And They're Off!

Off their rockers.

Our DSL got disconnected on Thursday around 9:30AM, which is why you haven't heard from me. It was supposed to be disconnected on Monday, but whatever.

The movers had everything packed up and ready to go by 10:30AM on Friday. I spent most of the rest of the day patching and touch-up painting. When you remove all the furniture and all the earthquake straps and picture hooks, you sure end up with a lot of area that needs painting. I had a couple little 3"-wide disposable rollers, and they worked really well. Towards the ends, The Fambily went across the street to C&D's house, where they will stay until Monday's flight to Denver, to go swimming. I cleaned up the paint equipment, then ran out and got cash from the ATM, gassed up the truck, and picked up a six-pack of beer. Then I high-tailed it home and headed over to C&D's for some beers.

But then my daughter started hollering to me from MaxieC's front window. Uh oh. The fambily wasn't in the pool anymore. They were back home. I trudged back, beers in hand.

The childrens had to take their baths, then we all had to go out for sushi. I was a-gettin' annoyed cuz I wanted to get to bed early, and the truck wasn't packed. And the stuff to pack in the truck wasn't packed. It was strewn all over the house and garage in multiple piles.

But off we went for sushi, given that we figger there ain't no decent sushi up in FC. It was sad, because all the waitresses always dote on The Childrens there.

When we got back, The Mrs. dumped MaxieC over at C&D's and plopped HannieC in front of a DVD on her portable DVD player (a godsend those are - once again the hand of God assists in the move), and she proceeded to supervise the packing of the truck. She is apparently "really good at packing" as was claimed many many times.

She managed to get everything in there, including a suitcase she was going to check as baggage but decided to just send with me in the truck. There was even a tiny bit of room left over.

After all that, we went bacl to C&D's to put The Childrens to sleep and to have a last round of beers. I was going to have just the one beer, but somehow D kept insisting I drink 3 cuz, "You can drive with a headache, no problem."

Well, I know what you're thinking. CherkyB doesn't get a headache from three beers. He's a trained professional. But well, I had, let's say, more than one beers at the sushi place, and I'd been operating on about 6 hours of sleep a night for the last two weeks when I normally need 9 to not feel grumpy. I normally only get 7.5, which I why I'm always grumpy.

I managed to not get to sleep until 11pm. I got home around 10:30, took a shower and settled in, but the dog was spooked. Apparently, sleeping on the floor in the middle of the master bedroom in a house with absolutely nothing in it except a suitcase, a sleeping bag, and a pillow is disconcerting. He kept barking and walking on top of me. Then finally he settled down lying against me around 11.

He was up again at 2:30 barking like he thought someone was coming in the house. And I was thinking, "Self, you've the pistola all packed up in the garage. What are you going to do if someone is in the house? Jab him with your toothbrush or try to smother him with your pillow?"

Luckily, false alarm. Did get up in the morining to find the back door unlocked, though. I woke up with a headache. It was 5:21am, and I jumped out of bed. I had planned to be on the road at 6am.

Took a quick shower and loaded up everything that was still out, like the sleeping bag, pillow, towel, and suitcase. Then, as I got in the truck to start it, I said to myself, "Self, go make one very last run through the house to make sure you got everything."

Sure 'nuff, the master bathroom medicine cabinet had never been packed. The Mrs. and I had been through the house like 3 times each before that, and we never noticed. Threw all the stuff into ziploc baggies and tossed it in my carryon bag. FreddyC was waiting in the truck. We managed to pull out of the driveway at 6:03am. Not bad.

The drive today went uneventfully. Many thanks to The Mrs., MommaC, and BrainkyP, all of whom called during the trip to see how it was going. I really enjoyed the solitude for most of the drive. I didn't play the radio or CDs. Just silence.

Well, silence mixed with the deafening roar of a Flowmaster 50 series at 80mph up a grade in 3rd gear.

The old truck performed quite nicely the whole way. Only a couple times could I have used More Power. In particular, there is this one climb as you come out the east side of Salt Lake City on I-80 where I had it floored and we were barely able to maintain 60mph. It was down in second gear revving like crazy. A lot of other vehicles were not able to maintain 60 in that stretch. A turbo really would have helped, given the altitude, but there is no turbo kit for my engine.

Right now I speak to you from The Comfort Inn in Evanston, WY. It's quite a nice motel, really. Clean room, nice facilities, pretty new. It gets bad reviews online because of its location: behind a restaraunt/lounge/drive-up liquor store (yes, the the liquor store is actually part of the restaraunt/lounge - and there's another just like it a block from here) and next to a porn store. We're three miles from Utah, and apparently a lot of people come across the border for liquor and porn. There are also fireworks stands all over the place. And about 20 different hotels.

This hotel is about 840 miles from my SJ house. I expected it to be 860, but I took a slightly different route out of SJ than yahoo had told me to. My realtor suggested a different route that he said would save me 20 minutes. It looks like it saved me about 20 miles, which is damn close.

Let's see - what else? Oh, we closed on the house in FC right on time on Friday. I thought the close was scheduled for 10am mountain time, so I was expecting a call from our realtor there at about a half-hour later. Instead, I got a call a half-hour earlier. This threw me into a panic, as I figured the title company had started to prepare the sign-off and noticed a problem.

But noooo...the sign-off was scheduled for 9am MST, not 10am. Argh!

I have about 400 miles (401.7 according to yahoo) to drive tomorrow, or about 5.5 hours. That'll beat the hell out the the 12 hours of driving today. The truck can't quite make 400 miles on one tank, so probably I'll go the 300 to Laramie and stop for gas and a dog walk and lunch and then head on in. I'm not planning to get up too early, so I'll probably roll into town around 5pm. No DSL at the new house until Tuesday at the earliest. Might update briefly Monday AM from work.

Oh, and the buyer backed out of the deal for my SJ house. Hopefully, we'll scare up another soon. There were some people looking at it today.

I think I'll go to sleep now, since I have nothing better to do.