Category: House and home Page 1 of 14

Lorena has moved from fixing toilets to installing washing machines and she owes it all the the fact that I am too fat to sit on the washing machine without denting it. She did a fabulous job.

The one “feature” of our house that we have not really figured out yet is the narrow, no-landing staircase that leads to the second floor. Putting big stuff up on the second floor would require us to get a lift or a boom of some kind and passing them through an upstairs window because some of the stuff we have will not fit through the stairway openings. It is hassle more than cost, but it made us realize that there are only two of us and it makes sense to live on the first floor and use the upstairs for visitors. To that end, we have decided to eliminate a few things, put up a couple of walls to create a downstairs office, finish out our bonus room upstairs with a mini-split so that we can cool and heat a single room rather than the entire second floor, and then just use the upstairs for when the kids come and to maybe do exercises and watch movies in the bonus room.

The truck from Texas arrived and was unloaded yesterday. As always, there was a lot of broken stuff. With so much experience moving around, you would think we would have this all figured out. Actually, maybe we do have it figured out. Things will go wrong. At any rate, everything is in the house and in the garage. Now all we need is a few months to get everything put into place.

Lorena and I have been just hanging out in the house waiting for the moving truck to arrive and for broadband internet. We got notice a couple of days that the truck broke down and heard yesterday it will be two days late. If we had comfortable chairs here, that would not be so bad, but we do not. As for the broadband internet, we are still in limbo, but hope to learn next week whether any of the cable companies are willing to pull wire to our house. If they do not, our only option will be StarLink. It is a little slow and a little expensive, but we can survive with that.

Our new house is next door to what I think is just a hobby farm. The have sheep and chickens we have been enjoying very much. So far we have only seen a couple of sheep–a white one and a brown one so maybe they are a 4-H project. That almost makes it better if that is true. We cannot wait until our moving truck gets here so we can use our binoculars to get a little better luck.

The tractor for the truck with all our stuff broke down so it will not arrive until Sunday or Monday (hopefully) rather than tomorrow as previously planned. A minor setback.

Christian has a great car. Since he is living in a place where he does not really need one, we have been keeping it for him in Texas. We hope to get it licensed under our name so we can use it in Virginia. We made arrangements to have it picked up and delivered a week or two after we arrive. Only a few days left.

We are only a week and a day from our move to Virginia. We are starting to get stuff checked off in our to-do list. The moving truck is ordered, the money has been moved to the right places so we can make the payment, the airline tickets are purchased to fly from Mexico to Texas, and transportation to the airport in Mexico and from the airport in Texas is arranged. We still need to get hotels arranged for the drive. We also found out that our car is not adequate to pull a car trailer, so we will have to get that shipped before after we get to Virginia. At least now everything seems to be a little more under control.

One of our real estate agents sent me this photo this morning of the view looking out of the living room toward our neighbor to the east for the house we are working on buying.. He told us the neighbor has sheep that graze on the other side of the trees from the house. Lorena and I are very much looking forward to that view in the mornings and the evenings. It can also be seen from the screen porch at the back of the house.

Lorena and I spent the night in sleeping bags in this spectacular, now empty house in Godley, Texas that is no longer our home. We have lots of great memories and loved just about everything about the house. Lorena did her exercises on the rowing machine and the treadmill in the media room with the huge windows looking onto the back yard. She took naps there on the sofa in the afternoon and we watched Midsomer Murders there just about every evening for the last six months. We loved the fireplace and used it whenever we could find an excuse–sometimes when it was not even cold outside.

I loved my office with its diploma wall, overstuffed sofa and chair, variable height bamboo desk, three huge monitors, and so much more. The office is where I did the last half of my PhD, met via video conference with my colleagues at Thrive Bioscience, read my Bible first think every morning with a glass of water, a cup of creatine laced coffee, and checked out the news on X and Telegram. Before we got the projector and big screen in the media room, Lorena and I often sat on the sofa and watched the British mystery series we like so much. We never did get around to installing bookshelves in the office or on either side of the fireplace, but we hope to do that at the very beginning in the house we hope to build in Granbury, Lord willing.

All our stuff is moving into the trucks and, God willing, it will all be safely in storage by the end of the day. We plan to sleep in sleeping bags tonight and then be out of the house and on our way to Mexico late afternoon tomorrow.