We were unexpectedly invited to the Kitsap County Democratic Victory Party tonight, and decided to attend.  Aside from actually voting, this is the first real major political gathering either of us have been to. 

Gawds, what an experience.  The energy in the room was electrifying.  I volunteered for future events for the Democratic Party.  I’ve always registered as non-affiliated, because sometimes I used to vote for the Republican candidate, sometimes for the Democrat.  I’ve been trying to think of the last time I actually voted for a Republican, though.  The only one that sticks out is Reagan in 1980.  I made the mistake of voting for him the first time, but not the second.  I started reading up on the issues, learning everything I could about the candidates and their positions.  None of the Republicans have measured up to my standards.  Since the Religious Right took control of the party, I would have been voting against my own self-interests had I opted for them.

I’m proud to say that I am now firmly a Democrat.  The Republican Party has become a bastion of racists, religious nut-jobs, and big-business fat cats.  Thanks, but no thanks.

This past weekend, we mostly finished the master bedroom’s trim, painted the guest room and laid the new floor in there.  We’re still trying to figure out what trim pieces go where in the MB, because we didn’t mark it as we took it down.  We DID manage to finish the guest room, though, trim included.  The color came out a little different than we expected.  We were going for a light peach kind of color, but wound up with more of a deep pumpkin.  With the bedding, curtains and art work, it works out very well, though.  I’ll have pictures as soon as we finish getting art work up and Jeffrey can take pics. 

WE HAVE CENTRAL HEAT NOW!!  The company we hired to convert us from the ceiling radiant heat finished the work converting us to an electric heat pump and central heat/air on Friday.  The difference is amazing.   They also retrofitted one of the gas fireplaces so we can burn real wood in it, and fixed the other gas fireplace so that it works as intended. 

Jeffrey bought a dart machine.  You know, one of those electronic, quarter-eating machines you use to play darts on in a bar.  He found a great deal on one through Craig’s List from a guy down in Olympia.  I was able to dig up most our darts, and we’ve been getting our game back a little bit at a time.  I’ll post a picture when I can.

Learning a little more about the neighborhood.  Somewhere, someone has horses.  I keep hearing the whinnying, and I’ve seen people riding them up and down the alley.  I guess we’re in a slightly more rural area than I thought.  We’ve also got racoons in the neighborhood, not that I’m surprised considering our proximity to the state park.  I see them in the neighbor’s yard every once in a while, at night.

Perhaps the most thrilling thing for me, though, is that I can hear sea lions (or seals) from my back yard.  I knew we were close to the water (meaning Puget Sound), I didn’t think we were THAT close, though. 

Gawds, I’ve missed being in the Pacific Northwest.

Any commentary I care to share regarding the political situation and the upcoming election will be witheld until after the election, with one exception.

Unless you are willing to vote against your own self-interests, be sure to vote a Democratic ticket this year.  Republicans ruled Congress from 1994 through 2006, and we’ve had a Republican president since 2001.  We’ve seen and experienced what the Republican vision is, since they’ve enacted most of their “wish list”, and it is not healthy for the USA.  Think before you vote, and if all else fails, remember which party is fighting for the little guy.  It sure ain’t the Republicans.  John McCain thinks middle-class includes people making $5 MILLION a year.

Addendum:  I almost forgot.  Washington State is transitioning to mail-in ballots only.  We got ours a week or so ago.  We’re going to be casting our votes tonight and mailing them tomorrow. 

Be sure to vote, if you are eligible.  It’s the most important thing you will do this year.  Maybe this generation.

That’s what the debate about I-1000 is really all about: your body, your death, your choice. The passage of I-1000 doesn’t impose anything on terminally ill people who reject physician-assisted suicide for religious reasons. But the rejection of I-1000 imposes the values of others on terminally ill people who would like to make that choice for themselves, who should have a right to make that choice for themselves.

And, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing about physician-assisted suicide—or, as it should be called, end-of-life pain management—that precludes the presence of loving caregivers. You can be surrounded by love and have access to the best medical care available and still conclude—reasonably and rationally—that you would rather not spend the last few moments of your life in blinding pain or gasping for breath or pumped full of just enough morphine to (hopefully) deaden your pain without deadening you.

…

If religious people believe assisted suicide is wrong, they have a right to say so. Same for gay marriage and abortion. They oppose them for religious reasons, but it’s somehow not enough for them to deny those things to themselves. They have to rush into your intimate life and deny them to you, too—deny you control over your own reproductive organs, deny you the spouse of your choosing, condemn you to pain (or the terror of it) at the end of your life.

The proper response to religious opposition to choice or love or death can be reduced to a series of bumper stickers: Don’t approve of abortion? Don’t have one. Don’t approve of gay marriage? Don’t have one. Don’t approve of physician-assisted suicide? For Christ’s sake, don’t have one. But don’t tell me I can’t have one—each one—because it offends your God.

[f-word] your God.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.  I don’t believe in your god, and I don’t believe in your holy word.  If the god of the Bible exists in some way outside of your fevered imaginations, it is a petulant child not worthy of respect, let alone worship.  More like the character of Trelane from a Star Trek episode.  For you to impose your supposed god’s will on me not only precludes MY free will and that of others, it is inhumane and goes against everything the Founding Fathers intended when they wrote the Constitution.  It also goes against your own “holy” scriptures.  Publicly, and for the record, I have directed that no extraordinary measures be taken to preserve my life should I be incapitated and unable to make that known, and if I find myself in such a situation as Dan describes in the article linked above, I would hope that those nearest and dearest to me will understand if I decide to end my life rather than deal with the pain and suffering whatever my end-of-life circustances might bring.

Think about it.

That being said, on to other updates.

We decided on a company to update the electric radiant heat in the ceiling to a forced air system.  They’ll be here Wednesday morning to start installing it.  Just in time, too.  The last couple of weeks have been getting cooler and cooler.  Some of the trees are starting to show their autumn colors, and it’s cold enough outside in the mornings that I can’t leave the dogs out for more than 15 or 30 minutes now.  Yesterday I had to turn the fireplace on for most of the morning just to keep them from shivering INSIDE the house.

More debt we have to take on.  [sigh]

Aside from putting up some finishing pieces of trim, the master bedroom is done.  We should be able to finish that this weekend, and I’ll try to have the before and after pictures available then.  Jeffrey got ambitious last weekend and also put the new flooring down in the hallway, and I started removing the wallpaper in the guest bedroom so we can paint and pull up the felt-like carpet and lay the new floor.  We’ve gotten some new tools and chemicals to remove the wallpaper, so the process will (hopefully) not be too painful.  We haven’t decided which room to do after that.

The lawn is still waiting to be mowed because the weather hasn’t cooperated with our schedules.  Even though I work from home, I can’t take the time to do it during the week, and it’s been raining on the weekends.

I’m getting used to the rapid decline of daylight hours now that the seasons are changing.  It’s not something I noticed a lot in Florida, but this far north it’s noticable on an almost daily basis.

Work is going well, both for me and Jeffrey.  We’re down a person due to a reorganization, but everyone is working to pick up the slack.  Jeffrey’s starting in a new position the beginning of November as Managing Attorney for a new division in a successful lawfirm.

Cat is getting used to the dogs roaming inside the house, but still doesn’t like it much.

Good friend/realtor John’s new business is doing great so far, which is very good news since we invested in it.  I’ve put together a dummy website for him, but haven’t made it public yet pending some design and menu changes.   Once it’s finalized and if he agrees, I’ll post a link here.

I’ll refrain (for now) from commenting on the presidential and vice-presidential debates.  I’m sure you’re all sick of hearing about politics.  I might change my mind later, though.

We decided that the first room we need to re-do, and immediately, was the master bedroom, mostly because that king size bed is such a pain to take apart, move and get back together.  The room was in sad shape.  Old 70s wooden panelling on one of the walls (painted over, naturally), and ugly painted over wallpaper borders along the ceiling and about chair rail level.  Last weekend, we started our first major project on the house.

