Last night I had a dream about skydiving. I was on the plane, looking out the open door and suddenly realizing what I was about to do. It was a long way down and I wasn’t sure I wanted to suffer the gut-wrenching drop, even if I knew it would be a thrill in retrospect.

It seems that jumping off a plane is not unlike what I’m in the process of doing.

Let’s recap the last 96 hours:

I dropped off 2 yawling cats at SFO at 7:30 am. My Dad picked them up in Manchester at 1 am.
We watched as movers spend 2 frantic days packing our house into 125 boxes, all going directly into storage.
We put both our cars on moving trucks, headed east.
I left my job of the last 6 years, running the world’s largest news site.
I packed up my cube at work into 8 boxes.
I gave away a ton of books and other stuff, including a “midnight meat run”. On Thursday night we realized we had to clear out our freezer, so I ended up bringing 3 dozen hot dogs, some pork chops, and a big bag of meatballs to work at midnight, stuffing them into the freezer for anyone who wanted them.
I attended a party at work in my honor, where I was presented with a new ping pong paddle, 72 3-star balls, and brand new ping pong table, to be delivered to my new office in Cambridge.
I spent my Friday night in a dark, empty house, armed with a UV light and a spray bottle, cleaning the carpets of any cat pee, puke and blood.
I turned in my keys for our rented house.
We loaded everything we needed for at least the next few months into 6 large bags and a couple of carryons. We weighed each one, most coming in at about 49 pounds, just below the limit.
We filled a minivan cab with our 300+ pounds of stuff.
We boarded a one-way flight from Oakland to Boston
We said goodbye, for now, to a lot of good friends.

That’s some serious change, but there’s more to come in the next 96:

We’ll rent a car and check into a hotel outside Boston for 2 days.
We’ll meet with a realtor and start looking at neighborhoods and houses to live, somewhere around Newton/Brookline/Lexington/Belmont/Winchester.
I’ll start my new job at Yahoo in Cambridge.
We’ll move, temporarily, into Anne’s uncle’s house in Brookline, NH
I’ll see what I think of a 75 minute one-way commute to Cambridge

Yeah, this must be exactly what it feels like to jump out of plane, not knowing where you’ll land and what shape you’ll be in once you get there. Now we just need to figure out which of the 125 boxes contains our parachute.