A couple days ago, Shelly and I went to the beach, and admired the sun setting over Clearwater’s urban decay. It was quite lovely (the urban decay, that is; Florida sunsets are always lovely), and the beach was utterly abandoned save for us.

My client–the electronics firm that wants to hire me and send me up to Atlanta–received notification last week that their venture capital funds had been transferred from the overseas VC group, so the move is on. Some of the principals of the company have been in Atlanta for the past several days, getting ready to sign the lease on the research and manufacturing facility they’ll be moving into; the place is nothing short of amazinf, a 33,000 square-foot, brand-new facility that’s completely gorgeous. Shelly’s been apartment hunting all week; we’re in the process of narrowing down the likely places to live, and we’ll be taking a trip up there in a couple of weeks to check out the places on the short list. phyrra and nihilus have volunteered to accompany us and help us look, which rocks.

On the one hand, not owning my own business is going to take some adjusting. on the other hand, the potential exists to make an absolutely obscene amount of money, and one of my contacts at another client (a large nationwide retail chain) is relocating to the client’s corporate office in Atlanta, so I’ll likely be continuing to work with him; since I’ll still have clients of my own in Atlanta, working for a startup is not as risky as it could be.

We’ve been spending a great deal of time with nihilus and phyrra lately, and not all of it has been playing World of Warcraft. 🙂 Spending the night at their house last night was absolutely delightful, and I’m really looking forward to continuing the trend. The friendships Shelly and I have been building with them and with S and her partner M, and the frienships we have with the Smoosh and other people in Tampa, are the most difficult part of leaving here for Atlanta; odds are good we’ll probably still be spending a great deal of time in Tampa even after the move.