The truck packed to the gills. It was a fun time packing it. ugh
My girl Grace :)
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Pictures from our trip west
Some fun stuff we've been doing
An October trip to the cabin in Idaho. We had fun, the nights were cold, but still fun!
Semester one
I forgot to talk about the other PhD student that I helped this summer. When we arrived, I went to talk to my professor & he said if I wanted to work, he could find me something to do. So I helped one of the other students by watering plants, taking soil samples, taking plant samples. Fun stuff. Not really, but it was worth the money :) And it allowed me to spend most of the day outside!
Classes started at the end of August. I've never felt so stupid in my LIFE! ugh. It was crazy. It's been at least 5 years since I took calculus, so my brain was not in the mood for math. Not only that, I've been sitting in front of a computer cutting & pasting for the last 4 years, not exactly the most mind taxing job in the world. My classes were open channel hydraulics, process dynamics, and environmental quality analysis. The analysis class was pretty good, since I have forgotten all chemical analysis that may need to be done on water or soil, all of which I will need to do for my project. The process dynamic class was a COMPLETE waste of my time. It was stuff I've already covered in my other classes when I got my master's degree and I didn't learn anything new. nothing. hated it. My hydraulic class was the hardest one and I spent every week talking to the professor trying to understand what the heck was going on. But I did well in the class, so it ended okay. The entire time that I was in class I was also starting to work on some of the things for my project. I was buried in work. Luckily I wasn't doing anything with LTI, the company I worked for in Pittsburgh. I kept the job for a while to work "part time as needed" but have decided that I didn't need it anymore. Sean struggled to find a job and finally found one at the beginning of December. He took and passed the CNA exam and is now looking for a job in that field. The job he is working at now is a cooking job for people with eating disorders. He enjoys it but the pay isn't very much and it's only part time. but it's a job for now. So that catches me up for the last 6 months. life is busy but we love be out west. We are having so much fun!
Classes started at the end of August. I've never felt so stupid in my LIFE! ugh. It was crazy. It's been at least 5 years since I took calculus, so my brain was not in the mood for math. Not only that, I've been sitting in front of a computer cutting & pasting for the last 4 years, not exactly the most mind taxing job in the world. My classes were open channel hydraulics, process dynamics, and environmental quality analysis. The analysis class was pretty good, since I have forgotten all chemical analysis that may need to be done on water or soil, all of which I will need to do for my project. The process dynamic class was a COMPLETE waste of my time. It was stuff I've already covered in my other classes when I got my master's degree and I didn't learn anything new. nothing. hated it. My hydraulic class was the hardest one and I spent every week talking to the professor trying to understand what the heck was going on. But I did well in the class, so it ended okay. The entire time that I was in class I was also starting to work on some of the things for my project. I was buried in work. Luckily I wasn't doing anything with LTI, the company I worked for in Pittsburgh. I kept the job for a while to work "part time as needed" but have decided that I didn't need it anymore. Sean struggled to find a job and finally found one at the beginning of December. He took and passed the CNA exam and is now looking for a job in that field. The job he is working at now is a cooking job for people with eating disorders. He enjoys it but the pay isn't very much and it's only part time. but it's a job for now. So that catches me up for the last 6 months. life is busy but we love be out west. We are having so much fun!
Monday, December 22, 2014
it's been a while so I'll start with the trip West
I've been meaning to update this for MONTHS! ha, as you can see, it's been months and I'm just now getting around to it. So we left Pittsburgh the 1st of July. Or somewhere close to that. I have pictures somewhere. I'll have to add them later. We used ABC trucking to move our stuff which means we had to load it up ourselves. When the guy dropped the truck off he backed into the wires attached to our house and the truck was charged and I got seriously shocked. OUCH! anyway. he moved the trailer and we got to loading. I wasn't about to have issues stacking boxes to I went to Home Depot and we bought all the boxes. I wanted them to all fit together nicely, which they did when stacaked in our garage. I had all the books in small boxes and all the fluffy big stuff in the big boxes. Next time, I'm loading the damn trailer myself. I had boxes marked HEAVY for a reason, that meant they went on the bottom. The people that packed the truck didn't seem to realize that and just stacked stuff willy nilly. So when we got here stuff was smashed. I don't think anything was broken, but I think we were just lucky. We thought we had everything loaded in the truck and what was left would easily fit into our Pilot with the 2 cats. I was wrong. ugh. it was so frustrating. we had to go get another car carrier to go on top of the truck because we hadn't put enough stuff into the big truck. So instead of getting to Akron at noon like we wanted it was more like 5pm. o well. we got there eventually. We stayed over there then headed to Iowa to stay with DeAnn It took 2 days and the back of the truck was a disaster and stuff we really needed we couldn't get to because of the way I loaded it. We got to DeAnn's on the 3rd and stayed for the 4th and left on the 5th.
