours. Definitely an 'oh shit' moment. I dashed up the street, ran up the three flights to my apartment and threw all the remaining items in my bag. Luckily, I had already packed the days before, so that wasn't too time consuming. My land lady's husband was there, so I had him call me a cab. The instructions to the cab driver were "drive as fast as you can!", which if anyone has been in Paris, is simply the way they drive anyway, but this was an even bigger challenge through Parisian traffic to the airport. Amazingly, I made it there with 10 minutes to spare for my check-in time and collapsed into a seat to wait for boarding. NOT an experience that I ever want to repeat. I now check and re-check my ticket dates for weeks ahead of time!

The nerves have left but the excitement remains for this trip. I can't wait. One last dumping of snow today makes me want to leave even more! Not that I don't like snow - I do - I like skiing. But Ottawa winters, since it is so damp, are much more brutal than Sudbury winters ever were, even though temperatures in Sudbury could be -30 for weeks at a time. So leaving for +33 C is just fine by me! And having spent a few seasons skiing in the Alps, skiing in the Gatineau Park just doesn't do it for me any more, as spoiled as that sounds... :)

So farewell for now! More random entries when I get settled in in Bangkok near the weekend.