I started a new binder in my Great Ticket Collection today

Yow! This is it! The single biggest change in my life ever! Rivaling college, I guess. Whoo! Splendid.

I'm in Mountain View, CA, right now, for orientation for a week at the Google HQ. I'm going to Seattle on Saturday. Today I gained three hours, due to time zones, that I never have to pay back! How often does that happen?! I'm keeping them in a box for later.

Yesterday I dropped off a carful of clothes, toys, and STUFF to Goodwill. How liberating! And what a luxury! To say, I have this stuff, but I will get rid of it, only because it's in my way. I hope it will help someone, but really, to get rid of this was not a selfless act but rather kinda selfish. No worries! No more neuroses!

I have three bags I'm taking on the plane, plus three bags I took on the plane last time, plus two big boxes being shipped to me. I can move with fewer possessions than you can! But that's not really fair either; I left some stuff at home for archiving.

I went to my high school to see some friends and teachers. For those of you dear readers who went to my high school, I ran into The Fr. Ober, Mr. Skerl, Mr. Corrigan, Mr. Barker, and a couple others, although most had left for the day by the time we got there. Dave and Erik are living in Chicago! I've got to go visit.

Did I mention that my family threw me a going-away party? I got to see family, family friends, and friends. My friends from CMU came up. How lucky am I to have not only lots of family and adults around who would like to see me, but also friends from Pittsburgh who would drive up just to hang out with me and my family! At one point everyone started saying "speech! speech!" so I said the most succinct and absolutely true thing that came to mind, which was: "Thank you all for everything, I have no complaints whatsoever."

My mind is a million miles an hour. I'll keep on with the bullet points.

iPhone! It's great! A couple things I wish:
- notes synched
- camera had like some options, and maybe one more megapixel
- it did my laundry for me

And I'm watching all my photos zip past, as they import into iPhoto, in a hyper slideshow of my last four years. It's a wonderful life! (later edit: I'm not so fond of iPhoto. Why don't photo programs just mirror the file structure? Why do they have to keep trying to be fancy by creating "events" or some nonsense?)

I've got the Mirrormask soundtrack on my ipod. I mean, iphone. It seems vaguely appropriate in a stranger-in-a-strange-land sort of way. Okay, Mountain View is not a very strange land. In a lot of ways, this is the easiest life-changing transition possible.

Aaaaaand one more: a new charity option. Instead of giving money to a kid and feeding into a machine of aggressive street canvassers, what if I started lending micro-loans through Kiva? Have you heard of this? Anyone know anyone who's done it?

Signing off, exhausted but excited.