Archive for September, 2005
We were driving over the mountains, after leaving Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, heading to our motel in Idaho Falls, Idaho. It was near the end of our road trip, and we had already driven 4800 miles or so in 14 days. I had tried to plan all of our driving time each day to arrive at the motel at a decent hour. Unfortunately, I hadn’t considered the fact that on that night, we’d be driving very slowly in the dark over the passes and through the mountain roads. Needless to say, we got into Idaho Falls very late. In addition, we couldn’t see the motel when we got off the freeway exit that was given to me back when I reserved the room. We saw a cluster of other motels off to the left, so we turned left to see if our motel was tucked away in there somewhere. It wasn’t. Luckily, in a fury of planning foresight, I had printed copies of everything, including the motel’s phone number.
Using her cell phone, Kathy called the motel and talked to the woman at the front desk to find out just where the heck the place was. Kathy was given brief directions, and she hung up and directed me back across to the other side of the freeway and down a small gulley, where the motel was completely hidden from view of the freeway.
I went in to the office to check in, and I swear I am not lying when I repeat the woman’s comment: “So you were the ones that called for directions? I’m usually no good at giving directions over the phone, so I was a little worried that I would get you more lost. You did find the place, though?”
Uh, yeah, I’m pretty sure we found the place.
September 30th, 2005
I have a new photo gallery on line. I’m still tweaking it a bit, and getting it to fit with the look of this site. All the pictures from the old photo gallery software are here, though. One of the main reasons I changed to a different photo gallery is to have the ability for anyone to leave comments on each photo.
Click the link at the top left of this site to check it out, and be sure to leave a bunch of comments!
September 30th, 2005
Moving from our rental house into an apartment last week-end was quite an experience. We’re finally now all unpacked, and just last night I got the boys’ beds put together. We’d been too busy at night after we got home from school and work to put them together, doing things like moving the last of the smaller stuff from the old place and getting it ready for the landlord. They’ve been sleeping on the mattresses on the floor, so it’s nice to finally have their room presentable now. We’ll see how long it lasts.
But anyway, back to my story. To help save money to buy a house in a year or so, we moved from a 1700sf house to an 1100sf apartment. The apartment comes with a refrigerator and washer/dryer, so we had to also rent a small space at a self-storage place to put our fridge, our upright freezer, our washer/dryer, as well as the lawnmower, and all the other things we won’t need while living here. The storage place has sturdy wooden carts to use for making it easier to get a stack of boxes from your car to your storage unit. When we were loading up one of those carts this week-end, I kept cracking up remembering something that happened to Kathy and I years ago, when we lived in the L.A. area, before we had kids.
We had rented a storage unit in a huge self-storage complex that sprawled over several acres, and was several stories tall. While I was at work, Kathy had made all the arrangements to rent the place, and the manager had taken her around the huge complex in a golf cart. The next week-end, Kathy, her sisters and I were going to start to move things there, and it was the first time I’d actually been there myself. We backed the car up to the door nearest our unit, and Kathy said she’d go get the cart to help unload things. The carts were kept chained up around the corner from the office, and she went inside to get the key.
A few minutes later, Kathy and her sisters come ripping around the corner almost full speed in the golf cart. With a puzzled look on my face, I asked if she was sure this was what they meant when they said we could use a “cart”. She was sure, and besides, the key that they gave her fit the golf cart’s ignition. It didn’t look like a regular key, though, it looked more like a padlock key. She put the key back in the ignition, but it wouldn’t turn this time. We couldn’t get the golf cart to move again.
I went to the office to explain the situation, to tell the guy that the key wouldn’t fit in the cart anymore, and so we couldn’t move it out of the roadway. The guy couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get the key to fit in the padlock, and why we couldn’t just move the push cart out of the way. When I was finally able to make him understand that I was talking about the golf cart, and not one of the push carts, he refused to believe me. “That key is to open the padlock on the chained up push carts. The golf cart uses a completely different kind of key. There is no way that you can make that padlock key fit in that golf cart’s ignition”, he said.
“You’ve never met my wife, have you?” I said.
September 16th, 2005
It’s moving day, and I’m just about to take the computer down. We’ll be in the new place today, but we won’t have Internet hooked up until sometime Monday. This is the last post I’ll be able to write until probably Tuesday when things start to begin to slowly seem to maybe consider think about getting back to normal.
September 10th, 2005
Many of you close friends know that we are moving out of our rental house and into an apartment tomorrow. This is to help us save money for the downpayment and closing costs as we are in the process of buying a house next year in Wood Village. The apartments that we are moving into has a deal with Centex Homes that if you rent through Equity Residential they will set aside 20% of your rent towards closing costs.
Well, we have lived in the house for about 2 yrs now. The owner has been very nice to us. We have never been late on a payment and we have kept the place in decent shape. Also, we gave him 6 wks notice of our move. Since he has found out that we are moving it seems upset and very rude towards us. I don’t know what is with him. He already has the place rented and he received our partial payment for the rent this month. We even let him show the place to prospective tenants on three occasions.
