As we enter the final 30 day countdown to liftoff, I feel a shift in my heart and in my mind.  This is happening.  Soon.  I am sad and I am overwhelmingly happy.  I am nervous and I am increasingly bold.  I want to stay but mostly I want to go.  That is what makes life worth living – the mixture of emotions and confusion of thoughts when change is around the corner.   I see similar emotions in the eyes of my friends and family – they want to be excited for us but are not sure they should be, or can be.  Change in one person affects the whole community – and honestly the community didn’t really ask for this change.  The hardest part of this last stage is that I feel I need to focus on the details of such a move – how is my mail going to find me?  Who’s going to pay for my medical needs?  What color towels will make my bathroom homey?  Why on earth did I ever buy this many Wii games and how many can I reasonably pack?  How do we get this house ready to sell?  But I worry that what I should be doing is spending these last days with the people who I love and who are really unsure about what we are doing.  Oh I know we’ll be back lots in the first year – and I have Skype and Google Hangout loaded on my computers and phones, ready to beep and buzz my way back into people’s lives.  But I know it will not be the same – and I don’t really know quite how to process that now that we have entered the pre-liftoff stage.