It's official...

I told my boss and co-workers yesterday that I will be leaving. For the last week, we have been discussing next season and donor receptions coming up this summer and everyone assumed that I would be here, so leaving seemed very far off. Now that my move is public, it is finally starting to feel real. I will be in my car, less than four weeks from today, driving 866 miles to start a new job and new life in Santa Fe. I am excited about working at an interesting research institution, and about living in a new and very different place. People at work here are coming up to recommend good restaurants they tried on their last ski trip or their vacation during the Opera Festival. My dad recently discovered Bandelier National Monument, an archaeological site full of Anasazi ruins near my new home base. I can't wait to explore the city and the beautiful, natural areas in the Sangre de Christo mountains (the mention of which always reminds me of the Paul Simon song "Hearts and Bones" -- I can't stop singing it). Who knows, maybe I'll actually get outside enough to get tan? Highly unlikely, after years of living in Southern California and still looking like a ghost, but a girl can dream.

I have discovered, in preparing to move across state lines, that there is a lot of stuff you never have time to do that must now get done. For instance, I had been putting off getting some dental work done. I'll have dental insurance at my new job, but I don't want to arrive and then ask for time off to go to the dentist, so I decided to use up some sick time while I'm here in L.A. and get my smile all pearly and white. Yesterday's visit to the dentist was the worst of my life. Emergency cases kept coming in, so I was stuck there for 2 1/2 hours, staring at the holes in the tile ceiling and wondering if my left cheek was going to explode. The novocaine wore off and I had to get an extra dose, and the dentist was complaining about one of his assistants to the other working with him. Then the "good" assistant was called off to an emergency, and the "incompetent" assistant came to work on me, which was a bit unsettling. It turned out that one of the emergency patients was a woman with cancer who had her saliva gland removed and needed something fixed before getting chemo and radiation, so then I felt bad about being selfish. Not so bad that I didn't take my droopy lip and buy a new grey suit with pink pinstripes on sale at United Colors of Benetton. I have to look professional at my new job, right?