It was supposed to be a kind of catch-up and high priority kind of weekend.  Saturday, we drove up to Silverdale to pick up our Costco membership cards, then drove up a little farther and caught the Bainbridge ferry over to Seattle.  We drove up to visit our previous hosts for a while, and to pick up any mail they had for us.  The mail forwarding update is working now, so we shouldn’t have to do that particular task again soon.  But we do like visiting with Bill and Esther.  We’re going to go over again the next time our honorary god-daughter comes back to visit, and they’ll be coming over for the house-warming party.

A couple of weeks ago, Jeffrey was checking out different places for new flooring for the house, and found a place right here in Bremerton with great prices, and stock of a particular wood floor that was on clearance.   They had enough for two of the bedrooms, so we wound up buying their remaining stock.   Sunday, Jeffrey laid the new floor while I was in the backyard putting up chicken-wire fencing so we could finally let the dogs off of their tethers.  It only took a few days for them to find a shallow place on the north fence to dig under and get out of the yard.  An alert neighbor noticed them and let me know, and I got the dogs back in the yard, found the hole and plugged it.  They were on the tethers for another few days while I made sure there were no other such areas, and to hopefully start training them that if they get out of the yard on their own, there will be consequences.  Hopefully, not fatal (think cars and trucks).

Back to our first project.  We had the foresight to take “Before” pictures, and as soon as we finish the final touches, we’ll have “After” pictures, and I’ll post them somewhere on the main website.

The floor was gorgeous.  We had to take the bed apart again and get it out before we could do the floor.  Jeffrey decided that while we were doing the new floor, we might as well tackle the walls.  That was this weekend’s project.  Yesterday (Saturday), we spent the day pulling down the faux wooden panelling, finished the drywall underneath properly, pulled out as much of the wallpaper as we could, and evened out the walls with joint compound and spackle.  That had to dry several hours before we could do any more, so we invited our friend (and realtor) John over and watched a few movies that he hadn’t seen before.  An enjoyable evening all around.

(Side note on John: Because the real estate market is in the toilet [Thanks, republicans], he’s branching out into his own business, and we’re going to be his initial backers.  He found a sweet deal on some prime real estate downtown [he used to be a French chef, and had his own business], and is taking over a business running a cafe and catering.  The space is on the main floor of a government building and central to downtown.  The previous owner didn’t know what he was doing, and it has some fantastic potential.  We’re putting up some of the start-up money, and I get to manage the website.  More on that as it develops.)  Now back to the rest of the story.  Honestly, people, if you keep getting me side-tracked like this, we’ll never get to the end of it. 

Today (Sunday), we were working almost from the time we got up until 8:00 tonight.  We had to do some more joint compound in a few places and let it dry, then smooth out the walls.  Jeffrey did the detail for the priming, and then did some work for his Florida job while I did the broad roller work.  After that dried, round two with Jeffrey doing the detail work again with paint, then we mixed up the paint with a texture treatment and I did the rest.  The problem with using a textured paint is that you tend to get a lot of paint splattering, not only on the floor, but also on yourself.  One gallon of the textured paint was enough to give the whole bedroom a decent coat, but there were some areas that needed more of the texture treatment, and where I didn’t get the paint on thick enought with the first coat.  So, let the first coat dry, take a short break and catch up on my internet stuff, then mix the second gallon and start round three of painting. 

I finished round three of painting while Jeffrey followed along behind cleaning up the new floor.  I finally convinced Jeffrey that the new rule for any other room we do needs to be walls first, then floor.  While Jeffrey finished cleaning up the floors, I took all of the outlet covers outside to strip the paint off of them.  I can’t believe how lazy some people are.  It takes all of 60 seconds to remove a wall plate and paint underneath it.  They just painted over the plates, the electrical outlets and the light switches.  By the time we finished, it was almost 8. 

