You would think the hardest part of moving to a new country would be all the paperwork and red tape you have to go through. Not true. The hardest part is telling all of your friends that you are leaving, totally abandoning them, and then trying to get them to help you pack and move all your stuff. And where did I get all of this stuff anyway? It didn't look like that much until I started thinking about making it all fit into boxes and crates. I think it's swelling, just out of spite, knowing that it's all going into storage.

I'm excited about the big move, but there's a little guilt in me too. I mean, who else will be here to help my friends through their crisis? What happens when Kerry needs a plan for her upcoming date and no one else thinks to tell her to go out to Richardson's Ice Cream to play mini-golf and pet the cows? Cows are a solid plan.

I know they'll be fine without me. In fact, they might not even notice I'm gone until they realize that no one has complained, loudly, about anything in a few weeks, but I guess I'd just like to think that they'll fall apart without my bossy guidance and general expertise on everything.

The most exciting part of this week had to be booking my flight from San Francisco to Sydney. Thanks to the power of frequent flier miles, my roundtrip ticket cost me a total of $54.60. Brilliant. Four years of flying from home in California to school in Boston and back on the same airline, through St. Louis every single time, totally paid off. My miles also got me a free ticket to Paris last summer, so everything's coming up Milhouse as far as me and the airlines are concerned.

My view on frequent flier miles: If you don't sign up for frequent flier miles because you don't think they'll ever really add up to anything, then you're pretty much throwing away money. It's free to enroll in the programs, you can belong to as many as you want to, and the miles almost never expire, so even if it takes you ten years to get to 20,000 or 30,000 for a free domestic ticket, it's worth it. So go, sign up right now.

I'm lucky to have a couple of friends living in Sydney now to give me advice on what to pack, what to prepare for, and to give me a free place to stay. The best friends are the ones you can mooch off, especially in foreign cities. Oh, and they've been emotionally supportive and caring and encouraging and blah blah blah too. Basically, they have said that I should bring deodorant, since the Aussies seem to prefer the spray-on, liquidy, drippy stuff, and tampons. You can ask me for more details about that, but in short, there's a general anti-applicator feeling there that I just can't go along with. Blech.

So much to do and so little time. I'm going to take a last stroll through town, from the North End all the way to Kenmore Square. My last day in Boston just happens to be Ben and Jerry's Free Cone Day, so I'll be sure to hit that, maybe twice if I plan the right route. The right route, of course, being around the block to hit the Newbury shop twice.

So, goodbye Boston. I'll miss Fenway and the Common and free summer concerts and Friday Flicks at the Hatch Shell and empty T's once the college kids are gone and random appearances by Joey McIntyre and the Falafal King at Downtown Crossing and late night pastries in the North End when nothing else is open and the grunginess of Harvard Ave on a Saturday night and the view of Boston you get from Memorial Drive and Simpsons night at Our House and scorpion bowls and meat-on-a-stick and everything else that has made for an incredible seven years. We'll have to do it again sometime.