Moving Day and Other Things

Wow, what a weekend/week this has been! I got back from a wonderful trip in Phoenix that I was able to share with plenty of my friends and family last Tuesday. Immediately after I began packing the remnants of what was left in the apartment in preparation for our move that weekend and to get ready for our final checkout which was scheduled for the following Tuesday.

On Friday morning Glenn and I packed a bunch more stuff in the car to take down to the house to lighten the big load on Saturday morning. We did a few errands around Tacoma before deciding that we should probably reserve our U-Haul for the next morning. Last minute, I know. Wouldn't ya know that with it being a beautiful holiday weekend, everyone else is moving too! Our pickings were real slim. Anything we could get on Saturday morning would have to be back within two hours. That wasn't gonna happen. Our next best option was to just take the U-Haul home that night and have it back by 10:30 the next morning. It wasn't ideal at the time but it turned out to be quite the blessing in disguise. When we returned to Seattle we parked the U-Haul outside the apartment and decided we might as well start packing now. Of course we didn't imagine it would take as long as it did. After a few hours of hard work late at night we got everything loaded into the truck except for our mattress and TV.

The next morning Glenn called Janke and asked him to come over a little earlier, like 8:30, so we could pack up the TV in his car and go. I was absolutely terrified that something was going to happen to the TV. There was NO WAY it was going in the truck. It was too expensive for something catastrophic to happen. Janke showed up, he's such a good friend, and we made our way out to Tacoma.

With Rally, me, and Glenn all packed on the bench seat in the truck we had an interesting but surprisingly short ride to Tacoma. We immediately started unpacking and Janke arrived about 15 minutes after us. About 30 minutes later, everything was out of the truck so the boys took the U-Haul back. From start to finish that morning, everything only took an hour and a half. Amazing. Then we went out for a nice fatty breakfast to fuel us for the remainder of the day.

Ever since we moved in I have been cleaning everything in sight. Who knew I could be such a neat freak. It's really that I just can't stand being around/in someone else's dirt. My own is just fine, thank you. I'm a little embarrassed that cleaning has worn me out so much! So far I have vacuumed, mopped and semi-dusted the living room and dining room. I vacuumed the stairs and the carpet in the upstairs hallway. It was really gross looking when we moved in but after one pass of our AMAZING vacuum, they look halfway decent! I mopped our bedroom so I could reassemble the bed, but that's as much cleaning as I have done upstairs. Yesterday I decided to take the vacuum out to the atrium and I clogged it up twice! There was so much dirt/grime/hair out there that when it was all clean it literally looked like a different room! I seriously cannot get over how amazing our vacuum is though. If you need a new vacuum, I HIGHLY recommend the Electrolux Nimble.

Anyway, today was my biggest cleaning project yet. After the refrigerator recycle guys hauled away that stinky old fridge and gave me a fun box full of CFL bulbs, an aerator, and a water saving shower head I started to tackle the kitchen. Other people's kitchen dirt really grosses me out, so there was no way I was just going to lay down some shelf liners and call it a day. I scrubbed the inside and outside of every last cabinet and drawer. I even managed to clean the very very top of them. Things got real interesting when I had to straddle the stove. Now everything is shiny and clean and I am happy and exhausted.

Cleaning is pretty much all I can handle right now with the house. I really want to start tackling other projects like painting and finishing the disaster zone in the living room that Glenn and Janke started while I was gone (more detailed post with pictures coming soon) but I think cleaning has to be the first priority. It's always good to start with a clean slate, right?

I guess tomorrow will involve vacuuming and mopping the remaining rooms upstairs and hopefully I can Windex all the windows tomorrow. I just noticed today that the previous owner's dog must have been about the same size as Rally because when they stand on their back feet with their front feet on the window sill, their wet noses get all over the exact same location on the window. Fun.

I promise the updates will come a little more frequently when I am not using someone else's unsecured internet connection. Love to all!

On the road...Day 2

When I think back to my decision to leave I-5 in favor of US-101 I can't quite figure out what I was thinking. I guess I figured it was better to be on the road an extra day than to impose on our friends for another day in Washington. Whatever I was thinking, I should have gotten us going earlier...MUCH earlier.

We were probably on the road some time between 10:30-11AM. This drive took us through Oakland, across an (pictured) expensive toll bridge, and up past Napa, the drive-thru tree, & the hill people of Northern California. We were starved as we went through town after town in search of something not named McDonalds or Burger King. Around 4pm we found a Subway in some one-horse town that was part of a gas station/CS. Strange employees & customers did not deter us & we were back on the road in 15 minutes.

As we neared the coast and the Oregon border things started to get a bit tense. Hairpin switchbacks ascending and descending, around 300-year old redwoods with semi-trucks approaching every oncoming encounter with a little more reckless abandon than their predesessor, only to be made worse by a rolling fog from the sea - this was to be our final hours in California. By the time we reached the boarder it was almost 9 and the sun's light was being stretched across the sky by the light cloud cover above us. We had two options: 56 miles up the coast to a Motel 6 in Oregon or 106 miles through the forrest to Grant's Pass and the (safer, wider) I-5. Fearing the fog would get worse along the 101 we headed towards Grant's Pass hoping for a clearer route. What we found was a beautiful river-lined passage where we only encountered 10 other cars in an hour. It was extremely dark and I was on the lookout for wild animals darting into the road. By the time we reached Grant's Pass I thought for sure the power grid had failed. We hadn't seen a streetlight or electric sign in over an hour. The glow of the town was enough to make our eyes hurt.

As we pulled in to the motel, I had never been so happy to be in Oregon in my life. What I thought would be a scenic bypass with a couple additional hours drive time turned into an all-day stress test. I've driven from Tacoma to Salinas in 12 hours...I covered half that distance today in the same amount of time. Disgusting.

I was determined to make day 3 end in success.

-- Sent from my Palm Prē

On the road...Day 1

As you can see...the dog blocked more of my rear view than any of our stuff did.

Driving up was needlessly complicated. The normal boring PHX-LA trip didn't see much action. We stopped in Valencia for lunch. Then stopped outside of Bakersfield at the Murray Farms for (pictured) Rainier Cherries & boysenberries. We finally stopped in some farm town a few hours south of San Francisco.

The entire place smelled of fertilizer & there were bugs everywhere. The motel was nice and it was surrounded by food options but ultimately the town was uninteresting.

Day 1 went off without much complaint.

-- Sent from my Palm Prē

Leaving...

If someone asked youto pack all of the important things that you would need into a car...could you do it? What if your car was a compact hybrid? Well that's what this is...every "essential" item in our family's life. It was a tight fit but our run-through last summer helped us figure out what we really needed to get by.

No real furniture. A lot of clothes, some kitchen gadgets, a couple laptops, a fan, a house plant, and a bunch of board games all came along as our supplies. The dog had just as much stuff: 8 toys, a bed, food, jacket, harness, and some bowls. He packed just as much as we did.

Are there things I wish we had brought? Yes. Are there things we didn't need in retrospect? I'm not sure...doesn't feel like it yet.

-- Sent from my Palm Prē

The move

Well we're starting to get settled in here in Seattle. Since things have been crazy, I thought I'd take a few minutes to update with some pictures and comments. So keep an eye out for those throughout the day.

Love you all!
-Glenn

-- Sent from my Palm Prē