Some lazy downtime to watch TV and have dinner.  Tomorrow, we put the baseboards back on, the bed back together, and get some artwork up on the walls we just refinished and painted.  I haven’t broached the subject with Jeffrey yet, but next weekend HAS to be a relax and unwind weekend.  Oh, and we need to decide on a date for the house-warming, then design invitations (with detailed directions on how to find the house) and start getting them out.

I haven’t checked with Jeffrey yet, but I thought it might be nice to invite my family up for Thanksgiving weekend.  Let them see the new house, get caught up, and get Lori’s husband’s input and suggestions for the other projects we’re lining up for ourselves.  We’ll have to play it by ear, though.  I understand last winter up here was a bit of a bitch, and we don’t know what this year is going to bring yet.  Snow in the mountains would almost preclude a visit by car, and airfare is way too expensive for that many people to come up with.

Hopefully, I’ll have more next weekend.

[NOTE:  post edited 9/22/08 for continuity and spelling/grammar)

We’re finding some interesting things out about this house.  Apparently all of the walls were wallpapered at one time, and instead of taking the wallpaper off and painting, they painted the wallpaper.  It looks crappy.  It’s going to take longer than we thought to clean that mess up so we can get our stamp on the interior.

I mentioned in a previous post that we had been pricing hot tubs.  A couple of days ago, we found out that there was already one in the back yard.  It doesn’t show on any of the pictures I posted earlier of the new house, but there is a three-tiered small garden area in the upper terrace of the back yard.  The backside had some of that black material you put down to keep plants from going through, and Jeffrey lifted it up to see what was underneath.  Lo and behold, it was a hot tub.  No idea if it still works or not.  The neighbors across the alley confirmed that they just stopped using it and covered it up with this garden-type setting.  Very creative, I must say, but it’s going to take us weeks to get it cleared out and see what’s there.

Last week we got our drivers’ licenses, registered to vote, and I now have local plates on my car.  Jeffrey has to wait a while for his plates, because Washington has some law that they need a copy of the title, and the company that financed his car can take up to two weeks to fax a copy to the DMV so he can get his plates.  That puts us closer to the deadline of 30-days for changing everything over once you move to the state.

We’re learning more about the neighborhood, too.  The neighbors are all very friendly.  Next door to the south invited us to a little neighborhood party for Labor Day.  We got to meet and get to know a few of our neighbors.  One lady was so impressed with us that she asked if we would be willing to be a “safe house” for her kids.  I guess she went through a very nasty divorce, and her husband is a bit of a psycho.  We were very flattered, to say the least, and since I work from home and am here all day, I agreed.  The kids love the dogs, by the way.

We also learned that the street we live on is called “Candy Cane Lane” by the locals.  I guess it’s been a tradition for years, but this street is “THE” street everyone comes to to see christmas lights and displays.  Normally, we just put up lights, and the tree in the front window.  It looks like we need to stock up on xmas stuff for this year.  Jeffrey is already searching eBay for things like that.  It seems all of the holidays are a lot of fun around here.  I can’t wait to see what goes on for Halloween.

We got a chance to visit the state park at the end of the street, and drive down to the beach.  It wasn’t far at all, so we’re a lot closer to the water than I thought we were.

Today, we actually had time to do some work on the outside of the house, all of it in the back yard.  We pulled all of the ivy off the wall.  Bought an electric lawn mower and weed whacker.  Replace a few parts of the back fence that had started to rot (they still need priming and painting), and I mowed the upper terrace, after picking up all of the apples that had fallen from the tree. 

We even started to get some of our art work on the walls.  Right now, it’s mostly just deciding where we’re going to put everything, but even having a few pieces up feels like an accomplishment.

More when I have something else to relate.  I’m keeping the family stuff private for now.

At this point, everything is in the house.  Now it’s just a matter of moving furniture around and unpacking what seems like hundreds of boxes.

