Start unsubscribing from enewsletters and email lists that send out more email than I need to receive without internet access, or whose emails I never read anyway: Check.

Connect with Beth about handling my email accounts and blogging for me (from letters I'll send her) while I'm gone: Check. (Thanks, Beth!) (Since I'll be writing, and she'll be typing what I write and posting that on my behalf, likely the only difference you'll notice may be a distinct lack of typos, or at least that is one significant difference I notice when I read things posted by Beth.)

Slack off on the workouts after getting in shape enough to figure out I'll be fine at boot camp: Check.

Manage, somehow, to severely overdose on protein: Check.

Set up a junior-high-and-former-junior-high-student party as a farewell to all the kids I've worked with in my years at my old church: Check.

Sort through my clothing, posters, dishes, etc and decide what to keep and what to give away/throw away, and even start packing a wee bit: Check.

Begin, slowly, telling more people at work (though not yet the supervisors) that I've enlisted in the Navy and won't be around there for long: Check.

Begin, slowly, telling the students that I'm friends with (college students, that is) goodbye since I won't see a lot of them before they leave for the summer and then before I leave for the Navy: Check.

Give away some of my furniture and such to a house of college-aged guys that needed some during a roommate-transition time, who were borrowing a truck at the time and so pulled around back to get the table into the truck and in so doing got quite very stuck in the mud in the back yard, and had the Patty tradition of gathering neighbors to help people get unstuck from my backyard: Check.

Stall as much as possible on really packing and getting rid of stuff: Check.

So, I'm making progress and procrastinating at the same time. And things are starting to get lined up for having a lot of going-away gatherings during my last week before shipping out, although there is a certain irony in my mind of gathering people that I see only on certain fairly rare occasions to say goodbye, when I'm likely going to see them about as often as I currently do throughout the next five years, since I'll be back on leave from time to time and all that. But, of course, there is that whole concept of the me that's back on leave being different from the me that's leaving now.

And goodness, I miss reading other people's blogs. And I really look forward to when I can get back into that.

So, I'm off to pack now and then go to work. (I'm working 40-50 hour weeks these days, and the overtime pay on top of the regular pay is quite nice.)

Blessings.