Everything's Exactly the Same. Except for the Different Bits

So yeah, we're back.  And it's like we never left, except for all the new stuff, stuff that's gone, and stuff that's just... different.

The girls have commented that New Zealand feels like it was just a dream.  I get that too---in some ways it seems so improbable that only a few weeks ago we were sitting in a house north of Wellington.  Another country, another culture, another land mass in another hemisphere.  Weird.  

I'm back at work already, having clocked a full week of work already and things are the same way at work as they are in general.  Intense familiarity and comfort flecked with bits of the strange and unknown.  Much of the last bits of code I wrote are still in use at work, but there's tons of new stuff and a new overall organization to things that makes the familiar slightly unfamiliar.  A lot of water has passed under that bridge while I was gone---yet I feel at home amidst my coworkers.

We're still in between countries in some ways... using a hotel room as our bedroom and spending daytimes either at work (for me) or at Ruth's or friends' (for everyone else.)  Soon we'll have a house rented and be able to move our suitcases full of stuff into a big empty house that echoes with the lack of our stuff in it.  

A home isn't about a house full of stuff.  We've learned that.  But it is at least a house with some stuff in it.