Oh, and dealing with work.  <sigh>

Kitchen is usable.  Dining room area is mostly set up, except for the missing china cabinet (to be delivered tomorrow), and all of the boxes strewn all over the place.  We have a place for the grand piano set up.  Half of the book cases are ready to go, I just need to unpack some of the books boxes and fill the shelves.  The antique TV and stereo are in place and working.  We’re not sure what to do with the leopard skin fainting couch yet.  Tomorrow morning I have to get the frame set up for the guest bed, since the mattress and box spring for it are also being delivered, as is the entertainment center we’re not sure where to put.

There’s still a lot of unpacking to do, and organizing.  It’s starting to feel more like home, but I’ll be happier when we have some of our art work upon the walls.  To me, what really makes a house a home is putting a nail in a wall and hanging something there that’s yours.  Jeffrey didn’t see it that way until we moved into the Tampa house.  Once we had that first painting on the wall, though, he agreed that it was “home”.

So much to do, so little time.

We didn’t wake up quite as sore as we expected.  That meant another busy day.

This morning we drove back to Edmonds to pick up the rest of the things we had left with our former hosts, mostly clothes, food stuffs we didn’t want to leave in storage, and our computer network.  We managed to fit all but my computer chair into Jeffrey’s Kia, but Jeffrey offered to let me get a new chair.  I was going to wait until we’d been settled a few months before broaching the subject.  After all, that chair was probably 13 or 14 years old.  There was almost no padding left, and it was uncomfortable to sit on for any lenth of time.  We compromised, and Jeffrey gets a new office chair, too.  His is just as old, and almost as uncomfortable.  You think he was trying to pull a fast one?? 

We dropped that stuff off at the new house, I started setting up the network so the wireless stuff would work.  Oh, I mentioned in the previous post that I was having connectivity issues.  We found the problem.  Most of the outlets in this house are so old that they are fairly loose, and many don’t maintain a tight connection with the plug.  We moved the modem to a new power receptacle and haven’t had a problem since.  This is a broadband and voice modem, and it has a 10-12 hour battery backup in case we lose power.  That’s why the connection was sporadic.  It was shutting down the internet in order to save power for the phone system.

After working on that and a couple of other urgent things, we went and did some shopping.  Stopped at Lowes to get new locks for all the doors, and a small piece of lumber to repair the frame of our bed, a broom and dust pan.  Then to Wal-Mart for some household goods, like a kitchen garbage can, a couple of phones to go with the one work gave me, and some sweets for after dinner.  Normally, I don’t shop at Wal-Mart because of their labor practices, but I will go occasionally if Jeffrey drags me there.  Then we stopped at a Safeway to pick up some perishables like milk, eggs and butter.  Then back to the house to do more unpacking and setting up the rest of the computer network so I can get back to work tomorrow.  We had carry out, since I haven’t had a chance to unpack the kitchen yet, but I got a good start on that after dinner.  We can’t afford to keep getting carry-out or going out to dinner right now.  We need to get money back in the bank after closing on the house.

Tomorrow, I get to do some more in-depth grocery shopping to replace a lot of what we lost, check on the water/sewer, trash and recycling in the area, and find a place to get the car tags and drivers licenses updated.  Oh, and to register to vote.  Jeffrey is in court most of the day, but he’s going to try and track down a company to move the piano and the rest of our heavy items from storage.  I’m hoping he can get someone to do it this week, as we’d like to get a start on decorating, changing the wall colors, and updating the floors.  They’ll do for a short time, but they don’t really match our tastes or any of our furniture.

It’s going to take some time to truly make this OUR house, but we’re going to get there.

Big drama over the last couple of days. 

Thursday morning, the day of closing, they discovered that my SSN was wrong on all of the paperwork.  They were trying to fix it so that we could still do the signing that day and take possession on Friday. 

That didn’t happen.  It turns out that the lender that is doing our loan is ironically, in Florida, and the time difference was causing the delay.  Everything was reprocessed with the correct SSN, but the lender did not get it until the end of their day.  Thing’s weren’t looking good.

