Yes, this is a picture I took from our deck last night. We decided to take a break from cleaning (we've been spending a good amount of time cleaning up the construction muck and dust from our brand new place), and opened up our last bottle of Silver Oak (thanks, JPO) and rinsed out a couple of our crystal glasses (all the china and crystal made it just fine, thanks) to enjoy the sunset over the mountains our deck overlook - and there's that picture.
Here's another pic from before the wine was poured. I'm going to wait until our real computer gets here so I can put the rest of the pictures up, album-style, for you to admire.
The internets got up and running today (like 30 minutes ago), and I was downstairs setting that stuff up while D was upstairs singing and playing guitar (Amy, she wanted me to tell you that Colorado makes her feel like playing guitar).
Oh, and a very happy birthday to Amy and my dad, both of whom turned thirty today. Unfortunately Amy's birthday wish was more powerful than my dad's and as a result the Cubs lost.
I feel dirty admitting it, but we spent over $300 at Wal-Mart yesterday, and over $200 at the grocery store today. Needed cleaning supplies, refrigerator staples, the same stuff everyone forgets about when they move into a new place.
Oh, and our showers rule. And the weather is awesome (even though it's raining right now - but it'll pass soon, I think).
Overall, things are great. The movers will get here Sunday, DirecTV gets here Monday (gotta get that working soon as the Tour begins soon).
D went on a run this morning, I hung out and scrubbed the kitchen spotless in anticipation of our millions of pounds of crap on the way to invade. We still have cleaning to do before we're ready for that, though. Right now I'm just kind of planning things out in my head.
But at least the internets are working! And Qwest had a surprise for me and told me we qualified for 5mb/800-somethingK, so we're all dialed in now. SPEED!
Until later (tomorrow?).
For Joter. Our drive to lunch
Oklahoma city! Shout out to Julie and Andrea, who I'm sure never read this.
We're at our hotel in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, and we decided that in leiu of driving 13 hours to Steamboat today, we'll take it relatively easy and go the nine and a half hours to Limon, CO, on the close side of Denver, or if I'm feeling frisky, through Denver to Georgetown, a little mining town my family and I visited a long, long time ago that has since exploded (as in gotten much bigger; not as in been destroyed).
Yesterday's drive wasn't bad. The car is too full to see out of any of the windows other than the front three, but it's not so bad only having the side mirrors. I thought I'd be worried about the bikes as they're out on the car for the world to see, but they're all locked together in one way or another, and because the hotel we checked in to last night was full other than us, the nice lady at the front desk just told me to park in the handicapped spot (there were like 6, all open) - she said all the handicapped rooms were already taken.. But I do feel a LITTLE guilty about that.
So, D's in the shower now and I'm on deck. Removing her luggage from the car was actually less of a chore than I thought it would be - I planned ahead and made sure the suitcases were easily accessible from the rear passenger side door (but if you open the hatch or the driver-side rear door, look out cuz things will be a-tumblin.
As we crossed the state line from TX into OK last night, there were actually fireworks. Literally. Apparently the border is determined by a river, and some dude on the river was shooting fireworks at the bridge above just as we crossed. Fitting.
Expect some risky roadside blogging today. We'll be passing through Oklahoma City about 30 minutes after departure, and then into Kansas. Once we're in the middle of Kansas we take a left and don't turn until we're in Silverthorne, just nextdoor to Keystone, CO (where I learned how to ski). And that probably won't happen until tomorrow anyway, so the countdown is probably one day off.
Hopefully the place we stay tonight has some free WiFi also. Here's hoping!
It's crowdwd in here... But the roads are finally clearing up a bit. Probably about 90 miles from Dallas now...
Statue of Sam Houston. According to the sign, 'the world's tallest statue (of an American hero)'.
Loaded down and on our way... Only an hour behind schedule!
That would be my ghetto office, Houston location. Amy and Daniel stopped by last night to pick up their folding table (logistics prevented it from happening today as originally planned) after going out for some beverages at the Ginger Man down the street.
So today, picture: two plastic crates (bottom one blue, top one black), with two IBM laptops stacked on top of one another (bottom one closed, natch), and me sitting in a folding chair hunched over wearing a T-shirt and boxers (TX flag boxers, of course).
I totally just made you picture me in my underpants.
OK, lots of stuff to do before we can leave (like, um, WORK), so I'll try to check in later.
For some reason Flickr hasn't been auto-posting moblog stuff to this blogger account, but I just realized why.. See, for some time now there has been word verification whenever I create a new post (much like you have to enter text when you comment for verification). I guess blogger thought my blog was a spam blog. Wow. Thanks, blogger.
Anyway, hopefully they turn it off before our move so I can moblog. But if there aren't any updates tomorrow, you might just want to check my flickr page for posts...
A year ago yesterday was our wedding! We've obviously got a bit going on, but D and I made sure to take some time out for ourselves yesterday, and went to what Dana keeps calling the best meal of her life (no doubt due to the company, right?). Anyway, she'll be blogging about the fantastic dinner later.
