At this time Monday evening I shall be on a plane bound for Seattle and cherishing the sight of the greater Boston area quickly fading into a tiny speck on the horizon. While I will really miss the fam, I haven't seen the majority of my Seattle-mates in over a year (and Twitter is hardly a replacement) . The trip is for work, but I hope to get to a MHC mid-week service, hit Monsoon at least once, collapse from a dim sum lunch coma, hop on a ferry and catch up with some of the best people on the planet at BigE's. If I manage to take some time off on Friday (as I've planned for), I also hope to swing by as many places I can to help re-etch them in my pattern buffers.

I know the area has changed quite a bit in the last year, mostly due to the economy. Even my home campus - MHC Lake City - is no more. Still, I suspect I'll have more "Movie Script Ending" moments of nostalgia than not.

It may be due to all the moving around and significant life-issues in the past four years, but I keep musing over how I don't recall things being this dynamic when I was growing up. Perhaps one of the benefits of youth is the immunity to the effects of constant, significant change.

If you don't follow the Twitter stream then you probably aren't aware that I'm back on the east coast, this time for two weeks. Good flight this time and better room despite staying at the Fairfield.

As you can see in the image below, I get to experience the "joys" of east coast heat & humidity – at least for a day – something I definitely did not miss.

I'll be hanging with the Jukes' family a bit when not at work plus getting in a bit of house hunting. I'm also going to try to get a hike or two, but it's a bummer cruising around solo. Really wishing I had a means to cycle while here. Just doesn't feel right using a bike that isn't mine now and not using clipless pedals (and, I forgot to pack my cycling shoes and pedals, so it would be highly unlikely that I could find a shoppe that would rent me a full setup at a reasonable price).

We're slowly making our way out here and will know a more firm date in a few weeks.

After a grueling ~7 hr drive, we are back in the Lehigh Valley. We saw an interesting house in Portsmouth to start our day and drove along the gorgeous Route 1a. Definitely looking forward to riding the road bike along there later this year. The Camry we are renting is very "meh" in a great number of respects and I'm sore from sitting in it so long today.

We had an opportunity to share a meal with Lou Ann and TR tonight at an old haunt of ours - Anna Bella's. The food and fellowship were both as good as I remembered.

iChat vid with the kids was very comforting tonight. Tori is doing fine after slamming her hand in a car door Friday night. @Aadom carted her to the emergency room this morning (for which I am seriously in his debt for) and she is sore but doing well.

Looking forward to a day at the Rogers' Sunday, but really wish we were home with the kids.

Made it to Boston fine this morning. Very decent and comfortable flight on JetBlue. I even managed to get an exit row seat with no one next to me.

Upgraded to an Xterra at Enterprise and very glad I did (as you will see below). Even. More. Snow.

Looking forward to seeing @ianjukes! (Will be the best part of my trip here).

From Xinhua:

Japan starts to fingerprint foreigners_English_Xinhua: "OKYO, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- Japan's new Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law took effect on Tuesday, authorizing the government to fingerprint and photograph all foreigners aged 16 or over upon entering Japan at 126 ports and 27 airports.

The law made Japan the second country following the United States to fingerprint and photograph foreigners.

During inspection of Tokyo's Narita International Airport on Monday, Japanese Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama said the law could help block terrorists and repatriated foreigners from entering Japan.

The procedure is to affect up to 7 million of the 8 million people entering Japan annually. The electronic system will send the information to the Justice Ministry's host computer, which will then check against a blacklist based on the Interpol and other institutions."

Before you go to Japan, you might want to ask how they are storing your biometric data (if they are storing it) and what the procedures are to have it deleted.

I wonder how long we can keep our dollar low enough to keep attracting visitors before it becomes completely worthless.

I'm ready for a change in Washington if only to give someone else a chance to royally screw up our economy, foreign policy and energy strategy. The problem is that there are really no candidates out there who seem to have any ideas how to make it better.

The ladies leave tomorrow (Wed), so I'll be "back" online then and can get to some e-mails (sorry, Mr D) and regale you with tails of our familial adventures this past week together. I also finally fixed a problem with FlickrExport and uploaded some pictures that have been lagging for a while: More Seattle Pix.

The final reason I'll be "back" online is that I broke down and got an AT&T HSPDA ExpressCard for my MacBook Pro so I can be online on my own terms.

Enjoy the pix and look for an update tomorrow night (PST, remember)...

Mary & Tori touched down ~10:47am. Long flight, but they are now tooling around the University District while I'm stuck in meetings.

It is *so* good to see them after three weeks.

Made it to the airport for real this time (more on that in a trip summary later). We leave @ 1430, so we've got ~1 hr to kill. *Not* looking forward to the 5.5 hr trip from DC to Seattle. At least LVIA has free wireless internet access.