I finally have pictures of the house. They are up on flickr. They are labeled and grouped. Now, all I need to do is write up a post and explain what everything is.

Ah, crap that sounds like a lot of work. *sigh* Uhm....while I work up the energy to do that much, go here and look at the pictures. I'll work on getting them into this post....maybe....

I never fell asleep last night. I might have dozed for about 20 minutes (?) but I never truly fell all-the-way asleep. So, here it is, 14:34 hours in Arizona and I've been up since.... okay a really late hour on Sunday. But still, no sleep!

So, pardon me. I'm going to eat my tilapia fish thingies (gotta love Costco) and then crash for a couple of hourzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...............

Yesterday, the pool was *finally* serviced... I was so shocked, I walked outside to see the clean pool.... and managed to slip and break a toe. *sigh*

There's really nothing that can be done for a broken toe (which I learned back in 1980-something, when I broke my big toe and the emergency room X-rayed it, sprayed it with some kind of numbing stuff and taped it to another toe to keep it straight. Thank you, $300 please!). So, I've been taping it to another toe to keep it kinda straght, but it still hurts. Ugh. Leave it to me to break the weird things.

My broken toe....

...let me shows you it.

We're still waiting on the freaking lawn guys to come and get the lawn under control---it was bad when we signed the lease. And then we turned the water on and it became a jungle. One of the neighbors commented that the only reason the owners didn't lose the orange trees is because of the heavy rains the area has had this winter.

I've mentioned our old house. I've mentioned that it's vacant. Now, let me mention the MLS # for said beautiful house: 2885387. It's down to $241,500...but needs at least $10k worth of work, depending on how picky the new owners are about lights and appliances. We originally installed almost $5k worth of lights. I forget what we spent on the range and dishwasher (we kept the fridge).

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested in buying it again. We wired that house from one end to the other with ethernet. You can sit in the master garden tub and have a computer jacked into the internet. You can be working in the garage and check something online without having to go into the house. I think we even put network jacks in the pantry! Plus, we (well, Randy mostly) installed beautiful laminate floors everywhere there wasn't linoleum or stone tiles. Yeah, I miss that house. I just don't know if it's big enough for us, with our massive IKEA desks now. How funny is that?

Randy's enjoying the "walk to the bus stop, ride the bus to work" convenience of where we live now. And I do like that it means he's leaving me with the car most days. Perhaps I could get a part-time job, doing something fun/interesting (and pay off my credit card!).

We're ticked at American Express now. We contacted them, to let them know we'd be moving---and that charges would start showing up in new places. We charged the move, we traveled across the country (hotels ain't cheap!) and once we signed the lease, we bought a washer and dryer. They security flagged it and it took 20+ minutes to get that resolved. Fine. I'm glad they watch that stuff. But the following week, Randy was at the store to get cat food and litter---a whopping $21, mind you---and the card came back declined. What??? So, he gets home and they've cut him off. Now, this isn't a card with a set limit on it. You spend it, you pay it once a month. Turns out, they're "concerned" about the amount of money he's spent on the card in recent weeks.

Uh, duh? We told you guys this was coming. So, he makes a payment to them to make them happy---no payment is yet required on the account, mind you. But, now he's a little iffy about using it. Then, the night we had to euthanize Maya, they put a security hold on the card. *sigh* "Unusual charges", they said. Uh, yeah. The day holding a pet while the vet administers heart-stopping drugs is "usual", just kill me. Okay? Randy read them the riot act and they finally approved the transaction. But he hasn't calmed down about this yet. He's removed his American Express card from his wallet and we're rather tight while we wait for the paychecks to start flowing in again.

He's so fed up with them, he decided (with my agreement) to cash in all his points for Barnes and Noble gift cards. As soon as he's paid the account off, he's closing it. I'm debating doing the same with my card. My newest LYS doesn't take American Express and that's the card I put my allowance on right now. So. I'm debating getting a new card, rolling my AmEx amount into it and closing my AmEx account as well. I wonder how many points I have? More Barnes and Noble shopping, perhaps?