We exerted all the pressure we could, and our mortgage broker managed to pull a few strings, and expected the paperwork early Friday morning.  On the off chance that nothing else would go wrong, we all made a tentative plan for me to follow Jeffrey to work Friday morning, sign the essential documents and fax them back.  The only problem with this plan was the time constraint.  Jeffrey had to be in court most of the day, starting at 9:00.  Naturally, there was a problem.  Jeffrey gets in and finds out that court has been pushed up to 8:45. 

I’m able to get a weak wireless connection in the courthouse, and try to do some work from there while he’s in morning court.  We have given everyone a fax number in the actual courtroom, so that as soon as they get the necessary documents we can sign them and fax them back immediately.  I have to move my car after two hours (about 10:45, at this point) because of time restrictions on where I was parked, so it was decided that I head to Jeffrey’s office, and we’ll keep in contact by text messaging.  Realtor said that the document was being faxed just after Jeffrey texted me that he was almost done.  Another text that he’s on his last case for the day, and still no fax.  I let realtor know, but he’s already on his way to Tacoma with the rest of the documents and a Notary Public to witness everything.  We contact another party in the transaction (the trust company, I think) and they are able to email the necessary documents to his work account while realtor is still in transit.  We sign the absolute essential ones (after getting some questions answered about the closing costs) to close on Friday back (the HUD statement), and await the arrival of realtor and notary.  The original fax to the court room shows up after we have received the email, about 11:45.

Get a call with an ETA from them (approx 12:15), decide to walk to Subway so Jeffrey can get some lunch before he has to be back in court.  Back at the office, Jeffrey eats, we review the other documents for closing to expedite the signing process, but only get so far before Jeffrey has to deal with something from his afternoon docket.  Find out that our deadline for closing today is to get the documents signed, notarized and filed before 2:00.  Shortly thereafter, realtor and notary show up (12:30).  We appropriate a supposedly empty law library, unintentionally kicking Jeffrey’s boss’ boss (who is eating his lunch) out.  Jeffrey had never met him before, but realizes who he is and starts agonizing over it.  Get him calmed down a little, start signing papers, with pauses to get answers on parts we haven’t reviewed yet.  Some of the documents are in duplicate or even triplicate.  Now I don’t have good handwriting (that’s why I took typing in high school), so my signature is little more than a scrawl at the best of times.  By the end of signing, I wouldn’t even have called it a chicken scratch.  Realtor and notary head back to Bremerton/Silverdale to get the papers filed, hopefully before the deadline (we’re about 1:10 or 1:15 at this point.  Drive to Bremerton is about 1/2 hour, depending on traffic.  We’re cutting it very close.  Jeffrey and I pretty much lose hope at this point.

I head back to our hosts’ house in Edmonds after I drop Jeffrey off at the courthouse, to save him the time of walking back.    I get to Edmonds about 2:10 (traffic on I-5 was bad), check in with work again, see that the update I wrote to my boss last night before I went to bed was still saved in Draft, and not in my Sent Items.  I forgot to hit Send!!  I immediately write a new email apologizing and explaining the situation.  My boss has been very understanding and patient while we’re going through this process as long as keep her update.  I hope I didn’t jeopardize my job.

Get a call about 20 minutes later that realtor and notary got there and filed in time.  We can take possession that day, realtor will get keys.  I will start loading my car with necessities we have at hosts’ house in beween calls and head down when I check out of work for day.  He will go directly to Bremerton from work, meet with realtor to get keys, pick up a few perishables and I will meet him at the new house.  Meantime, among my packing and working, I have to re-reserve a U-Haul that I had cancelled the previous day because it looked like we wouldn’t be closing in time to make good on the reservation.  Managed to get it set for Saturday morning, definitely one day, possibly two.  I piled clothes, bedding, laptops (but not desktops or my networking stuff) some snack-type food-stuffs we had lying around, and the dogs and their needed items.  I didn’t get on the road until about 5:15, right smack dab in the middle of rush hour traffic.