I could probably get the pictures from our camera on to the computer (and from there online), but it's early and I didn't feel like bothering just yet.
The move went pretty seamlessly. The ginormous truck came a little early on Friday morning and they finished by about 1:30pm. The only furniture remaining in here is a folding table that Houston Amy was nice enough to lend us (I have to work somewhere) and two of those folding lawn chairs. Talk about comfort!
We do have an air mattress, but, um... the adaptor for the pump was packed. So we're sleeping on the floor. Only one more night of that, though! Oh, and though it's not exactly furniture, we did leave our coffee maker behind with us, so we can still function as members of humanity in the morning. I'm enjoying the perks now, actually.
Quick round-up of the weekend: Friday night went to see Cars (we both really liked it), Saturday morning Dana went to get a haircut and I cleaned up (holy hell are we dirty slobs, dust bunnies were everywhere), we did some other stuff I don't remember on Saturday, then went to a surprise party for our friend Amy (which was great; we were, of course, the last to leave). Sunday we totally intended to go to NASA but just didn't get around to it and putzed around here until it was time to go to our regular Sunday lunch spot, where our waitress comped everything since we'd basically been going there every Sunday all year (but we got her back with a crazy tip, so all is good in the karma circle). Then we came home and napped for like three hours (um, beer at lunch... everything comped... you do the math), then D went on a quick run to get the beer cobwebs out, we got ready, and went to the best dinner ever.
TK will be glad to know that as we pulled in (in our birdshit covered CR-V) there was a beautiful Ferrari parked right in front. Among mercedes, BMWs, etc. I joked when we left (this is the kind of place where it's valet only) that the valet would have to run around back to get the car (because they wouldn't want it to be seen) but I was wrong. They actually didn't park it in their lot AT ALL - it was across the street. We got a kick out of that.
So now, a couple days' work, scarf down some more of our favorite food (we've been eating a TON, trying to eat ONE MORE TIME all of our Houston Favorites) today it's Goode's BBQ for lunch and Star Pizza for dinner, before going out to meet D's pals from work for a goodbye at our local beer joint. Then tomorrow Dana has a half day, we load up the car and head out of dodge. We're hoping to hit the road about 3pm tomorrow and are shooting to make it to Oklahoma City, which is 7 hours away, but really the goal, I think, is just to get out of Texas. We'll be heading straight through Dallas as well, so we'll be able to say we went there while we were Texans.
And then... Colorado!
They pick up our stuff TOMORROW MORNING! We packed last night, went out for sushi, and packed some more (then finished our BSG DVD as a reward).
This morning I took a handful of pictures to please you all, trying out the new "Picasa Web Albums", but they don't have a way to post those images to blogs (um, HELLO?!?). So see them here.
Gotta get lots of work done today, and lots of packing. Yeow!
I just heard from Horatio, our driver. He happens to be in the neighborhood so he's going to stop by and check out the place, see if he'll have any problems getting a truck down our street.
Oh, and he's coming FRIDAY. That means mega-packing tonight. Whee!
Also, he's nearly impossible to understand. My guess is he's from Louisiana, with one of those crazy cajun accents. Bam!
more to come...
Well, he came and went (And lo and behold, I forgot to update). He'll be here on Friday morning from 8am-noon(ish) packing up. Walked through, I knocked off the remaining questions I had, and we're good to go.
The only hurdle I forsee is there being enough room on our street for the truck. It's typically empty around noon, but it fills up with (parked) cars overnight. I just don't know what time in the morning they disappear. I guess I'll have to pay close attention tomorrow morning.
But for now... time to finish up packing.
Exactly one week from right now, Dana and I will be on the road somewhere between here and Steamboat. We still have a good amount to do before we can leave, but only so much time before they come to pick up our stuff - then we're here alone in the apartment with an inflatable mattress and clothes to last us a week. That's it.
Last night we didn't do a lick of packing (though throughout the day I did manage to pack a couple bike wheels and my axe in the large box we received the hitch in). So tonight I have to get the office and other stuff as close to done as possible. Thursday night we have a work "going-away" party for Dana so not much packing will probably get done then, and the movers still may be showing up on Friday - I should know for sure later today.
Last night I wasn't sleepy so I stayed up for a while after D went to bed and updated our address with credit cards, changed the automatic billing from our Houston bank to our Steamboat bank, and various things of that nature that can be completed online. Yesterday afternoon I transferred the bulk of our checking balance to the new bank, so I can start to pay our end-of-the-month bills from there this week, also.
Also before I went to bed, I decided to shave (it had probably been about a week since the last full shave). I was tired by this point and decided that it was time to audition a goatee (it's been a long time) so I shaved it, gave it a glance and told myself that if it didn't look any better by today I'd get rid of it.
This morning Dana's first words to me were "I don't like it" over laughter. I'll be keeping the goatee now, out of spite.
who are we kidding, no I won't.
