Tick-tock

Getting down to the wire now. If I can just stop looking up information about Socorro at 3 am, I'll actually get some sleep!

I leave in two days, on Friday. I think I've got mostly everything packed. I did the last laundry today, and in the morning, I'll do final packing of clothes, so that I can sort what I need for the trip itself from what I need when I get there.

I'm taking three days to get to Socorro, so that I can (finally!) stop off at Hovenweep National Monument, which I've been trying to get to for what seems like forever.

On Friday, I go get the rental car at the airport at 9 am, bring it home and load it. Then I go to Spanish Fork, to have a last lesson on my pony. This is, remarkably, exactly on the way. From there, I think I can get to Moab before it's too late. That's the biggest driving day, what with all the car business first thing in the morning.

Saturday, I'll head to Hovenweep, and then around through Cortez, CO, and down to Gallup, NM.

Sunday, I'll drop straight south through Zuni Nation to route 60. Turning east will take me past (well, through, actually) the VLA. I'm really looking forward to seeing it again. It makes me proud of my species.

I should be in Socorro by early afternoon. That will give me time to swing by my new digs, and change to emergency plan B, if necessary. Also, it will give me time to stop off at the store and pick up a few things. I'll stay in a hotel on Sunday night, because on Monday, I:

a) move into the apartment
b) show up for my first day at work
c) return the car to the Albuquerque airport
d) come back to Socorro via the shuttle

None of that necessarily in that order. It's going to be a really, really busy day!

Tuesday is an AOC-wide CASA meeting. This is critical to my project. (AOC=Array Operations Center, the name of the place I'll be working. CASA=er, something, probably with Analysis in it. But it's the new software package that runs the new instrumentation, and does the data analysis. Did I mention that it's new?)

Gustaaf (the person I'll be working with) is going out of town for two weeks starting on the 13th, so I am under some pressure to come up to speed pretty quickly on the status of the project, current issues and concerns, and so on.

I'm nervous, excited, jittery, homesick already, and having a hard time sleeping. Or maybe that's just the economy.