Went out to REI to return some stuff (that store is worse than crack) and saw the most magnificent thing: the sun lighting up the Chugach mountains like some huge spotlight, brilliantly illuminating them in yellows and roses. What a goodbye! Thanks, Anchorage.

Am just now waiting for laundry to dry, then will stuff in carry-on and be on way. Ran out of time to get that Alaskan Amber -- but hey! there's always the airport bar!

Of course, I kept finding things that I forgot about -- like my bathrobe, for example, which has been hanging out in the linen closet all summer because I didn't have to walk down a long hallway that might at any time be full of people chatting with each other. It's actually a pretty ratty bathrobe -- I think I've had it since college, which makes it... oooo, has it really been that long? Well, it'll be the first to go if my checked baggage exceeds the weight limit. Which I am terrifed about. I weighed both bags on my landlady's scale (which is in stone and kilogram because she bought it in Australia -- cool, innit?), and I think they're both under the 23 kilo limit, but no matter what, the airport scale always, ALways adds more weight. It's like being filmed, I guess -- both add 10 pounds?

Still, a kilo is 2.2 pounds -- surely my landlady's scale can't be that much off?

If it is, then I shall curse the Australians, dump my bathrobe and other sundries, and also mutter evil things about my landlady. A good and generous landlady she's been, but I'm currently a bit irritated, because she up and wrote my security deposit check to h "park" instead of hk! Agh. I know she's good for it, but 1. I could use that $200, and 2. I'll get it in Crimson City, where there are NO Citibanks and I'll have to mail in the check or something in order to deposit it. Citibank is in Seoul and Tokyo, but not Boston. Oh, good. NOT.

Am currently suffering from massive guilt over not taking the food that my grandmother sent with my dad in July. I just don't want to deal with it, and anyway, have little space to put it in. Oh, all RIGHT. I'll try to take some of it.

Time to check the dryer.

(10 minutes later)

All righty, everything is dry and it's time to shove off and hie myself to the house of the attorney who lent me the car, so that the cab can pick me up! And off I go, into the wild blue yonder, probably not to check in again until I get to Crimson City, on the 6th.

Farewell, Alaska!