So we're mostly unpacked (Alycia's stuff is unpacked at least, my stuff is still percolating in various boxes) and starting to get settled. With the help of Alycia's Mom, aka Momma Bear, the kitchen is all unpacked and totally usable. Being that food and gluten free living are crucial tenets to our lives, the next step logical step was to replenish the kitchen and pantry with necessary items.
Being that we're no longer in San Diego, finding the things that are "normal" to us and part of our daily diet are, to understate delicately, freakishly weird out here. Wanna get your ass kicked, or at least a lot of weird looks? Try asking a store clerk here where they keep the tofu. Thankfully though there is a natural food store - Amazing Grains with a good amount of gluten free and "unusual" items, like tofu, and organic stuff.
Just a few observations here about my new home town. In my trip to Hugo's supermarket, I noticed that there are a significant amount of larger girthed individuals here. There are also a large number of people who seem to amble about aimlessly with little discernible purpose, and in the close aisle confines of a grocery store, this has proven to be problematic/frustrating. Not sure if this is more prevalent here, or simply I encountered a busy shopping day, time will tell.
My other small bit of information to pass along - frozen Texas Toast is really big here. Not sure why. Two grocery stores that I visited had a proliferation of choices of frozen Texas Toast and numerous shoppers had the item in their cart. Hopefully I'll be able to unravel this mystery and report back to y'all in the future.....
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Truck Day Today
Today is the day the semi is dropped off at the new house and we get to gingerly remove the bulkhead and see what state our items are in. Hopefully things are not too broken and a few plants have survived the trip. I'm not hopeful about the plants though, it was really hot inside the trailer when we were loading it and I can only imagine how hot it got once it was sealed up and motoring through the desert Southwest.
We'll get a jump start on the unloading process this afternoon by removing the bulkhead, the tiedowns, and anything sitting precariously on top (which is a lot). The rest of the moving party (aka Alycia's folks) are making the trek down from Cavalier tomorrow morning to help us unload. We'll bribe them with breakfast and lunch, but they're happy to help out regardless.
It's another lovely day here in Grand Forks, warm, but still pleasant, a nice breeze and a few puffy clouds moseying across the sky.
The city sprayed for mosquitoes last night. Around 8:30 a low flying plane made several passes and sprayed Lord knows what over everything. You're not supposed to go outside for a half hour after spraying and those who are "sensitive to chemicals" were warned to shut their windows. Isn't everyone sensitive to chemicals? I just know that I'm pretty sure I am.
We'll get a jump start on the unloading process this afternoon by removing the bulkhead, the tiedowns, and anything sitting precariously on top (which is a lot). The rest of the moving party (aka Alycia's folks) are making the trek down from Cavalier tomorrow morning to help us unload. We'll bribe them with breakfast and lunch, but they're happy to help out regardless.
It's another lovely day here in Grand Forks, warm, but still pleasant, a nice breeze and a few puffy clouds moseying across the sky.
The city sprayed for mosquitoes last night. Around 8:30 a low flying plane made several passes and sprayed Lord knows what over everything. You're not supposed to go outside for a half hour after spraying and those who are "sensitive to chemicals" were warned to shut their windows. Isn't everyone sensitive to chemicals? I just know that I'm pretty sure I am.
Monday, July 20, 2009
An Update - North Dakota style
Howdy all. Sorry for the long delay in posting. Sadly after the first day of the road trip, though I had Internet access, my desire/ability to sit and compose coherent English was lacking. So, to update you, the last three days of the drive went well.
Utah was quite pretty, especially North of Provo up to the I-80. Wyoming was full of rednecks and we had a slight incident with a dumb ass chick and her giant pit bull (that she couldn't control even though he was on a leash), who thought it was OK that the dog grabbed Shakk Ti as he lunged out of the bushes because "he don't like other dogs none that much". People like that are the reason pit bulls are so maligned.
The Dakotas were everything they had been sold as, desolate but beautiful. It was also the midst of little yellow butterfly season, and we must have smashed hundreds of them as we drove down the road. It made for some serious window squeegeeing at our rest breaks.
The moral of the story is that we made it to North Dakota safe and sound, people, dogs, and fish are safe and happy. Alycia's parents graciously met us here at the house, stocked out refrigerator and pantry with a ton of food, and brought us chairs, toilet paper, paper towels, etc. All the things that make life much more easier and enabled us to delay the necessary run to Target and the grocery store for a couple of days so we could rest up.
