Today is Panda’s birthday!  It’s fitting that he’s celebrating another year just as he gets ready to embark on the next stage of his life.  In just a few days, he’s off to the east coast to start a job, a career.  It’s also his first time living outside of Los Angeles, so there will be a lot of learning and adjusting to do.  Hopefully the worst of the storms has passed for this year, so he won’t have to deal with driving in the snow.  Living so far from is already going to be a challenge in and of itself, weather notwithstanding.

This Sunday will be the last full day we get to spend together for a long time and I am excited to be sharing some of our favorite things together, including good food and good friends.  Of course we will also have some alone time to enjoy each other’s company before our primary mode of interaction becomes Skype.  Back when I went to Singapore for a few months, we had been through this challenge (in addition to a pretty drastic time difference).  While this won’t be as bad, it will have to sustain for longer, so I am preparing myself for some tough times.

The good thing is that this is a great opportunity for him to grow and hopefully within a few years I can move out there (or he will decide to try something else and we will both move to the same place).  It’s too early to say what might happen until then, but we’ve weathered a storm before and I am confident we can do it again.  I just hope that we are able to visit each other every few weeks or months.  Things are so much better when I can share them with him.