If you are not familiar with Seattle, driving I-5 through downtown can be problematic at any time, but it is especially stressful during the rush hour periods.  An 8-lane freeway basically narrows down to a 4-lane one right through the heart of downtown.  The backups in that constricted are are nightmarish.  Tacoma’s downtown is better, but not my much, and I had to drive through that too, in order to get to Bremerton.  It took me over 2 hours to make a commute that under ideal circumstances would only take a little more than one.

I get to our new house, found that Jeffrey had stopped by the storage place and picked up a few things.  We unloaded my car, and headed out to a nice dinner, courtesy of our realtor.  It had been a VERY stressful day, and there was more coming the next day.  We needed a little pampering.  Back to the house, set up a place to sleep for the night, even though it is on the floor.  Plug in the small TV I had brought, discovered the cable was still on, thanks to the previous residents, and watch a DVD that Jeffrey had picked up from storage.  Start getting the puppies acquainted with their new house and yard.  They are so excited with the expanded territory and all the new smells.  We’re going to have to get a dog run or something until we can do something about the fence in the back yard.  They are very small dogs, the backyard fence is a picket fence and they can squeeze between the slats, and there are parts that need some repair.  Right now they are on very long leashes when they’re outside.

We get an unrestful nights’ sleep, as neither sleep well on the floor.  Pick up the moving truck a little after eight and head for the storage place in south Tacoma.  Bill shows up to help, but had to bring his dog because he couldn’t find anyone to watch or feed him that day.  Dog goes absolutely crazy, barking, whining and howling at being tied up while we’re moving around so far from him.  Dog noise bothers everyone, we ask Bill to go ahead and take dog back home.

So, it’s just Jeffrey and me loading a 24′ truck with most of our life.  We have a deadline, since the cable guy is supposed to be at the house between 12 & 2 to get us set up with internet, cable and telephone.  We get 3/4 or more of our stuff loaded in, filling the truck from tob to bottom and front to back, and leave about 11:15.  I make it to the house about 12:05 or so, no sign of cable guy.  Put puppies outside, try to maneuver truck through alley and backed up the garage, truck is too big.  Move truck to front of house, and start unloading it while waiting for cable guy.

Cable guy shows up about 1-ish.  By this time, both Jeffrey are nearing exhaustion after having loaded the truck, driving, and unloading as much as we did, which is not that much.  We take a short break, show the cable guy what we’ve discovered and reiterate what needs to happen and where.  He gets started on that while we continue to unload the truck.  Truck takes longer to unload than to load, both because it’s further from the street to the front door, and our increasing soreness and waning strength.  We plug on, finally finishing about 4:15 or 4:30.

My hands started to become numb, my hands cramped up a couple of times, my backs, legs and shoulders are killing me, especially the one injured in the previousely blogged accident.  We decide to leave the rest of the stuff in storage for the moment, which is mostly big items, including the grand piano, and hire a company to get them out next week. 

Returned the truck, got sticker shock at the mileage charge, even though we returned the truck with more gas than we got with it.  Went to get Jeffrey some dinner (I’m not usually hungry after a physically stressful day).  Met realtor at restaurant and chatted for a few minutes.  Stopped at the store on the way home to pick up some needed things (including beer).  Arms started to spasm halfway through the process, hands went numb and fingers curled into my palm and I couldn’t straighten them unless I used the other hand to do it.

Got back to the house, got mattress ready to sleep on, not having time to get frame put together, relaxed for a while.  Jeffrey did what he needed to on the internet, and now so am I.  I won’t have my networking components until tomorrow, unfortunately, so we’re taking turns using it right now.

We already have to call the cable company tomorrow.  Internet has gone down at least eight times since about 7:00 PM.  I have to reset the modem before it comes back on.

Time for bed.  Tomorrow, we unpack a few things, get new locks for all the doors, and pick up the rest of our necessities from our gracious and former host.

Sleep well.