Today was the first day we had internet at the house, so I'll now have the means to throw out much more information down the road - stay tuned.
I also plan on doing at least a three part report series on Home of Economy, which I plan on investigating extensively. What is Home of Economy? Think hardware store, Amish Furniture outlet, flea market, barber shop, bait store and snack bar all rolled together under one giant roof. Lo it shall be awesome.....
Utah was quite pretty, especially North of Provo up to the I-80. Wyoming was full of rednecks and we had a slight incident with a dumb ass chick and her giant pit bull (that she couldn't control even though he was on a leash), who thought it was OK that the dog grabbed Shakk Ti as he lunged out of the bushes because "he don't like other dogs none that much". People like that are the reason pit bulls are so maligned.
The Dakotas were everything they had been sold as, desolate but beautiful. It was also the midst of little yellow butterfly season, and we must have smashed hundreds of them as we drove down the road. It made for some serious window squeegeeing at our rest breaks.
The moral of the story is that we made it to North Dakota safe and sound, people, dogs, and fish are safe and happy. Alycia's parents graciously met us here at the house, stocked out refrigerator and pantry with a ton of food, and brought us chairs, toilet paper, paper towels, etc. All the things that make life much more easier and enabled us to delay the necessary run to Target and the grocery store for a couple of days so we could rest up.
Today was the first day we had internet at the house, so I'll now have the means to throw out much more information down the road - stay tuned.
I also plan on doing at least a three part report series on Home of Economy, which I plan on investigating extensively. What is Home of Economy? Think hardware store, Amish Furniture outlet, flea market, barber shop, bait store and snack bar all rolled together under one giant roof. Lo it shall be awesome.....
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Excessive Heat Advisory
We're safely in small town Utah, napping comfortably in an air conditioned hotel room through the afternoon heat outside. We're looking forward to sampling some of the "creative American food" that the diner just outside the hotel is allegedly dishing out. As I sit here and watch the weather channel, it turns out that the entire stretch that we just drove through is under an excessive heat advisory, not exactly a good addition to a road trip.
We did get on the road just after 4:00 am, and yeah it was painful, but well worth it to avoid some of the hot hours of the afternoon. Alycia made it just fine, the dogs are lazing around, and the fish did not get boiled alive, all in all a raging success. One which we'll repeat again tomorrow.
It was 96 degrees as we drove through Barstow at 8:00am, and it only got hotter as the day wore on. We got out of the car around 10:30 am in Mesquite, NV and strolled around a park I found online to give the dogs a bit of a respite. It was quite warm, even in the shade, and the dogs were panting by the time their paws touched the ground coming out of the car.
Despite the intense heat the North Dakota mobile soldiered onward and made it through the day with nary an issue, and except for a couple of long uphill grades, we successfully ran the a/c the whole time.
The good news is that though it's supposed to be hot again tomorrow, we should be out of the super hot areas and into northern Utah and Wyoming. We're pondering another early start tomorrow to get some hours on the road before it gets too warm, we'll see.
We did get on the road just after 4:00 am, and yeah it was painful, but well worth it to avoid some of the hot hours of the afternoon. Alycia made it just fine, the dogs are lazing around, and the fish did not get boiled alive, all in all a raging success. One which we'll repeat again tomorrow.
It was 96 degrees as we drove through Barstow at 8:00am, and it only got hotter as the day wore on. We got out of the car around 10:30 am in Mesquite, NV and strolled around a park I found online to give the dogs a bit of a respite. It was quite warm, even in the shade, and the dogs were panting by the time their paws touched the ground coming out of the car.
Despite the intense heat the North Dakota mobile soldiered onward and made it through the day with nary an issue, and except for a couple of long uphill grades, we successfully ran the a/c the whole time.
The good news is that though it's supposed to be hot again tomorrow, we should be out of the super hot areas and into northern Utah and Wyoming. We're pondering another early start tomorrow to get some hours on the road before it gets too warm, we'll see.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Go Time
We're wrapping up our short stay at my sisters place in Vista, though it's actually so nice it's like more of a resort; pool, big yard for the dogs to play, tons of lounge chairs for us to hang out upon. It was a great place for us to stay for a few days and recharge our batteries (both actual laptop/cell phone and metaphorical internal) for a bit.
I made the most of my last meal in San Diego by partaking in an In N Out burger....tasty. Truly one of the things that I'll miss about California.