When I spoke to an American Express representative about this whole thing, she said they've been busy, "With the downturn in the economy". Ah, so pissing off the customers who've been behaving is how you handle that? Bad move, American Express. I'm sure your mega-company won't miss the paltry amount of money we bring in, but you do this to enough people and you'll find that people *will* leave home without it!

I'm still working on this stole design. I don't know how the designers out there do it... I'm stumped. Randy's working on a program that will take an XPM and convert it to row-by-row instructions. But, I have to have some concept of how to scale the image first. One image I was playing with started at 615x600 pixels. If I do a stitch/pixel, that's a lot of stitches. But at laceweight, is that a lot of stole? I have no clue. Really, I don't.

I'm down to a size 1US (?) needle (one of my sock needles) and I'm not sure I'm going to get enough definition still. Maybe I should go up to fingering weight? Will that be too heavy? *sigh* This makes my head hurt. And I really want to see this come together. I can do this!

So, to that end, I should step away from the computer and do more actual knit-testing, eh?

Post drafting, Day 1: Well, it's currently around sunset on the 17th of February and we've slept in our new home two nights now. In the meantime, there's been some struggles... Grab a cuppa joe or your knitting, it's been a bumpy ride.

First, the movers arrived on Wednesday, the 8th as expected. They loaded (and loaded... and loaded!) us up and I messed around with some cleaning in the kitchen while I waited. This is our third move with Graebel, so I know the drill: I have to be on-hand for the driver and his crew of movers while they load and I have to sign off at the end of the loading on all they've done.

As I look back on the whole week+, I wish I'd worked harder that day, but I was exhausted... and looking at a week and a half without my Kingsdown bed. So, Wednesday afternoon, Randy took us to lunch when the movers were done and then I dropped him off at work. Next challenge: gather the most important elements which we'd be packing in our car for the 2100 mile trip and check in to the hotel.

Bluffton sucks. That said, I was extremely pleased with the Holiday Inn Express there in Bluffton. They are pet-friendly... and I paid less for a handicap-accessible (I guess it's called "an ADA room") room. We had enough space to set up the Marshall's playpen we've had for close to a year now. (Note to potential buyers of this pen/matt: The vinyl matt is safe against their constant digging/scratching but not against the pee/poop! If you must protect your floors, spend a couple dollars on a clear shower curtain, lay it under the vinyl matt and continue with a normal set-up. Worked perfectly for us.)

Back to the Townhouse from Hell: Nick and I got to work "bright and early" on Thursday with all the cleaning. And by Thursday night, I was beyond my limits, exhausted and truly no longer caring. Friday morning, the carpet cleaner came and did a really miraculous job on the carpets. I used ChemDry, which is now owned by HomeDepot. I was thrilled with the initial team that came out but they called their boss and he finished the job---sorta. The first team still had to go back upstairs to vacuum and the boss never did it. The only place I was truly disappointed was the stairs: they were soaking wet! The ChemDry machine was too big/bulky to really do the full job on the stairs.

Unfortunately, the incredibly clean carpets now revealed how much more cleaning we had to do on the baseboards. Ugh. More Work. A quick call to Randy had him on the way to pick us up and we dropped him off at work. I had errands: some ferret toys (I packed them all and the babies were bored!), new toilet seats (those were kinda cool but expensive) and a wrench for the disposal. While out, Nick and I wanted to get lunch and we found this place called "Blue Coyote" which we'd never been to before. Of course, in true fashion, it was amazingly good and we wished we'd known about them sooner. Really good and fresh guacamole. Nifty plates. Cool decor. Would have made living in Bluffton less painful.

Randy departed work early on his last day---what a cool boss he has!---and joined us at Blue Coyote. This meant we could get to work at the townhouse and finish early and get a good night's rest. Right. 11pm and the final straw: Randy couldn't get the dryer vent re-connected and needed to buy another one. He decided to do that first thing Saturday, bring the very last of the stuff we were packing in the car (!) and quit that place forthwith!