On tuesday afternoon, I received a call from him and he wanted to know if he could bring someone over to look at the carpets because they needed to be cleaned. The owner would be here also. I said “sure”. When they arrived the guy had a clipboard and said they will clean everything. After about an hour I told the owner “I was feeling uncomfortable because I felt he didn’t think we would clean the place up when we left”. He said “no, he only wanted a quote for the carpet cleaning”. Then, I receive a call the next day from the owner saying that “he was pretty upset about the way the place looked”. I said “we just got back from vacation, so that is why the lawn was brown and needed to be mowed”. He then said “don’t do any additional repairs on the nail holes because they weren’t up to his standards and he is going to have to fix all the walls now”. If anyone has seen my house knows that there is shabby patchwork on the walls anyway with the drywall and nails showing through. What is up with him and is it legal, what he is doing to us? I feel like he is to the point of harassment. Can he do this legally? Having people coming into the house invading our privacy.
Let me know your suggestions or opinions. He was a nice landlord up until the point that we notified him we were moving.
September 9th, 2005
Well, they are finally all done. There are a lot of pictures for you all to enjoy in the photo gallery. Now maybe I can finally catch up with all the posts required by law from when a bunch of people recently tagged me. Patience…
September 7th, 2005
Seven things I plan to do before I die
1. Buy a rv and travel all the states with Bill
2. Take a vacation to Paris with Bill
3. See my children and grandchildren grow up
4. See Gone With The Wind
5. Have a b***** reduction due to back pain
6. Buy a corvette and it will be mine (my all time favorite car)
7. Have enough money to live a comfortable life with Bill
Seven things I can do
1. I make an awesome Thanksgiving Dinner
2. Use a pogo stick
3. Give medical advice
4. Have compassion for the sick and elderly
5. Name over 900 trees and shrubs
6. Hiccup consistently about 10 times in a row
7. Love my family forever
Seven things I can’t do
1. Work on the computer without icons or without the help of Bill to guide me
2. Cart wheels
3. Find time for myself
4. Study for school without being interrupted
5. Listen to speed metal or rap music
6. Miss an episode of Days of our Lives (I have watched that show since I was about 9-10 yrs old)
7. Stop beating myself up for not being there when Grandma passed on.
Seven things that attract me to the opposite sex
1. Pretty eyes
2. Sensitivity
3. Compassion
4. Good listening skills
5. Dancing around in your underwear (Risky Business)
6. A good sense of humor
7. A nice butt (Years ago that is one feature that I looked for) I know “How shallow!”
Seven things I say most often
1. I love you
2. Did you brush your teeth today?
3. Can you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?
4. Money doesn’t grow on trees
5. Give me some time to myself
6. Goodnight sleep tight don’t let the bedabugs bite to Lexi
7. Do you know what sounds fun, swimming in Stephanie and Justin’s pool!
Seven celebrity crushes
1. Tom Cruise (I don’t care what a certain someone (DH) thinks of him, I have always thought he was the best)
2. Toby Keith (He is so rugged)
3. Richard Gere (Love the grey hair)
4. John Travolta (I loved Grease)
5. Kenney Chesney (He is the cats meow)
6. Tim McGraw (Enough said)
7. Mel Gibson (He is just hot)
Seven people I want to do this
1. Bill
2. Stephanie
3. Justin
4. Gabe
5. Danielle
6. Billy
7. Matt
September 7th, 2005
I have almost all the vacation pictures ready in the photo gallery. For lack of a better system, I have them organized by day. As of now, it is complete through day 13. Actually uploading the photos is trivial, but I want to have a caption for each one, which is proving to be a bit more time consuming than I thought it would. Day 14, which I hope to have ready sometime tomorrow, will have all the pictures from our trip through Yellowstone National Park. I took over 180 pictures that day, and I’m going to upload 70 of them for your viewing pleasure, plus I have five photos from Day 15, the very last day of our vacation, including the aftermath of a very scary and potentially deadly highway incident (don’t worry, we’re all fine).
I’m also going to have a bunch of posts soon about more specific things on the trip, general observations, as well as things we learned about long car trips, kind of like a how-to guide for family vacations via automobile. What worked and what didn’t, ya know?
This was an epic journey for us (5450 miles in 15 days through nine states to visit several family members, three national parks, and a seemingly endless parade of tourist traps), and I don’t know when (or if) we’ll ever be able to do it again. It was a lot more expensive than I’d planned (we spent $687.50 just in gasoline), but I would gladly do it again if given the chance, and if I had it to do over, I would change very little.
September 6th, 2005
We’re back home now. We got in about 10:00 last night. I have a bunch of stories to tell, and I still have all the photos to sort through and share. Vacation was wonderful, but it’s good to be home.
September 4th, 2005