OK, so I did a quick re-count and here's where we are today:
Boxes
1 XL
5 LG
14 Med
36 Small
1 Electronics
2 Framed pics
2 flat wardrobe
Totalling up to about:
143.5 ft^3
I spent most of our packing time last night finishing up the kitchen (a few small items left, mostly stuff we intend to bring with us in the car, the biggest of which is the most valuable item in our house: the coffee maker. Otherwise, all the cabinets and shelves are empty and the kitchen is pretty much set to go (OK, some booze and bottles of oil and such are still unpacked, we might just toss those in the car).
D spent a lot of time in the front hall closet and back stairwell, loading up our coats and stuff in the flat wardrobe boxes and the extra large box.
Tonight I plan to attack the office and rid it of everything that isn't needed for me to work. I'll also hold off on packing the computer until probably the night before the movers come (when I'll also be packing the stereo and stuff).
A note: I totally guestimated the capacity of the flat wardrobe boxes and boxes that we put our framed pictures in - they don't have the capacity listed on the outside.
The other "sized" boxes, though, do. So we're pretty accurate.
Also, our bed was ordered yesterday and will be shipping to Steamboat and arriving on July 11th, so don't visit before then or you'll be sleeping on the floor. Unless sleeping on the floor is OK with you, then by all means, stop by.
We also got our tax refund check yesterday (finally) and deposited it along with D's paycheck (we stopped direct deposit so we can close this bank account before we move). We're pretty well prepared, but I still feel like we're probably forgetting something major. Oh well.
We have our new phone number in SBS (but it's not hooked up yet), and I have had my work line set up for some time. Water, DirecTV, garbage/recycling pickup, gas and electric are all also set up, and their corrollaries are set to be cancelled here. We already have our bank account in SBS set up (we'll be wiring most of the money from our refund over there once it clears so we can close our TX bank account). Oh, and the post office knows we're moving and will be forwarding our mail starting next week.
We leave a week from today in the afternoon/evening. This afternoon I should find out if we're loading on Friday or Saturday. I'm hoping for Saturday (for the extra day to pack and so I don't have to work while they're loading), but D is hoping for Friday so we can get it over with. We should also clean and stuff at some point this weekend, and we plan on (finally) going to NASA on Sunday and we have our anniversary dinner on Sunday at one of the nicest restaurants in Houston (it's our one-year anniversary on Sunday, BTW).
OK, that's enough for now. Back to work with me.
No pics as of now (maybe later today, you photophiles), but things are progressing very nicely. A couple more hours of packing and we should be set to go.
I spent most of yesterday packing up the kitchen (holy hell, we have a lot of stuff), and D spent a good amount of time in the office. I woke up and went out to buy more boxes yesterday morning - Saturday we spent at the St. Arnold's brewery tour with Amy and Daniel, and then went to see Nacho Libre at the Drafthouse, which was only as funny as it was because they gave us free beer at the brewery tour. Then we came home and rested up for a full day of packing on Sunday (HFD, dads!).
We've got a handful of boxes left but need to go out and make a fourth run (we bought them a little at a time at first as we weren't sure what we'd need), and after that we should be done. Hopefully today I'll get the rest of the big stuff (appliances, not the pantry) done, and then we can focus on the little things: desk drawers, closet floor, etc. Then, the day before I'll wrap up the stereo (NEED. MUSIC. TO. PACK.), and we should be set.
I'll try to get some pics tonight. We have boxes everywhere. Quick inventory yields:
5 large boxes
10 medium
31 small
1 stereo/electronics box
2 framed picture boxes
Yet to build/fill, we have 2 wardrobe boxes, 5 more stereo boxes, like 4 medium and one extra-large box. Those will probably all get filled up today.
Casualties:
1 broken wine glass (um, we've got PLENTY, so no worries),
2 paper cuts.
I did a quick calculation based on how many boxes of which type we have packed, and it comes ot 110 ft^3 packed so far. Wow. Seems like it would be a lot more than that. Hm. I guess we're just really efficient at packing.
We have so many books, it's sickening. Easily 2/3rds of the small boxes are filled to the brim with books.
I really don't go here enough to laugh.
Everyone should.
See pics of our hitch here. Included are pictures of the hitch, where it's mounted on the driver-side (I didn't want to dig under the muffler again to get to the passenger side mounts), with the Cubs hitch cover (which is actually really high quality, to my great surprise), and with the Yakima rack (in various positions).
And Hutch, you big whiner, it took me all of 45 seconds to disconnect the rack from the hitch.
There are also a few pictures of me with a cast. Dana was practicing yesterday and I was her guinea pig. Those pics were actually taken on our way to the hospital so D could cut off the cast, and I moblogged a good pic of me with TWO casts on - more practice at the hospital. Check that puppy out at flickr.
PS: I'm not too worried about our license # being out there on the internets. We should only have it for another couple of weeks.
So I was kind of freaking out thinking our home PC's hard drive was failing. I opened it up to check on the freaky devil noises coming from inside and cleaned off the fans (hoping it was their noise, not the HDD), but to no avail. The kicker was when I set the hard drive to power down after like 5 minutes of inactivity, and the noise stopped. So I ran to Best Buy and got a new one (and a new surge protector for the new place, and new phones...).