I unloaded everything and repacked it. We also had our bikes on the back so we had to have everything available through the side doors. The cats traveled ok. They didn't like being shut up in the rooms while we were with family and in the hotels. Sean had to travel the entire time with his back in the brace. He had been semi-released from the Dr. so we could travel. Once we left DeAnn's it took us 2 days to get to Utah. There were 2 huge accidents on the way that slowed us down. One was a totally smashed RV. I hope they were okay. Sean was actually able to help drive the second part of the trip, so it seemed to go a lot faster. Once we got to Utah we stayed with a friend and on Tuesday morning went and got the keys for the apartment. We had the truck delivered and started unloading. With no help at all. No one from our church came except for 1 guy. thanks people. A friend of mine sent her husband over after she brought us dinner. And then our friends we stayed with brought some of their guys over. The first guy, Scott had a meeting to go to but before he left we managed to get the couch stuck in the hall. I do have pics of that to share, I'll post them later.
Then my friends husband and I were able to unstick it and get it into the living room where it belonged. We were actually contemplating chopping it in half. We were able to get all the furniture off the truck the first day & into the apartment. We got the bed set up and went to sleep. The second day our friends Audre & Jerry sent some of their guys over again to help us with the rest of the boxes. Then we realized that we didn't even have enough room in our place for everything. We had moved from a 1000 sq ft house with a shed & garage to 900 sq ft. Yeah, not gonna happen. So we need to get a storage shed, but that took about a week. So we lived with boxes piled all over the place until we could get them out. In the meantime we realized that the carpet was gross and the kitchen cabinets were not the best and the toilet was falling through the floor and we didn't have a shower head. sigh. so much for looking online & having friends look at a place for us while we are 3000 miles away. Luckily we have a Bissell and can clean the carpets once a week. they will probably be cleaner when we leave. The cats got settled and so did we. The ward (our church) is great (even if their skills for helping to unload a truck are suspect), and I've actually met several friends that are friends with people I know back east. Small world. Classes started at the end of August. And I'll have to write more about that later.
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Roof project
We needed to fix the attic/roof vents for our buyers. As you can see the edges have broken off due to the heating and cooling. It was cheaper and quicker to do it ourselves. So I got all the stuff from the big box store and took it up to the roof. 
Here's what it looked like after I got all the pieces on.
I then had to cut the shingles into singles.
Then put them on the vents. 
Finished product. Not quite the right color. But I really don't care. Since Sean is still injured and not allowed to do anything I had to do this all by myself. It didn't take too long. Only about 4 hours. Probably would have been less if I would have had help. I probably could have waited until later in the week to get some help, but my anxiety was out of control wanting to get this done. So I just did it. One less thing to worry about. It was actually the last thing on the list that needed to be done for the buyers. whew. Friday, June 20, 2014
Anticipation and anxiety, all rolled into one
We sold our house!
The inspection went ok. The report came to us at 10pm, after I was asleep, but Sean woke me up anyway. So after I heard what they wanted fixed I freaked out and couldn't get back to sleep until 3am. And really, they only wanted some minor things fixed. Well, minor except for having the roof vents replaced. grrr. So I'll be working on those tomorrow. Everyone thinks I'm crazy because I plan on doing them myself, unless someone comes over to help. Which is really dumb because I've put on a few roofs before. Not the vents themselves, but it's not like they are hard. seriously easiest job I'll have to do. eh, whatever. I just need it to not rain while I have it torn apart before I put the new ones on. The appraiser was there today, hopefully he will allow us to sell it for the price we want and not knock it down a few thousand. We can't afford that. Either way, we'll be selling it, so I guess it really doesn't matter.
As for Sean, he's getting better. The bad part is, he feels he's getting better and is now seriously bored and itching to do stuff. And he's driving me crazy! We see the orthopedic doctor on July 1 and hopefully he will tell Sean he can start doing physical therapy and other stuff so he can stop going nuts.
