HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We're home.

And I'm in heaven. I'm sitting at my new (Craigslist!) desk, with two nice monitors staring back at me, looking out over the Harvard Ave street sign, listening to the morning activities rumble by on triple axles. Last night around 12:30 Aimee and I went to Dick's for some burgers and shakes, after spending part of the day thrift-storing and furniture moving, and it was wonderful. To finally have the TIME to do what we want and not be on anyone else's time line is like... nothing you'll quite understand, unless of course you've spent 3 summers (or more!) in Alaska while only getting 6 days of that entire time off work together! Granted, it has far more benefits than set-backs, but we needed a break, and any later and things would have gone sour. So, upwards and onwards! Aimee and I are in town until Sunday figuring out small logistical things, like how to work with shared laundry bins and where my shoes should live, then we depart for Santa Barbara, California to visit my Mom for a week. When we return, I'll be home for a few days packing for a 14-day trip with my friend Christian, where we'll be departing San Diego and working our way down the coast to Cabo San Lucas, B.C.S.. We'll be killing and eating fish, getting tan, exploring and talking about women and engineering. When I fly back on the 31st (October), we'll have a whopping 3 days to pack up our lives for the two months that we'll be gone in the Western South Pacific (Fiji, Vanuatu, and the Salomon Islands). We'll be getting back in early January, and at that time I'll be going straight into work on my sailboat, Rafiki, for the next 4 months while she's hauled out at Delta Marine.

Well, that's the update! Below are some of my final photos from our southbound Alaska trip, and our one-week Pacific NW trip.

Cheers,

Danny