Hello! Here I am again, after a week of battling flies. They were pretty disgusting! At the height of our plague, we were vacuuming multiple times a day. And it's a good thing too, with the number of flies that there were. Can you imagine what it would have been like if we weren't vacuuming throughout the day?!? Being scientists, of course we collected data on the number of flies each day, so that Spencer could make a graph about it:

Yesterday was day 8. I think we've reached the peak. Good. And I hope we don't have any more plagues before we leave in just over a week!

So, yes, we're leaving next weekend. We think it's going to take us two days to pack the house, clean, take our stuff across the inlet to the truck, and pack the truck. Then we're planning a whole day to get to Oregon. The ferry goes from Victoria at 4 in the afternoon, but we'll leave here at first light anyways to give ourselves plenty of time to get to Victoria. It really might take all day, particularly if there is snow in the mountains. I guess it's a good thing in a way that our truck will be heavy! We will fill it up on the inside, and also pack things on the roof, then put the canoe on upside down over all of that. That's the plan at this point, anyways. Before we go, however, we have lots to do! Particularly socializing. There are Christmas parties and people want to visit with us before we leave. This week we went to scotch club night, then a wine and cheese party, we're having dinner with friends tonight, and the station Christmas party is tomorrow. Next week (so far) we have plans to attend the community Christmas party. You have to be a member of the society to go, which we're not, but we have been invited as guests by some people who are. That's really nice.

For those of you who I don't talk about this all the time with (my apologies, Kim),

Ha ha! I hear Spencer running the vacuum right now! Die, flies!

Anyhow, we are moving away from here. First stop is Oregon for Christmas with all of our families. We'll see friends from OSU too. Then Spencer is headed to New Zealand for a little vacation in January before going to Australia for a conference. He'll be gone about 3.5 weeks. I'm going to stay in Oregon, with the exception of travelling to California for about a week to do work things, and see my California friends as well. My niece is due to be born at the end of January, so I'll be in Oregon for that. Then in the first week of February, we're headed to Santa Fe! Spencer is going to work with someone at the Santa Fe Institute for a couple of months. We're really excited to go there. Neither of us have been to that area of the world before. We are scheduled to be there for two months, and our destination after that is not completely figured out yet.

Anyhow, that's the story with us for now. Oh, Spencer said he got 8 flies.

I'd better get ready for work now. I hope you all have a nice Friday and a fun weekend as well!