Saturday morning, I felt/heard him moving around in the hotel room and got up as he left. I began organizing and packing and trying to go through the room for any items belonging to us. While I was doing this, Randy called to tell me about his struggle with the dryer vent. We'd always had a bit of a humidity problem when drying laundry. The master bath backs the laundry room and the cabinets in the bathroom would get really warm and humid, as though the dryer was venting into it. I mentioned it to the D R Horton representative who did the one-year inspection. According to him, this well-built (note: sarcasm) D R Horton townhouse was designed that way.

Well, according to Randy, the vent in the wall connects to... nothing. So, after all the physical effort to get the darn dryer vent connected the night before and then buying a new connection kit on Saturday, he left the townhouse with the dryer sitting out in the hall.

Then, after a good Holiday Inn Express breakfast, we began loading the car. While doing that, in the wild-and-wooded area off the parking lot, a fire started. I was about to call 911 and report it, but Randy thought it might be smarter to go in and have the hotel call it in. After two years in South Carolina, he still hadn't adapted to their slow-and-casual way of doing things. In Arizona, the threat of wildfire is serious business---and with recent fires in the southeast, one would think it was similarly serious in Bluffton as well. Several minutes later, as I headed back to the room for another load, a hotel employee was coming to the door.

"Yeah, John, there's a fire out in the wooded area." Her demeanor was real nonchalant. I heard through her radio John's reply: "I'm calling it in now." That ended up being about 5 minutes after I was set to call 911---and in that time, the fire had doubled its width in one direction. An employee came out with a large fire extinguisher, but the time for that was long past. We were finally loaded up and heading out as the first fire engine showed up on-scene. We passed another one headed to the scene as we left.

Two hours and change later, we arrived at Mom's. Randy and Nick needed showers and I needed to get to a Jiffy Lube before we hit the road the following evening. Mom went with me and managed some Knitting In Public, but my hands were too sore from all the cleaning I'd been doing. One oil change and tire rotation later, we headed back to Mom's and piled into her car (we had the moving guys take the back bench and the second captain's chair in the second row, so we could put a platform Randy built for the last move) and went to Al-Amir's for a late lunch / early dinner.

We visited with Mom and her friend Ron, had a wonderful meal of ham-and-pineapples-with-cherries, lima beans, carrots and Irish potatoes (yum!) and finally, it was Sunday evening and time for us to hit the road. We planned to travel from Columbia, South Carolina to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (well, Chickasha, OK actually...) in one massive push across the country. I'm not sure how, but we did it. We checked in to the Holiday Inn Express in Chickasha, OK... and found the room hadn't been cleaned yet. sigh We were so exhausted and just wanted to set the furbabies up in their playpen so we could clean up their cage.

Randy and I finally grabbed something to eat at some place called A&E Grill, which was so-so. We took dinner back to Nick, who'd been too tired to go out to eat. A quick night's rest, breakfast, pack the babies and luggage back into the car and get on the road. This time, I took the wheel and drove us across the rest of Oklahoma, the narrow part of Texas and just shy of Albuquerque (about an hour east of it). It was a very windy drive, but some MadLibs and a fun word game which Nick suggested helped. (The word game: Start with a word, each player makes a single change to the word, go until there's no progress to be made.)

Randy took over before we reached Albuquerque and we grabbed some DelTaco in Albuquerque itself. I would have liked to just crash then, but we had a reservation we couldn't cancel in Scottsdale, Arizona for that night. So, we pushed on. And on. And on! Finally, at about 2 in the morning of the 13th, we made it to the Holiday Inn Express in Scottsdale... only to learn that our reservation was for the following night! And she was booked. And surly. Finally, she found a double-booking she could clear up and got us into a two-queen suite. We got the babies in, got them settled... and crashed.

I didn't sleep well and Randy had been feeling the edge of a cold since Oklahoma. But we were up bright-and-early. A breakfast---the worst Holiday Inn Express breakfast so far, despite the $180/night room fee---and Randy and I hit the road to handle business. We drove out to the house we were about to sign lease papers on. We finally got in touch with our rental agent and he agreed to meet us at the house. We had time for lunch----yum, Garcia's! Adam let us in the house (which has a for-sale sign on the front lawn and two lockboxes on the security screen door) and we walked through it for the first time. Frankly, I'm no longer surprised this place didn't rent sooner. It was poorly represented and the massive spaces were ill-described.

