We still don’t have any appliances, but Mark is scheduled to bring them here and install them next week along with the propane tank and gas lines needed to run the stove. In the mean time, Lorena is on a regular schedule at Anytime Fitness again and I am working full time from my (somewhat messy) home office with the view of Rainier. This is ALL a very good thing. Mark will be here to do his work next week while we are gone. It is nice to have someone watch the house. The week after that is painting week and we should be all done.
We will be up in a Hilton Hotel in Vancouver, BC with an Anytime Fitness across the street from us. It does not get much better than that. This is something I think we will be able to do together on a semi-regular basis. My new company has certainly been treating me well so far.
We went to our friends’, Bob’s and Gena’s house after church today for lunch. The highlight of the lunch was the Camellia flower Bob and Gena’s daughter, Bonnie, put in Lorena’s hair. The Rhododendrons and a bunch of other flowers were in bloom at their house and Bob picked a beautiful bouquet for the table. Other friends came over (Jack, Norm and Linda) were there. It was truly an odd and wonderful sensation when I realized I was the most liberal guy in the group and those who know me know that is a pretty unusual situation.
Lorena and I were a little discouraged with the taco scene in the Twin Cities of Centralia and Chehalis even though we have only been here now for a couple of weeks. That has all been remedied now that we have been to 
Christian has been to work for three days and it looks like he is getting his arms around things in the lab. He really likes the area where he lives although he says the culture is a little more direct. Actually, he did not exactly say “direct,” but you get the idea. He hopes to look around a little in Boston this weekend, maybe get in a workout and see the art museum across the street.
I drove up to Vancouver, BC last night to stay at a Hilton close to where the brand new corporate offices of my new company are located. It is a beautiful drive up from Centralia and the border crossing is not too bad. Every time I come up here I think, “I don’t remember it being this beautiful.” It is truly an amazing place with snow-capped mountains, lots of beautiful stretches of water and a huge, cosmopolitan city. I am looking forward to being here now and then and my company says it is fine for me to bring Lorena.
Bob and Gena are true champions. They have been kind to us way above and beyond the call of duty. They arrived in Centralia with all our stuff from North Carolina Friday evening. All of us, including their daughter Bonnie, went to the McMenamin’s Olympic club to celebrate–the weather cooperated wonderful as we were able to sit outside and talk and talk.
Christian flew from Tempe to Boston yesterday to start an internship at MIT’s Lincoln Labs. He 
Bob and Gena are on the last stretch home with our load of stuff from North Carolina. We are very grateful for their efforts on our behalf, but also pretty envious. They had some excitement (see the burning car), saw some beautiful places, got together with family and made friends with some of our (and their) old, dear friends from Raleigh. This picture Gena sent along of their drive yesterday through the mountain west did not do anything to make me any less envious.
Mark came up to meet the granite guy who was here to measure the installed cabinets so he can cut the granite. It is a little bit of an odd shape, but he is pretty sure he can get it out of one piece. Mark installed all the cabinet doors, drawers and all three cutting boards. In addition, we were able to get the clothes washer and dryer pushed into place in the laundry room (see below). We left the cardboard in place so we do not mess up the floor as we move stuff in and out. The rest of the pictures are of what the cabinets look like with new stuff added. The appliances should get here next week and the granite should be complete by the end of the week. I am not sure it will all go that fast, but we can surely hope.
This is Olivia. We call her our niece, but we serve the role of (in common parlance) her God parents. She has always been quite a precocious child. This picture was taken on a ski trip we took with her family. Olivia’ dad, Al, told her to go tell the big guy to help her get something out of the car. The name stuck. To this day, I am “the big guy” to Olivia. We saw the beautiful Olivia last week at a church convention in Arizona. She is in high school now, even more precocious and has turned into quite the fashion plate. We hope to see more of her now that we are on the west coast. She and Lorena are negotiating with Olivia’s parents to arrange for to come up from California for a visit with us and with Kelly.
The internet came up today. Based on my previous experience with DSL, I have to admit I was stunned the whole process was so painless and even inexpensive. We plugged it in, filled in a few lines on the screen, set up the wireless router part of the whole deal and were up and running. Not only that, I checked the upload and download speeds and they were as advertised. I was pretty sad because we do not have access to cable internet on our property. We are not so far from town, but in a little pocket where it almost certainly does not pay to run the cable out here. I should have known that since the many years that have passed since we previously had DSL, they have gotten their act together. I know some of the speed and quality issues have to do with how close one is located to a hub and we are pretty close so that might be why everything works so well. On the other hand, we ARE close. That was a dodged bullet.
Our friends, Bob and Gena took a trip we really want to replicate or at least a copy very closely someday. They took the train from Centralia to Seattle and then on down to the airport where they caught a plane to Atlanta to spend a few days with family there. They followed that up with a drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains to Raleigh to pick up all the stuff that has been in storage since we moved out of our house there to help take care of failing and slowing-down parents in Oregon and Texas. We are very grateful to Bob and Gena. The reality is that I just met them face-to-face one time a few months back at Starbucks just because they were kind enough to invite a newcomer from church for a cup of coffee. They are friends of friends and family, retired and kind enough to take a long trip back to the East Coast to pick up all the stuff we did not move out of our house to bring it out to Centralia. It is STILL way too much stuff even though we threw away a lot.
me envious–the train pictures. Lorena and I really want to take advantage of the fact that we live in a town with an Amtrak station that goes to Seattle and Portland–both of them places we want to go. The flew to Atlanta–a great town where I lived for less than a year, but even that was enough to give me a great love for that town and the friends I made there.
The cabinet designer Mark uses has an amazingly broad range of cool things to have in a kitchen. There is a lazy susan that allows for the use of the normally difficult area beneath the counter in a corner (see the picture below). It makes that space way more accessible and just about perfect for bigger pots and pans. The “two trash cans in a slide out drawer” is amazingly useful as are the suggestion for ergonomically exceptional placement of pullout cutting boards. The big opening on the left of the image is, of course, for the refrigerator.
The problem Mark saw when the cabinets went in is the placement of the lights too close to the cabinets. He opened them up and will move them to a better place sometime this morning–a minor foible.
We are completely slammed with the move (drove to Tempe to spend a few days with Christian, went to a church event in Casa Grande for four days, drove from Tempe to Bakersfield yesterday, then from Bakersfield do Central Point, Oregon today), but I thought I should put up a few images of the work Mark and his team has been doing on the house. We particularly like what he is doing with the wall across from the island. It is a narrow cabinet, but has glass doors and a “nook” with a granite shelf for coffee and hot water (for tea) pots. Eventually, the door to the right in the picture will feature a glass window, too.
Mark brought the cabinets to the house on his trailer this morning. I was worried because 
Kiwi was very nervous on all of the drive from Texas to Tempe except when we were in the hotel room. For some reason, neatly made beds are calming to her. When we got to Christian’s apartment, though, she was in heaven–just happy and excited to be there. Lorena has been doing her usual workout, shop and clean routine while Christian and I have kept our noses to the grindstone, him on homework and exams needed to finish the semester and me on software improvements for the sickle cell disease project which is scheduled for clinical testing in Nigeria and who knows where else over the next several months. The first testing will take place in Nigeria and I have one VERY big set of functionality to add before I go to a big church convention tomorrow. I would rather join Kiwi which maybe is why I don’t make the big bucks.