So I put the drive in, power up the PC, and..... no more noise. Oh well. At least now I have lots and lots of storage. :) I'm still going to transfer everything over to the new drive anyway, just in case...
Also, I've been having bunches of problems loading dotNetNuke onto my hosting server. Just .NET configuration problems, really, but I'm not ready to give in and call support. At least I'm getting error messages now, which is more than I could say before... That's partly the reason you haven't heard from me in a while as well - I had actually downloaded all my blogger posts with hopes of converting them to the dotNetNuke blog eventually (that's still the plan, I guess), but since I haven't been able to get it up and running, here I am posting again.
One more thing.. It's ten minutes before 6AM, and I've been up for an hour. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for my mutant ability to not fall back asleep. I actually didn't really even bother trying today. Just reluctantly rolled out of bed and made the coffee. At least I'll get to "leave" work early today...
What you see here is a screencap of the work-in-progress dotnetnuke site. This is after about 3 or 4 hours of work yesterday and a bit of tinkering today. As you can see, I'm already reading a feed from Blogger (this blog), and our netflix feed (on the left). On the right I have the links to external blogs as they exist today as well.
Unfortunately, this is all on my local development machine, and I think it would probably just be easier to re-do it all after an install on our host. But I still want to get more comfortable with the software before launching it outright and making the switch to one of our domains.
Keep your ears peeled, though, for the announcement of a switch, if and when it does eventually come. And you can see a full-size version of the screencap here.
Also - it would be possible for me to add others' blogs to our site as well. Would this interest anyone? Leave a comment.
This weekend we escaped Houston for the penultimate (I love that word) time to visit my friend Greg and his wife Meghan and their two adorable girls in New Braunfels, TX, a nice little town right between Austin and San Antonio.
We arrived Friday night, had a few beers and caught up, the big plan being a lazy day of tubing down the river on Saturday. Woke up Saturday and played with the girls, Anna and Kate, until it was time to head to the river. We bought 2 18-packs of Coors Light, planning on two floats down the river (of about 2 hours each). Some of us loaded up with sunscreen, we inflated the tubes, and we were off.
I was pretty surprised at just how many people there were floating down the river. At some points (more the case during our second float then our first) the river was so crowded with people in tubes one had to literally squeeze through just to keep moving. I felt like I was at Spring Break or something, and the peoplewatching was excellent.
After the first time down the river I realized just how sunburned I was going to be and slathered on some more sunscreen, but when the Texas sun gets it in its mind to burn you, burn it does. I'm a lobster-man.
We came home after the second float (thanks for driving and otherwise being responsible, Meghan), relieved the babysitter for a while, and Meghan and I played with the girls while Dana and Greg slept it off a little. Showers and the reappearance of the babysitter meant it was again time to go, and we headed to a great restaurant in Gruene, TX, for a quick beer at the Hoity-Toit, a highlight of my last visit to Greg and Meghan (about 6 years ago), and back home.
Sunday was a lazy day with more playtime (somehow Greg worked up the stamina to head out for another float on Sunday), and D and I packed up and left, leaving the girls (with mom) in the backyard with the inflatable pool and swingset to keep them company.
Dana and I couldn't stop saying how glad we were that we got out of town one last time, and how we should have taken the time earlier in the year to go visit. But better late than never!
We got home and I crashed on the bed for a while, woke up and did some work installing dotNetNuke locally to get a feel for the program, and started to configure it. It was a LOT easier than I thought it would be, actually, so once I get a little more comfortable I'll do my best to get it up and running at my private host so Dana and I can escape the confines of blogger once and for all.
Dana packed a box or two last night but I let the responsibility of packing escape me for one last weekend before the big push this coming weekend. Truthfully we're doing very well, and since we're having guests for dinner sometime this week I have an excuse to not pack up the kitchen (though a good amount of our kitchen stuff is already packed up).
More later. Back to work.
Thanks again to Greg and Meghan for the great weekend. I'll get that info on Steamboat's "kids fly free" program, if they're still doing it.
This is some crazy stuff. I first saw it on the sneeze and then followed the comment to the above link (ochenk.com).
I can't really hear anything about 16000 (that is to say, I can barely distinguish 16000). However, the frequencies just out of my hearing range do make me feel uncomfortable.
Cool.
I know I had something else to write about other than this, but this is all I can remember right now. You might be blessed with yet another meaningless post in almost no time at all, because I will inevitably remember what I was going to blather on and on about as soon as I publish this post.
I heard back from our new landlord today that our mailing address will indeed be the same as our physical address. Thank the gods. That should simplify things a ton. Time to schedule our mail to be forwarded and get those utilities set up!
Blogger has really been taking a huge dump lately, which only encourages me more to switch to a custom solution hosted at one of our domains. I'm really leaning towards dotNetNuke, as it's open source and totally customizable, and will heighten my geek self-worth index.
And Pablo, we're getting DSL (that is, if I ever hear back about our prequalification).
I plan to rearrange the dining room area today so we have more room for boxes. We'll see if that happens. And maybe I'll take some pictures of the hitch for you. If you're lucky.