From the entry (which is a double-door entry), there's a sunken room to the left (two very tall steps down) which measures 18 feet by 13 feet. It's just long enough for our two Galant desks (minus their half-round ends) and we're hoping to put a futon up against the long side of the desks, to create another seating area for watching tv in here.

From the entry, if one passes the sunken room we've dubbed "the office", there's a very large half-bath with an old-style toilet (the kind where the tank is mounted up on the wall way above the toilet). Then, past the half-bath is a double-door entry to the master suite. It's huge. One wall was designed for a king-size bed: it fits just between two wall outlets which are each followed by a narrow vertical window.

(Most modern houses I've seen stick one outlet on each wall and that's it. Now, if two people sleep in the same bed, that's at a minimum, two clocks and two lights, which is four outlets, right? Sheesh. Planning people!)

The master suite continues with an amazing walk-in closet with a skylight. This closet is set up galley-style: a rod on either side. There's a lower shelf across the end and really deep shelves above the two rods, plus some corner cubby things and a really neat shoe-shelf for my shoe-whore of a husband. grin It was really humorous seeing his shock at the quantity of shoes he has!

The master suite wouldn't be complete without a bathroom. This one is your basic two-sink, toilet and shower/tub. Only, it was last updated in the 70s or 80s sometime. At least it's a tile floor and not linoleum. Yeah, the whole upstairs is tile, except for the master bedroom/closet and the sunken "office".

There's a dining "room" just off the entry, which faces the french door to the basement. The kitchen/breakfast nook/great room is beyond the dining room. The kitchen has been upgraded recently with granite counters (the kind with an annoying mirror-particle scattered throughout) and features a really tall "turret" roof with three windows at the very top. Puck would love it if we mounted stepping shelves for her to get up to one of those windows! There's a ceiling fan over the kitchen, which I'm sure Randy will love once he's recovered enough from this cold to cook.

The great room also has a ceiling fan... and a really attractive beehive-type fireplace set up on a tall hearth. There's a shelf which runs the width of the room which Randy thinks the ferrets will be able to climb up on, but there's a fireplace screen which sits right in front of the opening and should prevent problems. There's a laundry room just off the kitchen, which connects to the two-car garage. My washer and dryer will be here on the 18th.

There's a small pool in the back yard, orange trees in the front and back yards, a storage shed in the back yard and an RV gate with room to bring one in and park it.

The downstairs has 3 bedrooms and a bathroom, all cleverly dealing with the need for two exits in the event of a fire or other emergency. One of the bedrooms is carpeted and has a pretty low ceiling with a ceiling fan. The other two bedrooms lack ceiling fans, but their ceilings are still too low to assemble Nick's loft bed. For now, his mattress is on the floor and he loves his new room.

Post-drafting, Day 2: I've kinda blended the tour with the move-in, which happened on Friday. And here it is Monday, the 18th and I'm writing this up, wondering when I'll be able to post it.

Yes, UPS screwed us again. I had my Qwest DSL/Broadband/whatever it's called set up to be on and here by the 13th. By the time we had our stuff delivered and our desks assembled and computers set up, I wanted to be able to jet online and catch up. Well, thanks to the three (yes, one got added...) lockboxes on the front door and the place being vacant, the UPS guy decided we'd moved, so he sent the package back to the sender. And we couldn't intercept it. We picked up another modem at Fry's Electronics... and can't get it to connect to our service. So, I'm sitting here typing this up, having gone very close to two whole weeks with no internet connection... I'm in major withdrawl here. I have no clue what's going on in the world.

There's only a ga-zillion things I want to check out right now. The tax assessment for this house. The locations of various preferred restaurants of choice. The nearest ATT store, so I can bitch someone out about changing my contract without giving me a choice to tell them to f-off! The release dates for the next book in about 5 or 6 series (I'm plowing through books right now). I feel like crap (spent the night fighting a fever and trying not to hack up a lung), am sick of take-out/eating out but no one here feels up to hunting down real plates, let alone cooking. The 1700 books I've catalogued and boxed are sitting in the great room, still in boxes. Hell, my keyboard tray still isn't installed on my desk yet. And I want to install some lights under my desk to light up my keyboard 'cause I still haven't seen a lighted/wired keyboard I like as much as the cordless one I have now.
(Well, perhaps one, but it's $80 or $100!)