We have a place to live in Logan finally. We were going to head to Idaho, then come back & find a place to live and leave our stuff in storage for a little while. But then we decided that might not work. So we looked at finding a place on line from 3000 miles away. It sucks! The good part is that I have friends in Logan that are willing to look at places for us so we didn't get sold a box of rocks :) Our biggest problems were that A) we currently have 2 cats and B) we want to get a dog once we are there. We didn't need a big place, 2 bedrooms would have been fine, but the whole animal thing took it to a whole other level. And my animals are cleaner than some peoples kids!! Anyway. We thought we had a line on a place and had a friends check it out, her first words were, "It's gross" lol, guess we aren't getting that house. And for $800 a month I would expect central air, there wasn't any. And then someone tried to scam us using a legit house from another website. some people. So finally we found a decent place fairly close to campus that doesn't mind pets. We have to pay extra for the pets but we'll survive. And we will be able to get a dog once we are there. The only down side was we had to pay for an extra 2 weeks rent because they couldn't legally "hold" the property for us. Which is weird because another property I talked to said if we paid $100 toward the deposit it would hold the place for us... hmmmm
We are leaving in 10 days. It's crazy. We need to get all of our stuff out of our storage place, and put it somewhere in the house. Luckily most of the stuff in the house now is in boxes. We also gave a bunch of stuff away, so we no longer have enough furniture to fill a 4 bedroom, it's only 2 now. Which is good, cause that means the truck will be cheaper.
My anxiety was on overdrive because of the fixes we needed to make before we leave and finding a place to live and now making sure everything gets packed in the right place, and, and , and, and. Can't wait to get to Logan and unpack!!
I'll post some pics of the move once it happens. Then I get to post all kinds of pics of fun things we will be doing once we get to Logan. I am so excited to get out there.
The inspection went ok. The report came to us at 10pm, after I was asleep, but Sean woke me up anyway. So after I heard what they wanted fixed I freaked out and couldn't get back to sleep until 3am. And really, they only wanted some minor things fixed. Well, minor except for having the roof vents replaced. grrr. So I'll be working on those tomorrow. Everyone thinks I'm crazy because I plan on doing them myself, unless someone comes over to help. Which is really dumb because I've put on a few roofs before. Not the vents themselves, but it's not like they are hard. seriously easiest job I'll have to do. eh, whatever. I just need it to not rain while I have it torn apart before I put the new ones on. The appraiser was there today, hopefully he will allow us to sell it for the price we want and not knock it down a few thousand. We can't afford that. Either way, we'll be selling it, so I guess it really doesn't matter.
As for Sean, he's getting better. The bad part is, he feels he's getting better and is now seriously bored and itching to do stuff. And he's driving me crazy! We see the orthopedic doctor on July 1 and hopefully he will tell Sean he can start doing physical therapy and other stuff so he can stop going nuts.
We have a place to live in Logan finally. We were going to head to Idaho, then come back & find a place to live and leave our stuff in storage for a little while. But then we decided that might not work. So we looked at finding a place on line from 3000 miles away. It sucks! The good part is that I have friends in Logan that are willing to look at places for us so we didn't get sold a box of rocks :) Our biggest problems were that A) we currently have 2 cats and B) we want to get a dog once we are there. We didn't need a big place, 2 bedrooms would have been fine, but the whole animal thing took it to a whole other level. And my animals are cleaner than some peoples kids!! Anyway. We thought we had a line on a place and had a friends check it out, her first words were, "It's gross" lol, guess we aren't getting that house. And for $800 a month I would expect central air, there wasn't any. And then someone tried to scam us using a legit house from another website. some people. So finally we found a decent place fairly close to campus that doesn't mind pets. We have to pay extra for the pets but we'll survive. And we will be able to get a dog once we are there. The only down side was we had to pay for an extra 2 weeks rent because they couldn't legally "hold" the property for us. Which is weird because another property I talked to said if we paid $100 toward the deposit it would hold the place for us... hmmmm
We are leaving in 10 days. It's crazy. We need to get all of our stuff out of our storage place, and put it somewhere in the house. Luckily most of the stuff in the house now is in boxes. We also gave a bunch of stuff away, so we no longer have enough furniture to fill a 4 bedroom, it's only 2 now. Which is good, cause that means the truck will be cheaper.
My anxiety was on overdrive because of the fixes we needed to make before we leave and finding a place to live and now making sure everything gets packed in the right place, and, and , and, and. Can't wait to get to Logan and unpack!!
I'll post some pics of the move once it happens. Then I get to post all kinds of pics of fun things we will be doing once we get to Logan. I am so excited to get out there.
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