ABC's

As part of her night time routine, she has started to give her doll a night time routine as well. In this first video, she is rocking the doll and singing her a song. The song happens to be her version of the ABC's.



This second video is her putting the baby doll in her crib to go night night. She's gonna make a great big sister one day :)

Internet

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I started working from home this week. At first, we were scheduled to have wireless internet connection through the Cresson Borough in place before the week began. However, with the trees there was not a clear signal for us to get that. Plan B was then to get cable service from Comcast. Because we moved in over the July 4th holiday weekend, we couldn't actually get in touch with anyone from Comcast until Monday, July 7th. One of our kind neighbors did not secure their wireless, so I was able to tap into that if I sat next to the window in the closet storage room. Well, that only works some of the time. If it's rainy, cloudy, or even a slight breeze I get disconnected. After a lot of frustration the first few days, I would drive down to the library that offered WiFi and work from there. Only problem with the library is that I can't make or take any phone calls. The soonest Comcast could schedule to come out to start service is Tuesday, July 15th! On Thursday, we had the idea to come into campus so I could work out of Justin's office. We weren't sure what time the office would be open, so we thought we'd have breakfast at our only fastfood restaurant in town, McDonald's. I remembered seeing a lego table there, so I knew that could keep Paige busy too. And they advertise WiFi so I could work for an hour or so before driving into campus. As soon as we get to McD's I start looking around for a power outlet. My laptop has a battery life of about 20 minutes max. I couldn't believe it, but there was not one outlet in the entire McDonald's seating area! How could a restaurant advertise WiFi but have no outlets? I asked the cashier/manager person. I should've known better. She said she didn't even know what WiFi was. She "hates computers". I tried explaining I didn't need help with the WiFi part, just the outlet to plug in. She seemed thoroughly confused. Maybe she hates electricity too.

Today (Friday) I decided to come back up to campus since it worked out fairly well yesterday. Only thing is you have to walk through a classroom to get to Justin's office and class was in session this morning. So, today I'm at the campus library...for now. Until I have to make some calls. Cross your fingers that Comcast comes out and everything is set up and ready to go on Tuesday!

Edit: Here's a picture of my makeshift office while we were waiting on Comcast installation.

Cresson - a small town

From what we've seen so far Cresson is a great, small town. Population is estimated at 1521 as of July 2006. It's very quiet. Our street as near the top of a hill. Our house is situated on a lot behind another house. So we don't get much traffic on our street at all. Today was trash pickup day. I saw the trash dump truck drive up the main street early this morning and was waiting for them to turn down our side street, but they never did. Just a few moments ago, a red pickup truck drove by collecting the rest of the trash including ours on the side streets! You know it's a small town when pickup trucks collect trash.

In Phoenix, our biggest concerns were safety. There were a lot of gangs around and graffiti. Occasionally we'd hear gun fire. Our house had been robbed within a few months of us living there. We just never really felt safe. Plus it was very noisy. At night, we'd hear dogs barking, neighbors partying, cars screeching down the street. It's the complete opposite here. Our bedroom is on the ground floor, right by the street and we hear nothing at night. Some neighbors were setting off firecrackers over the holiday weekend, but even that quieted down by 10pm! The loudest noise comes from chirping birds.

Here are some more stats on Cresson:
46% Males, 54% Females
Median age: 38.7
Estimated median house/condo value in 2005: $77,300
Race: 98.4% White Non-Hispanic
Elevation: 2030 feet

The Move: Day 5 and beyond

We made it to Cincinnati on day 5. I think this was probably the easiest day of them all. Maybe because we had a familiar place as a goal. We got in after 9pm, but it was still light outside so it wasn't bad at all. We spent the night with Grandma and Pop S. On Wednesday, we met Grandpa and Grammy M for brunch before we headed to Pittsburgh to see Grandma and Papa K! This was only a 5 hour drive. The truck was really acting up at this point. It stalled on us in the middle of the highway a few times. It was to the point that I wasn't even comfortable driving it anymore. I was so relieved when we finally made it to Pittsburgh. We called Penske again when we got in. The technician came out and even took it for a drive, but couldn't find anything. We only had 1.5 hours more to go to get to Cresson, so we just kept our fingers crossed.