Post-drafting, Day 3: I've been working up this post in bits and pieces, as I feel up to it. My keyboard tray (only recently lamented as un-installed) is now in place. My sinuses are driving me bat-shit-loco right now, between the sneezing, the runny nose and the nasal congestion.

There's one other thing I'm looking forward to my internet connection for: checking out the records on the house we sold in Queen Creek... Yeah, we stopped by there on...Saturday, was it? (The days are running together with this damn cold.) Get this: vacant. Not only vacant, with a lockbox, but stripped. Every light fixture, every appliance is gone. Even the mega-sized peephole we installed in the front-door is gone, leaving a gaping hole in the door. The yard looks like it hasn't been maintained in a number of months. I must admit to a high degree of curiosity here... What the hell happened?

Considering how much Queen Creek has changed, they might as well have re-named every street. They ripped out Rittenhouse Rd, which used to be a very straight NW-to-SE running road. It curved a slight bit to the south as it neared it's end, but not much. Now the damn road looks like a freaking spaghetti noodle. And the number of major chain stores going in mere miles from our old home is nothing short of stunning. It doesn't bode well for my own hunt for a piece of land to "get away from it all" (while still being local enough for Randy to work).

And finally, at the near-end of Day 3 of drafting this darn message, I'm actually in the form on my blog page, adding this last bit in... The modem arrived this afternoon and it took Randy over an hour on the phone with Qwest Tech Support to get it running. Fortunately, it seems to be quite the speed demon. Now, if I can just stop sneezing (and blowing my nose) long enough to type and do some web searches...

Of course, should I mention the expected secondary absence as I catch up on Ravelry? grin

Tonight's the night for the final packing of computers. Mine is likely to go in a couple more hours (or less!), so I thought I'd take the chance to say, "See ya later!" before that happens.

Our expected timeline is as follows:

• 6 Feb: Mover's Arrive to take it all away! At 8 in the friggin' mornin'!
• 7 Feb: My cleaning day, if I have any left to do!
• 8 Feb: Carpet's get cleaned
• 9 Feb: Drive 2 hours to Mom's and spend the night
• 10 Feb: Around 8pm, depart from Mom's, destination: Elk City, OK! A whopping 18 hour drive!
• 11 Feb: Crash into bed in Elk City, OK until the morning
• 12 Feb: Drive to new address in Mesa, AZ---only 13 hours for this day!
• 13 Feb: Meet agent for landlord, sign lease, get keys, driver's licenses, license plates! *grin*
• 14 or 15 Feb: Driver arrives and we get our stuff!

I'd love to hope for (and get) unloaded on the 14th, based on their first unload date suggested being the 11th(!), but I'm trying to budget in for some disappointments. Heck, maybe my cable modem won't have arrived when we get there...either way, don't expect to hear from me until at least the 16th or 17th, where I'll be posting from our beloved Arizona!

For the times I'm not (a)behind the wheel or (b)sleeping, I've got 3 Blue Kitty Design bags holding 3 different colors of Perchance to Knit yarn....all making SOCKS! *grin* And, for when my fingers are sore, a basket full of books, one of which is Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters, along with a set of Pathway's and ssk/k2tog stitch markers from Girl on the Rocks.

I'll hopefully have some very interesting photos (of knitting at least) when I get back online! In the meantime, stay safe and keep knitting!

I never really thought I'd say this: I miss my brother.

What? Anne, I didn't know you have a brother!

