We're Home

Well technically we got home Tuesday evening, but other than going to the post office yesterday to ship Christmas presents (yes, I do realize it's now after Christmas) the day was lost to jet lag. The cats were attention starved after 8 days alone, so a lot of the day was spent cuddling with them. They left surprising little in the way of messes to clean. Either that or I just haven't been looking in the right places. So now we know they can handle 8 days alone, but I really wouldn't want to leave them that long again without someone to look in on them.

We had a great time in North Carolina for the holiday and if it weren't for the cats, our jobs, and you know the house we already have in California, we probably would have stayed in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area for as long as our friends would have us. I think Scoob's favorite part was that he didn't have to do dishes for 8 solid days, well, that and we got to spend a lot of time with very dear friends. And our friends were approved for a home loan while we were there and they'll be moving in about a month, so one or both of us may make another trip out east to help with the move.

This was the view from our bedroom window for the trip.
Festive and gorgeous.

The lights are LEDs and the neighbors had been having a tough time
getting a good picture so I borrowed their tripod and took several.

One of my favorite pre–tri-pod detail shots.

I love all the red lights and the way the light falls on the stone walkway.

Table setting for Christmas Eve dinner.

Our friends make entertaining look so effortless.

Take home favors.

We know we want to move, but the question has always been where to move to, and now we have another location to consider. Before when Scoob talked about moving to North Carolina I told him sure he could move there, but he would be moving by himself. But now I'm totally charmed by the place. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what charmed me, but I felt comfortable and at ease there and I hadn't expected to.

Oh, and the food. We ate a couple different meals where if I closed my eyes I could imagine I was sitting in my great-grandma's kitchen. Sausage cornbread stuffing (mom, yours is still better). Vinegary barbecue. Creamed corn. Green beans. Sausage gravy and biscuits. Turns out that both great-grandma and -grandpa were born not far from where we were staying.

So anyhow, we've known we don't want to stay where we're at. And we've known this for a long time, but I think we're finally motivated to do something about it. Still no final decision on the where just yet, but we're ready to get moving on unloading some of the stuff we've got. Scoob is finally ready to sell his car. He's only been threatening to sell since before we moved in together. He doesn't drive it much. I think in the 7 years we've been together he's driven maybe 2,000 miles (whereas I'm closing in on 100,000 since I bough my car almost 5 years ago).

We figure after we unload his car, which we plan to do in January, we'll use the garage as a staging area to sort through some of the stuff we've already got in the garage and begin packing things in the house. Time line-wise, Scoob had been talking about being out of here this spring but that seems a tad ambitious seeing as how we've done nothing to prepare so far. Now we're looking at spring 2011 at the latest. It could be sooner. It just depends on how things play out.

As for me, one of the people we met while in NC was selling his old VHS tapes and books on Amazon and I said I would do the same. I had Scoob bring my 2 boxes of CDs and VHS tapes up from the garage. I have a butt load of Disney VHS tapes. It made me sad to look at them and think about getting rid of them but the fact is—we don't watch them. Dudes, The Little Mermaid is still in its original shrink wrap. With the exception of Toy Story and Hercules, all those tapes haven't seen the light of day since they were packed up in 2002. So they're going. I started copying all my CDs to iTunes yesterday thinking I'll unload those as well. They're just taking up space and once they're in iTunes I'll actually start listening to some of them again.

I had actually started copying my CDs a year or so ago but then the CD/DVD drive in my laptop gave out and the project sort of fell to the wayside. So yesterday, there I am copying away totally geeking out and looking forward to listening to some of these gems from my 20s that I'd totally forgotten about—KMFDM, Love and Rockets, Beck. I'm 50 CDs into it when on disc 51 I hear this huge pop from my computer followed by a plastic tinkling sound.

Disc 51 completely shattered inside the disc drive and that tinkling sound was the hundreds of tiny shards cascading in the intestines of my computer. It even broke pieces off the disc tray thingie. Thankfully, it seems the drive is a contained unit and all the pieces should be in there and not the rest of the computer.

Thank goodness it's a new computer and everything is still under warranty. After convincing the Dell support rep that the disc wasn't merely scratched but actually shattered to bits, I spent surprising little time on the phone. They'll be sending out a technician to completely swap out the optical drive and components. I should be getting a call in a few days to schedule a time. So until then, the CDs copying project is sidelined. Again. Oh, and I busted the vacuum cleaner yesterday as well, but Scoob took it apart and replaced the belts and it works again.