On Thursday morning, Justin drove the truck, my dad drove his car and my mom and I with Paige drove in another car. At least this time Justin had some backup if something happened with the truck. We all made it to Cresson and immediately started unloading. It took us most of the day along with my parents to get the truck emptied. The house was packed full with boxes. We went to dinner around 8pm and said goodbye to my parents from there. Back at the house, Justin and I cleared out the bedroom enough to get the mattress flat and we called it a night. Paige slept in a playpen the first few nights until we got around to setting up her crib yesterday.

At this point, we have the rooms in pretty decent shape. Livable at least. We have a room dedicated to being a closet/storage that is still pretty tough to get around in, but the main rooms are good. We still don't have Dish Network installed or even our Internet. As I type this, my laptop is on a box next to the window in the storage/closet room so that I can pick up a neighbor's wireless! Hopefully we'll have internet by mid-week. I'm officially back at work today, and this is going to be pretty tough working like this for very long without my own internet!

Check out the July 08 folder on Picasa for pictures from our trip and our first few days in Cresson.

The Move: Day 4

Distance Traveled: 558 mi
Average Speed (moving): 59.5 mph
Total Moving Time: 9:23 hrs
Maximum Speed: 71.4 mph

Our fourth day was pretty uneventful, thankfully. We called Penske service first thing in the morning to get our headlight fixed, and while we were waiting we had breakfast and took our showers at the hotel. Ultimately, we got out of Amarillo about 9:40--not bad for having arrived past midnight!

Jen and I split driving pretty evenly today. I took the first two hours, she took the next two, etc. After the long day yesterday, we were pretty brief with our stops. We had lunch at Subway with our first fuel fillup, and had dinner at McDonalds (Jen's choice) with the second fill-up. As a result, we made good time, despite brief traffic outside of Oklahoma City and some modest backups during rush hour in Tulsa. We ultimately pulled into our hotel in Springfield at a bit before 9pm. The biggest drama of the day occurred in the parking lot, where I managed to back over one of the pet bag dispensers they had outside of the parking lot. :(

Tomorrow we're going to try to shave another hour off of our start time and leave by 8:30 or so. That's 5:30am Phoenix time! We probably still won't make it to Cincinnati until pretty late at night, but at least we'll get there assuming all goes well. -justin

The Move: Day 3

Update is posted late because of no wireless in hotel last night.

Day 3 Statistics:
Total Miles Traveled: 607 miles
Overall average speed: 57.9 mph
Moving average speed: 59.4 mph

Today, we started with a nice breakfast at Comfort Inn, and got on the road at around 9am. Not bad given how tough the prior few days had been on us! We felt well-rested and ready to get the first full day of the road trip started.

Most of the day was uneventful. We had lunch at Cracker Barrell in Gallup, New Mexico, which tasted freaking fantastic after the debacle in Black Canyon City yesterday. I drove until we got past Amarillo, at which point Jen took over driving. And what better way to get your first taste of driving a 26’ moving truck then to immediately drive into a rainstorm? It was pouring cats and dogs within a mile, but Jen did great and was almost immediately comfortable.

For dinner, we stopped in Tucumcari. Approaching the exit, we saw a billboard for McDonalds that said "Best Service in town". That should've been a sign to us to keep on going and not stop. We first decided to stop at a Chinese restaurant. We walked in and the restaurant was completely empty except for the hostess/waitress and one customer standing at the front desk waiting for his order. The hostess immediately sat us with menus and then we waited. We could see her from where we were sitting and she kept getting calls for delivery orders and who knows what else. After about 20 minutes without even giving our drink order and we noticed at least 3 other orders were going to the kitchen before we'd get a chance to place ours, we just got up and left. After that experience, we knew we wanted something quick because it was already around 8pm and we were losing daylight quickly with about 2.5 more hours of driving left. So we stopped at Pizza Hut. We went to the front counter and stood in line for a bit then realized they had servers at the tables so we sat down. Then we waited. Finally, we went back up to the counter and placed our order up there. Then we waited. About 25 minutes later (when he told us the pizza would take 15 minutes) Jen went back up to the counter to check and see how it was coming. After a few minutes, Jen interrupted the conversation between the waitresses just hanging out there and after acting majorly inconvenienced, one of them turned to look at the kitchen and there was no pizza there waiting. So then she just started chatting with another employee and we decided to leave. Finally, we walked across the parking lot to A&W for quick burgers so we could get back on the road. If you are ever passing through Tucumcari, TX just keep on driving!