Yes, I do. Eddie (he's an "Edward" and goes by "Ed" now, but that's hard to remember 'cause he was always an "Eddie" to me....plus, my father's an "Ed"...) is 5 years younger than me. He's been in prison since he was 16 years old. It's been long enough that I'm actually hazy on the details of the offenses but I do know that Ohio's mandatory gun sentencing was invoked. He was up for parole in 2006 and it was denied---and at that time, I was grateful; the person I knew and the one I heard about from my Mother wasn't really someone who was ready to try to re-integrate into society. The challenge with entering prison so young is that the prison environment tends to "freeze" the prisoner's mental growth and maturity at that age.

Well, I must change my position now. My Mom's been talking to my brother by phone (they are collect calls he places... and that's a wonderful little game MCI has going!) and she's really enjoyed it. She's also a lot better about getting letters out to him than I have been. Mom was down for a one-night visit to help me out with packing and cleaning---and yes, she was amazingly (but not surprisingly!) helpful! She received a call from Eddie while she was here and passed the phone over for me to say hi to him.

It's the first time I've spoken to him since before my son was able to walk---that's got to be 13 or 14 years! I thought I'd just say, "Hey brother! How you doing?" and we'd talk for two minutes and I'd hand it back to Mom. Ha.

First of all, it's a collect call. Then, there's the most annoying recording which comes on the line and says, "This call is coming from an Ohio Correctional Institution and may be recorded or monitored." In the space of 15 or 20 minutes, it'll happen between 2 and 3 times. Then, there's another recording which says, "You have 60 seconds remaining in this call." And finally, "You have 10 seconds remaining." I can't help but feel all the recordings are also with the clock still ticking!

We went through 4 or 5 calls last night and another 4 or 5 tonight. I think each call is something like $20---isn't that a $1 per minute, if they are 15 minute calls? Why is MCI getting so much money for being the only provider of collect calling from the Correctional Institution(s)?

Okay...moving forward...

The calls were.... amazing. Some time in recent history, he's managed to grow up and start thinking about the real world. That sounds cold and harsh and I don't mean it to. He's like a dry sponge, soaking up anything and everything he can. He's interested in computers and is considering pursuing work in that direction when he gets out.

I can't tell you everything we talked about 'cause we bounced from topic to topic. We talked books and movies, we discussed the internet---which he's never experienced! We talked about stars and climates, psychology, his health and mine. We talked about our screwed-up childhood and how we're both working on just "letting go"... *grin*

My kid brother---I've always wanted to say those words with pride---is literally bursting with ideas and thoughts. He hasn't tasted pizza in 16 years. He's not seen the night sky and stars in 16 years.

And suddenly, I find myself wanting him to be awarded parole. And to be paroled to Randy and me, so we can help him with all the technology that has changed over the years. My Mom would take him in less time than it takes for the heart to beat---but I've wanted her to come to Arizona too. Who knew I'd become a "family person" after all these years?

I had to stop and write about this 'cause it was just so damn amazing (and yes, I know I keep repeating myself!). I can't wait until we're settled in Arizona and can set up calls from him to me, instead of burning up my Mom's minutes with him.

Now, I have to grab a quick bowl of chili and then finish packing the boxes which surround my desk---I'm quite literally buried in a pile of boxes! We're getting close, as far as packing is concerned but we've miles to go before we rest!

Finally, I can tell everyone and the world what I've been dying to tell you!

We're moving home!!!!!

Randy has been asked to rejoin the THEMIS team at ASU. In other words, my hubby's gonna be a rocket scientist again! *grin*

Meanwhile, this creates my own Mission Impossible: pack this house and be ready for the movers on 6 February 2008! All while nursing Elijah back to health and keeping an eye on my own health.

I've been seriously packing for about 2 weeks already based on a flurry of phone calls which had the LROC team also vying for Randy's "l337 skillz". But, the hard part is over. We've accepted an offer and Randy has told his really cool boss the news. We're still awaiting word on an address for the other end of the trip. Eek! But, wherever we end up, we'll be in Arizona again!

As one might imagine, my Mom is trying so hard to be excited for us....but I think deep down inside she's very sad. Even though we don't get to visit as often as we'd like, it's only a 2 hour trip each way and that means we *have* had a lot of contact for the last two years. In a dream world, she'd transfer to Arizona and be happy there, but I don't know that she really liked it when she visited us out there.

Let the countdown begin!