This is pretty much how much packing we have done so far. On the order of between 2-5 boxes per day since this last weekend, we are making good progress but not yet completely stressed out about stuff. In this picture, you can see the general disarray that is our apartment currently (and to the extreme right, the new hitch-mountable bike rack), and here is an example of what we've been packing: books (or in this case, no books).
Basically, all those boxes in the above picture are books. Some CDs, games, and photos, but mostly books.
I also packed our crystal (that will be in the car with us, thankyouverymuch) and some plates and glasses. Our strategy is to pack everything we don't need to live, so we'll leave a couple glasses out and a couple plates but that's it. That way we won't be overwhelmed a week from now realizing we only have one week left to pack, and it has the added benefit of meaning that we won't ever have a lot of dishes to do.
Anyway, like I said, just a quick update.
Today, I take comfort in the fact that my "Man" status is completely intact, so I get to continue to hold my Man Card (unlike some people). Last night I spent about an hour (difficult to tell exactly how long) wrestling with our new hitch as I installed it under cover of darkness on the CR-V. I'm pretty excited about it - it's the first time I've been under a car since I was hit by one back in Chicago (zing!).
I have to admit, the parts I thought would be difficult were surprisingly easy; actually mounting the damn thing was a real chore - the weight is unevenly distributed, and it weighs about 40 lbs - try holding that above you while under a car and trying to get some nuts threaded on bolts. Not fun.
Anyway, it's complete, and in time for delivery of our new hitch rack today. But first I want to see how good the Cubs hitch cover looks on there - unfortunately it didn't come with a bolt to attach it to the hitch, so Dana's driving around today with a bare hitch.
Of course, pictures forthcoming.
So I have the form mostly filled out to sign us up for electricity (that will be helpful), DirecTV is scheduled to come install a dish, and all the utilities here in Houston are scheduled to be shut down. One small problem is that we don't have our mailing address yet.
What's that, you say? How can we know our physical address but not our mailing address? I'll tell you.
Steamboat is awesome, no doubt. But it's also a strange little town with strange little ways. Apparently, the post office in SBS hasn't quite nailed down the home delivery bit yet, so many folks just have a PO Box and pick up their mail there. Otherwise, they have "cluster boxes" where residents in a subdivision, say, go to pick up their mail in a cluster of mailboxes at a central location. This is what we will have. The problem is, apparently these cluster boxes are addressed differently than our actual address... Maybe. See, I'm not sure, and the landlord is waiting to hear from the post office about it. So it's proving difficult to fill out any forms for, say, billing purposes, because I don't know what our mailing address is. Big sigh.
Oh, and once again, we'll be going 100% renewable energy for our electricity service. Hence the picture of the windmill at the top of this post.
And another thing: Dana and I realized at lunch today that our countdown (look up to your right), may be a bit misleading. It is accurate in the sense that we are arriving in SBS on the 30th (at least, we plan to arrive then). However, we're actually leaving Houston on the 27th (subtract three), and our stuff is actually being picked up on the 24th or 23rd (we're hoping for the 24th - subtract another three). That means we have six fewer days to finish packing than identified by that number. So it may not be misleading to YOU, but it sure is to US. And we're out of town this weekend, so it appears we only have one weekend remaining in which to pack. Yikes. Good thing we got started early!
Apparently Blogger (or Flickr) didn't like my moblogging last night (run by Astros fans, no doubt), so you missed my pics from the game wherein the Cubs wallopped the Stros. Pretty sweet game. Thanks to Daniel and Amy, of course.
I'm also investigating a way to use my domain names finally. As you might recall, I registered markanddana.com and danaandmark.com among others some time ago before the wedding, but haven't really done anything with them other than put up wedding info (um, that's old info, BTW) and use them as an online repository for images.
So I'm looking into a way to host a blog solution locally on our domains so I can do more cool stuff than is done here. I'd love to have it done by the time we move, but that just is not going to happen, so don't expect it. First I need a copy of Visual Studio 2005, which I should have anyway for work, but for some reason don't.
OK, rambling over. If you want to see my (two) pics from last night, check them out here.
So one of the cool things about the end of my fellowship is that basically, for the last month, I get to choose what I want to do. And one of those things is practicing more casting. I spent this afternoon in the cast room, and got some good work done. They even let me bring home some materials, and Mark will be my lucky practice model this week. Good times!
As for this weekend, it was pretty damn fun. Friday night Mark and I just chilled out, stayed home and watched "Everything is Illuminated", starring Frodo. I wasn't looking forward to watching it, but we had had it for a while from Netflix, and Mark seemed insistent that it would be good. I really enjoyed it--not the most uplifting movie, but very interesting with some good bits of humor. Great Netflix pick-up.
