Congratulations it's a green!

We woke up bright and early to go car shopping today. Dad had the paper and we looked at the cheap ads and then we visited the first dealer. On the way we stopped to visit dan at the caffeine factory. I used the power of the internet when we got lost on the way there, and felt so proud of my little cell phone. Steph really married a nerd. The guy on the first lot was really nice, but the only cars they had with the options we wanted were the WRONG color. So we went to the next dealership, it turned out to be farther away than we expected, and Steph had to pee quite badly by the time we got there.

They had an accent that we wanted to try, but the elantras they had were actually a lower price with power windows, doors, cruise, and remote entry. The new accent comes with ABS brakes standard, but that was the only reason to even consider it. In the end, Stephanie really wanted the green or the red, and we couldn't find a dealer with the red, and the green was only in the elantra, and the elantra was cheaper, so DEAL!

The actual deal took nearly 4 hours, we went to lunch, and came back and took a tour, talked with the salesman, and generally just chilled. It wasn't too excruciating, because at the end of the waiting there's a NEW CAR! Steph drove off the lot with a big grin on her face. She's grinning right now just thinking about it. She tested out the AC as high as it could go, and tested the brakes in heavy portland traffic. She anxiously wanted to call her family and tell them, but i won't let her call and drive when I'm in the car. Plus when I warned about someone crashing into her she got quite superstitious. It's now her baby.

We went to a fantastic birthday dinner for my mom at Boccelli's in Gresham. They have fantastic pasta. I had the Gnocchi, and Stephanie had the Ravioli with a sun dried tomato cream sauce. It was the first time in about 2 years since all of us kids and spouses and grandkid have been together at the same place and time. I think mom was pleased enough to explode.

Erik and Dan had to go to Midas in the middle of dinner because the doodyheads kept his car 6 hours past when they said it would be ready and if he didn't pick it up they were going to lock it up overnight. It made for a fun moment of gritching about mechanics, and Midas in particular. We all seem to have a bad story about Midas, I wonder if that counts as a consumer warning?

Christi and Bryan went to a wedding after dinner and the rest of us went up to mom's house and just hung out and talked. It was fun. Christi and Bryan just got home and now I'm heading to bed.

Good night internet.

A new state, but not state of mind

We arrived at my parents house at 645. So it took a total of 13 hours and 25 minutes to go the 790 miles from Fresno to Welches. We only had to stop to pee twice. All other times were included in gas stops, or lunch stop. I think you all should be very proud of Stephanie!

When we arrived my dad was mixing some fantastic margaritas and my mom was getting a fantastic dinner together. We had bbq grilled steaks, cheesy garlic bread, a superb potato salad, a green salad with feta cheese and dried tomatoes, and grilled corn on the cob. We topped it of with chocolate covered ice cream for dessert. All this after working a full day at the office! Love you mommy!

I voraciously read all my fans' comments, and I want to explain the duct tape. Our cigarette lighter in our ford escort is actually made for lighting cigarettes (gasp!). So it's a little smaller than is useful for plugging in 12-volt car accessories. In order to power our inverter we have to continually push on the plug to keep contact and power running. This is tedious, so I turned to nature's glue, duct tape, to do the job for me! You can see the results of this fabulously ghetto setup in one of the pictures.

5am is for suckers, and truckers, and other things that rhyme with suckers.

Welcome to life on the road. When I turned on the light in the still dark room Stephanie said, "Faggot! You didn't have to turn on the big light all at once!". This mirrored my feelings exactly, including that sickly feeling you get in your stomach when you wake up after too little sleep. I wanted to be on the road at 5am, but after loading the bags and triple checking everything, and saying goodbye to sherb, it was more like 5:20. Not bad for working with a Salsig woman.

I know that you all feel the same way that I do about lists; it's fun to cross them off. Here's the list we made yesterday, and that I finally crossed off this morning.

pay rent*
pay aaa*
pay comcast*
pay pge*
pay att*
stop newspaper*
stop mail*
drop off truck and key*
get bday cards*
buy a hat*
put water in car*
bring unemployment paperwork*
car title 94 escort*
make website*
bring duct tape*
bring computer w/ charger and gps*
bring cell with charger and usb cord*
bring camera, with charger, and batteries, and usb cable*
bring friends season 5*
bring jd's games*
bring maps and books*
call jeanne get phone nbrs and addresses*
pack clothes for 7 days. include swimwear, 1 nice outfit, 1 warm outfit, real shoes (not sandals)*
pack deodorant, toothbrushes, shaver, razor, brush, curling iron, blow dryer, toothpaste, shaving gel, mosquito spray, lotion, motrin*
go to bed by 10pm*
set alarm for 5am*

The Equipment

I'm going to try to put a new post on the blog everyday, with pictures, so you all can keep up with us as we travel around the country. How will I do this you ask? The picture above shows the equipment I'll be using in the car as we drive from landmark to landmark. I've got the laptop in the middle. It connects to the internet via the T-m0bile MDA on the right. Anywhere we have cell service I can connect at 230 Kbps. This is the key! It also takes decent pictures with the 1.3MP camera, so I may never pull out our battery hungry kodak. Below the Laptop is the power inverter. It plugs into the cigarette lighter and lets me plug anything with a standard power cord into it. This will let me power the laptop while on long 8 hour stretches without worry of running out of battery. On the left is our gps unit. I don't suspect that we'll need it, but it interfaces smartly with Microsoft Maps and Streets 2006 and will tell me where I am and how to get to the next place I want to be. As if I couldn't do that before the internet was invented.

P.S. Steph says this post is way too nerdy

Here we go!

I started the blog today. That's right, 6 hours before we have to go to bed, and while stephanie is packing, I'm tooling around on the internet.

I'm excited that we're leaving tomorrow, but I'm nervous that we'll forget something. This is my first 6000 mile road trip, and it's going to really suck tomorrow when, after 2 hours of driving, I remember the one thing that I should have brought that will make the whole trip more enjoyable.

I paid all the bills today. Some of them wouldn't let me pay online unless I signed up for automatic payments from here on out. That sucks because I prefer to be in control, not have the faceless corporate automatons take my money when it pleases them. I know I can cancel the autopayments when I get back, but will I remember? Not only that, but will I be willing to put myself through phone tree hell?

P.S. That's right Julie, I said "tooling". It's a euphemism, get over it.