Well, I got California plates today.  I can't express adequately enough how happy I am to get rid of the Missouri plates.  It's an interesting symbolic act, shedding one role, one time, one place, one identity, and stepping into another.  And yet, the car spans both.  We never fully leave behind a previous chapter, but we're free to begin writing on a new page with a new chapter heading whenever we have enough ink in our pen.

Or something like that. 

Tomorrow I have Verizon FiOS installed in the house, and I'll be reconnected to the world again.  At least, I will be as soon as I can get my laptop serviced.  Technology is *such* the mixed blessing.