Saturday we had a bunch of big plans, but after Daniel called in the morning to see if we wanted to meet him and Amy for lunch in Chinatown, those plans were pretty much scrapped. We did get the chance to run over and buy some boxes, and got a couple of those packed, and then we met them for lunch. Pho noodles--pretty yummy. Mark and I decided that it would make a perfect wintertime meal, and we should try and find a place we can order the ingredients online for shipment to Colorado. We spent the afternoon hanging out with Amy and Daniel (and I crashed on their couch for a while), and then their friends Brandon and Scott came over for dinner. Had a great time with everyone, but we collectively came up with a BRILLIANT IDEA to play asshole since none of us have played it since college and wouldn't that be a great fun game to play! In short, we went through a ridiculous amount of alcohol. I started taking miniscule sips from my beer after a while, since I wanted to be sure to get us home that night, and I realized once again I have the best husband in the world. He totally took one for the team when I broke one of the President's rules and therefore needed to do a tequila shot. Marky Mark came through big time when he downed it for me. He's the best.
Sunday was mostly spent recovering from Saturday.
But I did get some good studying in for my Sports Medicine Boards coming up at the end of July, and Mark did pack a few more boxes, so Sunday wasn't a total wash. We have tickets to the Cubs game tonight--and only 3 weeks left in Houston!!! Yea!!!
Determined not to repeat the fiasco that was our last moving experience (as a reminder, we had to pack the day after our wedding, and load up the truck the following morning for the drive to TX), we've already got a bunch of things crossed off the list.
We have a signed contract with movers, who will be picking up almost all of our worldly possessions on Saturday, June 24th. We have a new lease signed, and I just sent off the check for deposit and our first month's rent. I have scheduled all of our Houston utilities to be cancelled for a couple days after we're scheduled to be gone, and a list of what needs to be set up in Steamboat. I already have a new office phone number for when we get to SBS (VoIP is really handy that way. As soon as it's set up, which should be about a day, you can call my Colorado office number and it will ring my phone here in TX). We even have five boxes packed already! Books and CDs, some DVDs as well. We're going to have a lot of book boxes. Anyone who helped us move last time can attest to the fact that D and I have a great number of books. Books are heavy.
So, work is underway! Later this week we'll probably go pick up some free used boxes from our moving company to continue the great book pack of 2006. We're out of town in San Antonio this weekend, and after that it will be a packing frenzy, I think. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll have all our new utilities set up as well, and then it's just a matter of forwarding mail, updating addresses with financial institutions, that kind of jazz.
Expect pictures later.
Also - I bought a hitch for the CRV and will be installing that after it arrives - and on it I plan to put our new hitch-mounted bike rack. This will carry more bikes than the roof racks and give us much better mileage as well (and be better for the bikes, as they're not pelted with rain, dust, wind and bugs as much when behind the car).
We're getting ready to go. I just told Dana she has to blog about this weekend, as I still have to finish recounting our trip to SBS (maybe I'll be done with that recounting by the time we get there).
I'm thinking about adding an "arrive in SBS countdown" as well. Keep your eyes peeled.
sucking on tapioca balls..
OK, I'll attempt to finish the story of our trip here, but I'm not promising anything, considering how long my other two posts about the trip were...
After checking out the apartment for the first time on Saturday afternoon, we headed out to the airport to pick up our luggage, which was promised to be there on the first incoming flight of the day (since we missed our connecting flight from Denver the night before, our luggage obviously couldn't make it either, and we were told we could wait 4 hours for them to pull our luggage out in Denver, or pick it up in Hayden - the airport that services Steamboat - the next day at 1:30). Of course, our luggage wasn't there, and much to our surprise the airline guy said that other than it being tagged in Houston, there was no record of it (meaning, it never even got on our plane in Houston). We wouldn't have had luggage even if we had made our connecting flight. Oh well. We had the luggage tags with us and gave them to the counter guy, who assured us that when they did finally arrive (likely not until the following day - Sunday), he would drop them off where we were staying.
We weren't really upset (we were in Steamboat, after all), and we used it as an excuse to buy some new duds. I got some new Carhartts and a shirt (and some awesome SmartWool socks) at FM Light & Sons, a 100-year old store in town, then we went to Wal-Mart (yuck) to get some essentials. Dana opted to do her shopping at a local outdoors store and got a very expensive merino wool midlayer for basically half price (which made it a great deal - it's a really nice shirt).
Then we headed home, showered, and met Sheila and Wes for dinner. Sheila is one of Dana's new coworkers - Ron, her other coworker, was on vacation the whole time we were there. Wes is Sheila's husband. Remember this, there will be a test later.
Dinner was great (of course), but something really strange happened. I couldn't finish the best filet I've had in a long, long time because.... I was full. This wasn't some crazy enormous steak or anything, and we had an appetizer but I didn't eat any more than normal - I just literally couldn't eat any more. I was WAY too full. I think this is a sign that I'm going to lose weight in Steamboat, beyond what I would simply by virtue of getting more exercize - I just can't eat much there. Apparently it has something to do with the altitude...
After dinner, Sheila and Wes had to get home to relieve their babysitter (their 2-year-old Jonah is the cutest kid in the world), so D and I headed for a beer at the Old Town Pub and then home to the B&B. The next morning was hangover time, but not too bad; only moderate. Oh, and our clothes arrived at the B&B while we were at dinner. Boo-ya.
