It’s starting to feel a little more real. Jen’s last night at work is tonight, and this weekend is booked with scattered social gatherings where we’ll be saying Hi and Bye to a lot of people before we take off next week. There’s this stress that’s been bubbling up lately, too. We keep going over lists of things we need to get done and things we need to bring for our summer out west.

Last month we received a letter through United Airlines which promised a pair of free airline tickets anywhere in the continental United States if we sat through some presentation. Although the letter came from United Airlines, the presentation was from some other travel agency whose mantra seemed to be, “We’re not a time share.” If you Google their phone number, 866-437-7729, you get a whole set of planted videos that make it all seem legit.

Jen’s job in Palo Alto starts May 9, but we’re taking off the prior week to drive west across America. I just hope we don’t die of dysentery. We’ve spent the last two weeks coming up with lists of things to bring and saying we’ll start packing every tomorrow. We haven’t gotten too far. Jen’s been working six out of the last seven days so there hasn’t been much we could do together.

A few weeks ago I took a crack at writing a letter to the editor of a local weekly mini-newspaper. I hadn’t known there was enough space in this paper in which to put a letter to the editor until I was cleaning up and noticed a laughable come-to-Jesus letter to the editor entitled, OH NO THE GAYS! or something like that. I had to respond. My argument revolved mostly around the fact that religion is inherently irrational and that debate is something to be appreciated rather than feared.

It feels a bit weird handing our house off while we’re preparing for our summer in California. Jen’s sister will be squatting at the house while we’re gone, which should work well for her since she’ll be taking classes at the university a few miles away. She was over at our place yesterday and we walked through the house pointing out all the little things that she needs to know, much like we were shown two years ago when we bought the house.

We’re finally doing it! Jen got her first travel nurse assignment and it’s in Palo Alto, California. We’ll be packing up the Jeep and leaving in a few short weeks. This is something we’ve been wanting to do for years. Before we got married, the plan was to live a year in our Kentwood apartment and then start bouncing around the country on travel nurse assignments. As fate would have it, the economy tanked right at the same time as we got married and all the travel nurse gigs dried up.

I’m engaged. Only months earlier, the thought of such a declaration had sent me squirming uncomfortably and avoiding conversations. I used to have what I considered a healthy fear of commitment. My fiancé would disagree as to exactly how healthy or normal that fear was, but that’s beside the point. Even still, the thought and even the word fiancé, gives me goose bumps. No longer are they shivers of fear, but of excitement.

I had my three month post-PRK followup the other day. At this point, I was able to read the 20⁄15 lines with each eye individually. Sweet! However, the right eye is still slightly behind, but it seems to be catching up. When I cover the left eye, I can tell the right eye is slightly out of focus and slightly ghosted. I attribute this to the right eye being drier on average, and the doctor agreed.

Eight weeks have passed since having my eyes peeled and zapped. I would say that the left eye is pretty damn close to the acuity I had with glasses/contacts. All ghosting and double vision has retreated from the left. It has slowly improved since three weeks ago from pretty good, to pretty damn good. The right eye still exhibits a minor amount of ghosting and not being able to quite focus past that blurriness.

Inspired by Hemant Mehta’s book, I Sold My Soul on Ebay, I decided to visit a local church this morning. Resurrection Life Church is an evangelical, charismatic megachurch in Grandville, Michigan. I chose this church to visit first mainly because a friend mentioned that they’re into the whole speaking in tongues thing. I’ve really wanted to see firsthand what could possibly induce such trance-like states in white middle class suburbia.