Goodbye Colorado, Hello Minnesota

What a week - Quite full of gratitude, and happiness for me!

Saying goodbye
Even though I'm only leaving for 6 months (and I'll even be coming back periodically during those 6 months), the last couple of weeks have reminded me how much I love my life, home, friends, and family in Colorado. I got a few more "Happy Clips" for a 3rd video, and I said several more goodbyes to friends who were camera-shy.

My daughter and her husband, at my urging, took a last-minute trip to Cancun, giving me the opportunity to get a full four days and nights of grand-parenting in before my trip.

And my house-mates, in their usual thoughtful way, made me a delicious going-away dinner and surprised me with a box full of snacks and goodies for the road.

ALS Never Surrender
Anyone who knows me, knows that my "Carpe Diem" way of living was influenced by my friend Craig Dunham, who lost his life to ALS in 2010. For the last couple of years, I've led Team Carpe Diem in the Walk to Defeat ALS. Last year, I met Steph Courdin at the Walk, who started the ALS Never Surrender Foundation. I'd been meaning to ask Steph how I could help, and last week we talked and it looks like I'll be able to do some blogging that will help the foundation.

Like Craig, Steph is not letting ALS stop him from continuing to live fully. Not only does he continue to live a full and productive life enjoying his family and photography, his foundation is actively working on an application that will help towards understanding the disease. I'm inspired and excited to be involved!

Road Trip

And finally, there's my move to Minnesota! A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog post asking if anyone wanted to be my road trip buddy... and believe it or not, I got a taker! Kim and I worked together at Sun several years ago, and even though we've run into each other occasionally at an Agile event, we really were mostly "Facebook friends."

It was super-generous of Kim to offer to drive with me... in fact, she offered to drive the whole way! And that she did! We planned the trip using Agile techniques, with a "backlog" on Trello, and even though we were quite prepared to be entertained with music, audio books, games, and snacks, we spent the entire trip talking! Kim is both fun and funny -- what a great sense of humor -- and she was so open and authentic - she felt like another sister to me! The trip warrants a blog post all on its own, or maybe a private journal entry..  But I did want to publicly say that I so appreciate her willingness to give up her weekend to take this journey with me. I just love her attitude, spunk, and spontaneity and feel grateful to have shared this weekend with such a special person and earth angel!