Sunday
Sunday we walked to the real estate office where our acquaintance Scott works to talk to him about the apartment we saw the day before (he represents the buyer who we are going to rent from, and is the sole reason we found the sweet place). He wasn't around so D and I took a walk around town and checked out the raging Yampa river (pictured above), overflowing due to all the melting snow from the mountains. Called my mom (it was her birthday Sunday, she's 35!), and stopped by to see Scott. We told Scott we were going to take the place and went back to walk through again (and take all the pictures I posted yesterday).
After our trip to the apartment, we met Sheila at the pediatrics office and did a walkthrough while D took some inventory (and compiled a list of all the stuff they'll need to get so she can do things like put casts on broken arms and other sports medicine-y stuff), and then followed Sheila to her house for a late lunch and to hang out.
We ended up staying there for most of the afternoon, playing with Jonah and meeting some of their friends, and drinking all of their beer (including beer that Wes and Ron home-brewed, a shared hobby of theirs that I fully intend to shoehorn in on). After a while D and I split, went for dinner somewhere, then went to the B&B to change.
We then headed to the Strawberry Park Hot Springs as it was a pretty chilly night and we thought it would be best to go when it was cold and a bit rainy as opposed to beautiful out (does that make any sense at all?). Anyway, we stayed there for about an hour and a half, then took off when it got dark to head back to the B&B and get changed again. Changed, went to the Tap House for a couple brews (ran into a guy wearing a Cubs Ryno jersey for some reason, even though the game had ended about 6 hours prior to that), then headed home and went to sleep.
Monday
Monday was another full day, so I'll get to it later. You know, let you digest what I've written above so you don't suffer from Mark-and-Dana's-new-home-is-freaking-sweet-and-I-can't-wait-to-visit syndrome.
OK, onwards with Saturday. The place. Right, now I remember where I left off...
Here is our place. We met with the (now) owner at noon and did a walkthrough. I'll do my best to describe the place.
Inside, you'd think it was a single-family home, but it's really set up more like a duplex or townhome (everything to the left of the two-car garage in the above picture is actually someone else's home). The place itself is split into three levels - I'll do my best to describe it here.
The garage floor is halfway between the bottom floor (not really a basement) and the first floor. Walk through the garage and there is a 1/2 bath and some stairs down straight ahead, and stairs heading to the first floor to your right. I'll address the first floor..first.
The first floor consists of the entry from the front door (the first thing you see up the stairs from the garage), the kitchen, living room and dining room. It's very open with vaulted cielings and a gas fireplace in a corner of the living room area. Between the stairs heading down to the garage and the kitchen are several (5? 8?) stairs heading to the master suite (off-frame to the left in this picture), which is situated just above the garage. It's hard to gauge the size of the room(s), but at the top of this paragraph is a picture of the first floor. I'm standing basically where the front door is, D is stylishly between the entry to the kitchen area and the living room area, contemplating the dishwasher in the middle of the floor (we'll probably move that). She is wearing her favorite new sweatshirt from the Fargo Marathon.
This picture was taken from the stairs heading from the first floor to the master suite, and gives you a good idea of where our deck will be located (just outside the dining room, with access via the French doors D is pretending to walk out of). This is where the grill will live, and eventually we should have furniture as well. Supposedly, the deck will be done by the 4th of July, but I'm not counting on it. But I sure hope so. Nothing like grilling out on our nation's birthday.
As you can see in this series of pictures, Dana is always on the move. It's how she keeps her girlish figure. This is her walking away from our enormous windows in the master suite (I just like calling it that. It's really just a big bedroom with attached bathroom). In this particular photo, Dana is rushing towards the bathroom, intent on malfeasance. Unfortunately, the plumbing isn't yet hooked up, so she couldn't defile the toilet just yet. To the right of the bathroom door is the doorway to the first floor stairs, and to the right of that door is the big closet.
Skipping back to the garage entry, if we go straight and take a right we'll head downstairs. Looking down from the stairs as in this photo, we see the (formerly) empty laundry room. To the right of that is the utility closet (water heater, etc), and to the left the hallway heading to the two downstairs rooms and full bathroom. The two rooms are comparable in size with decent closets, but one has access to the patio that will be beneath our deck. Through careful thought and analysis I decided that the room without the patio door will be my office, so that I have a better view while I work so our guests can sneak in and out of the house without having to climb any stairs. This way, the guest bedroom (as opposed to my office) is directly next to the downstairs bathroom, so I don't have to smell the foulness which is certain to emenate from within so they can roll out of bed and into the bathroom with the utmost of ease.
The garage isn't much to look at, but it's ginormous. Currently it's a two-car garage, but I think that once we get there it will become a one-car, multi-bike garage. At least until I get my grubby paws on a "valley car", aptly named vehicles known around Yampa Valley (the area where Steamboat lies) for being passed from owner to owner time after time. I had my eyes on a 1960 Dodge pickup that I'm praying will still be available when we return. It's pretty sweet, but Dana liked the pickup that had a 2x4 instead of a rear gate (sorry, no picture could be found to represent that one).