By the time we got back on the road it was after 9pm and it was dark outside. We drove for a bit and then we saw a cop who pulled us over. There was one sign when we entered the state about trucks having a lower speed limit than cars, but no other truck was following it so we were just keeping up with traffic. Plus, it was only one sign. Luckily, that wasn't the reason we were pulled over. The cop notified us that one of our headlights was burnt out. He left us off with a warning and we were only about 15 minutes from Amarillo which was our destination, so we continued on.

We had picked up a brochure at one of our stops along the way with some hotel coupons. We decided to give the Fifth Seasons Inn a shot. They had rooms advertised for $38/night with a free Hot breakfast. The picture in the coupon looked nice too. The main hotel was very nice, however the rooms at the $38/night rate were the ones in the adjoining motel at the back of the building. It was kind of deceiving. We approached our room and the door was ajar. That really freaked Jen out. In addition to the hallway room, there was also a door to the outside as well as a door to the adjoining room. The room was very old and not the nicest we've seen.

The Move - Days 1 and 2

While Mom was busy working through her fiasco on Thursday and Friday, Dad was at home packing. Friday afternoon we picked up the Penske Truck, and so I needed to empty the storage closet we were renting before the movers arrived at the house Saturday morning. If 2 hours of heavy lifting in 107 degree weather isn't enough to convince you that it was time to move away from Phoenix, nothing is!

Day 2 began early--the movers arrived at 6am (and I was up until midnight packing...), and they were awesome. If you happen to be in Arizona and need a truck filled, I highly recommend AZ Best On Time Movers. Best $200 I've ever spent--we started with a house full of boxes and still-assembled furniture, and by 8:45 the truck was filled and secure. I could never get the truck packed as well as they did, and even if I could, it would have taken an entire day (in hellish heat) to get it done.

Mom got back in town at 9, and we ended up staying at the house doing final packing (there's always something else to put in a box!) and cleaning until 3. Amazing how long that stuff takes. But anyway, 3 hours late, we passed off the keys to the new owner (Mom got a kiss! No wait--two kisses! Romanians are a loving bunch I guess), we were off!

Things went well for about 30 minutes. Then, the truck started to sputter. Basically, as we accelerated moderately, the engine would occasionally not have power for a half a second. This happened three times just outside of Phoenix, and then another 6 times within a few seconds about 15 minutes later. We stopped in Black Canyon City and called roadside service. It only took them 45 minutes to get there (in the meantime, we had an absolutely terrible dinner at the 4B Cafe--Mom's roast beef was actually green), but the guy wasn't able to find anything. So we decided to keep on going and just see how far the truck would take us. Surprisingly, it behaved very well up the steep inclines to Flagstaff, so we're hoping those problems won't surface again. Our current thought is that the truck was having trouble deciding what gear to be in--and maybe now I better understand how much gas to give it at a given speed.

We ended up staying in Flagstaff, which is pretty darn far from our original goal of Albuquerque. But late departures and truck troubles will do that for you. But it's ok--we'll just have to make up time over the next couple of days--we had a lot of buffer worked into this trip anyway. In the meantime, Flagstaff is absolutely gorgeous tonight, and Mom and I got a chance to chill in the hot tub for a few minutes before coming back to the room, writing these posts, and now--falling asleep!

::pushes publish, shuts laptop::