The plan is to take off early, 3:30 or 4:00 am tomorrow morning to try and make it through most of the hot part, through Vegas and up to the border of Utah, while it's still relatively cool. Cool though is a bit of a misnomer since "cool" for that area is only 95 degrees. Hopefully we'll make it by noon, maybe 1:00 and be able to hole up in our hotel during the heat of the day.
I made the most of my last meal in San Diego by partaking in an In N Out burger....tasty. Truly one of the things that I'll miss about California.
The plan is to take off early, 3:30 or 4:00 am tomorrow morning to try and make it through most of the hot part, through Vegas and up to the border of Utah, while it's still relatively cool. Cool though is a bit of a misnomer since "cool" for that area is only 95 degrees. Hopefully we'll make it by noon, maybe 1:00 and be able to hole up in our hotel during the heat of the day.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Boxes Boxes Everywhere
Yay a packing update.......
The truck arrived promptly on Friday (I'll give a big plug to ABF U-Pack here, they know their shit and do it well) and even Alycia was impressed. Yup, it's a full sized semi trailer, and we're a packin' it. Again a plug for ABF U-Pack - the driver was able to skillfully manuever the trailer without killing or maiming the podocarpus tree along the street, left the end of the truck right at the start of the driveway (exactly where we wanted it), and took plenty of time to explain how everything worked. Sure he didn't have all his teeth, but he more than made up for it by being super nice and helpful.
This morning the nitty gritty work began, the hauling of boxes out to the truck. Naturally the weather has complied and God has rewarded all of my previous blasphemies with hot hot sunshine. It always make me reassess how much I REALLY want to keep something once I've hauled it around in the hot sun a few times. Am I really going to read this book again? How badly do I really need all these chonies? Do I really need all these cooking utinsils, can't I just stir with my hand?
We loaded up the truck for a couple of hours, arranged some of the items and boxes, and by 9:30ish, decided to call it a day, at least with the outside portion. I had already sweated through one outfit, so we are gonna concentrate up inside tasks, packing up the last remaining items, vacuuming, etc, until the cool of the evening returns.
The countdown for departure is now at three days and counting....break out the chippers North Dakota, we're coming!!!
The truck arrived promptly on Friday (I'll give a big plug to ABF U-Pack here, they know their shit and do it well) and even Alycia was impressed. Yup, it's a full sized semi trailer, and we're a packin' it. Again a plug for ABF U-Pack - the driver was able to skillfully manuever the trailer without killing or maiming the podocarpus tree along the street, left the end of the truck right at the start of the driveway (exactly where we wanted it), and took plenty of time to explain how everything worked. Sure he didn't have all his teeth, but he more than made up for it by being super nice and helpful.
This morning the nitty gritty work began, the hauling of boxes out to the truck. Naturally the weather has complied and God has rewarded all of my previous blasphemies with hot hot sunshine. It always make me reassess how much I REALLY want to keep something once I've hauled it around in the hot sun a few times. Am I really going to read this book again? How badly do I really need all these chonies? Do I really need all these cooking utinsils, can't I just stir with my hand?
We loaded up the truck for a couple of hours, arranged some of the items and boxes, and by 9:30ish, decided to call it a day, at least with the outside portion. I had already sweated through one outfit, so we are gonna concentrate up inside tasks, packing up the last remaining items, vacuuming, etc, until the cool of the evening returns.
The countdown for departure is now at three days and counting....break out the chippers North Dakota, we're coming!!!
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Another Reader
A quick but hearty shout out to my buddy Mike (last name hidden for security reasons) who recently and reluctantly admitted to being a regular reader. He gains notoriety as he is the first non-relative/non-significant other to publicly admit to being a frequent reader. We'll do our best to entertain him with humorous stories of our upcoming acclimation to life in Grand Forks.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Zen a Day Calendar
One of the few things that isn't quite packed up yet is the Zen A Day Calendar (it's present from my Dad to Alycia, so technically it's hers, but I ponder many of the wise words of wisdom). The quote from yesterday was fun. I'm not necessarily all about mantras or slogans, but sometimes things are said that are profound and are worthy of further introspection.
"Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what want so that they will be happier.
The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you really want."
Margaret Young
Margaret Young was no critic of modern society, but a jazz singer from the 20's and 30's.
Sorry to get all thoughtful and pensive on you, just though I'd pass along.
"Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what want so that they will be happier.
The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you really want."
Margaret Young
Margaret Young was no critic of modern society, but a jazz singer from the 20's and 30's.
Sorry to get all thoughtful and pensive on you, just though I'd pass along.
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