In closing (I have to end this post, because it really only takes us to 1pm Saturday), I'll leave you with this picture of Mt. Werner (the ski mountain) from our bedroom window.
I'm pleased to report I have found a worthy substitute to Shiner. This stuff is awesome, and although we'll be able to get Shiner up in Colorado, I have a feeling Avalanche will become my new default beer. It's out of Breck, and it's just an incredibly tasty microbrew. We also had the chance to sample some home brew cooked up by my new boss and Wes, who is married to the other pediatrician in the group. I felt a little guilty that Mark and I made a serious dent in Wes's homebrew stash, but damn, it was good. I promised Wes we'd have him and Sheila over to our place so that they could drink all our beer very soon.
The trip was great. Mark and I were pretty silent during the car ride back from the airport last night. Finally, towards the end, he turns to me and says "Steamboat is just so much cooler than Houston". Exactly.
But less than a month left here, which is tolerable, and I'll be spending a lot of it doing stuff I like--practicing my casting and looking at MRI's with the most bitter and cynical (yet absolutely hilarious) radiologist here. Could be worse.
Mark and I also had the chance to check out the new 6-screen movie theater that opened in Steamboat--it's a nice little place, and we saw X-Men 3. (I lost the rock-paper-scissors match-up again). It was a good flick and i enjoyed it, but it left me wondering something. OK, so in this movie, there's a mutant who can instantly tell you what "Class" any other mutant is. And there's a big hullabuloo over Jean, who is determined to be the Only Class Five Mutuant Ever.So I guess that makes most of the X-Men Class Four, and at another point in the movie, the mutant grader says that a room is full of mutants, but none above a Class Three. So it's safe to assume that there is such a thing as a Class One mutant, and that they really aren't very powerful.
So following the movie, this prompted a discussion between Mark and I (at the bar, of course) about what powers would constitute a Class One mutant. On the cool side, we figured the "Power to never have B.O." would be pretty sweet, as you'd hever have to worry about putting deodorant on in the morning, come back from runs and not stink up the place, etc. That's a good mutant power. I mentioned the power to have urine instantly vaporize from your bladder, so you'd never have to go to the bathroom, but Mark said then you'd smell like pee all the time, so that might be one of the Mutant powers that people would want to be cured of. Instantaneous urine transportation, however, would be worthy substitute.
We had other ideas, but you get my drift--as the night (and the number of beers) wore on, we tried to figure out what our current personal mutant powers are, and only came up with lame stuff. I can study for long periods of time and actually enjoy myself--I KNOW Mark considers that a mutant quality. Now if I could only just figure out Mark's.....
Thanks to the moblog, you're probably all aware of our problems on Friday trying to get in to SBS. We left the Hertz parking lot at 11pm (by the way, the Hertz Gold Club is pretty sweet. Thanks, IBM). If you remember our last trip from SBS to Denver (driving), it was an 8-10 hour long ordeal.
Well, travelling mountain passes at night may be only slightly less harrowing, but it's a hell of a lot quicker - we arrived at the B&B just after 2am and CRASHED (that is, "crashed" in bed. Sorry for any alarm my poor word choice may have caused. Coffee, you know).
When I called the B&B about two months ago to make our reservations, we were the first, so I had my pick of rooms. Last time we got put in a room with a "king" size bed, which was actually just two twin beds pushed together with a king mattress pad and sheets across both, so this time I requested the one room with a true king size bed - the "Sunrise" room. Well, it was aptly named - the sun poured in first thing in the mornings and was actually pretty helpful in my fight against Dana's momentum as I did my best to raise her from the dead each day.
The first day (Saturday), we had a 10am appointment at a really cute little single-family just past the mountain. We spent a good amount of time looking through and talking with the current residents (and owners). As it turned out, the wife works at the hospital as a nurse and "has already chosen" Dana's practice to be her eventual child's Pediatrician's office. They were buying a second home to fix up (this seems to be a main source of income in SBS lately) and wanted to rent this home, which they had pretty much made perfect. I felt it was a bit small, and the location wasn't awesome, but who are we kidding.. it was right on the Core Trail, seen to the right of this paragraph (on the left side in the picture) - it follows the Yampa in and out of town and seems to be a major thoroughfare... for those not in cars. We spent a good amount of time chatting with the owners and headed out.
We left and went back home for some reason, and as we were walking up to our room ("Sunrise" is on the third floor), I got a call on my cell. As it turned out, it was the gentleman our Real Estate guy had put us in touch with who was buying a new duplex and wanted to rent it out. We made an appointment to see him at noon.
Noon rolled around and we couldn't find his place for the life of us - when I called to let him know we were "a bit lost" he said he had given us the wrong street name (ah, OK), and talked us there. We pulled up a few minutes later to a total construction area, but could tell that these were a bunch of nice places being put up (and it appears as if all the "major" construction is already complete). He should have closed on his unit yesterday (Wednesday), and he was doing his final walkthrough as we came to check the place out.
(more later! I'm still not even halfway through Saturday and already this is a long post)
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