4 February 1999: Big Life Change: Update

Thursday, 4 February 1999:

Big Life Change: Update

Looks like things will shortly be moving in earnest as far as the moving plans go. Phew!

I called the vet today to get some advice on shipping my cats on my plane flight. Not surprisingly, they behaved like this sort of thing happens all the time - as I'm sure it does. They put a couple of my concerns to rest, so hopefully it will come off without a hitch.

The cats, of course, have no clue that there's anything going on. I've talked to several people about whether or not to use drugs on them when they fly. Some people recommend yes, other recommend no. The vet seemed almost indifferent; they said if one or both of my cats are very high-strung then tranks might be worthwhile, and suggested taking my cats on a few car rides to see how they behave. My cats aren't wild about cars, but they don't claw frantically to get out of their carrying cases, and they're very well-behaved and calm (all things considered) when they go to the vet, so probably I will dispense with the drugs.

Tracy suggested that it's unlikely the cats would be able to stay awake for the whole plane trip anyway; they'd probably spend most of the Midwest-to-San Francisco leg sleeping. That makes sense to me.

This week's headline in The Onion: "Lewinsky Subpoenaed To Re-Blow Clinton On Senate Floor".

I hit a nice milestone at work, reaching the point where I'm getting meaningful results out of my main algorithm on my current (and likely final) project for Epic. It took a while to get here; I had to rip the cuts out of several routines and build them again with the new enhancements. Ugly stuff, but necessary since the enhancements change some of the fundamental code of the module. Sometimes I thought I'd never get to this point! But now it looks quite realistic that I should get done what I need to get done before my last day.

Went to dinner with Karen tonight, and we swapped "big life change" stories, as I updated her on my moving plans, and she filled me in on her graduation job search. It sounds like she'll actually be out in San Francisco about a week after a fly out, so hopefully we can hook up for dinner or something. Since she'll be there over a weekend, I ought to have the flexibility to drive wherever it takes to meet up with her.

We are both pretty nervous about our big life changes. We arrived in Madison and started grad school at the same time, and it's ironic that we're leaving town around the same time. It's been the proverbial long, strange trip, and I guess most of that time it seemed hard to believe that either of us would leave, much less both of us.

On the off chance that I managed in yesterday's entry to convince you to buy the comic book Planetary, I'll also point out that an 8-page preview story appeared in Gen 13 #33. That story actually better shows the focus of the series, which not only has its characters unearthing the shadowy secrets of the 20th century, but indicates that those secrets are basically stylish interpretations of various better-known fictional figures. The 8-pager is basically a take on Marvel's Hulk character, while as I said the first issue of the series involves various pulp heroes (and another surprise besides).

While this sort of thing could get old fast, I'm hoping the series will also end up having a point, rather than just random interpretations of existing characters. But if nothing else, it's a substantially more entertaining series than the disgusting series Ruins that Marvel published a few years ago.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)