Journal…Of Sorts…

Since I was turning 30, Sharron and I decided we needed to have a party.  The original idea was to have a few people over for some BBQ, beer and games.  We discovered quickly that a LOT of people wanted to come, so we ended up inviting like 20+ people.  I think around 18 showed up, which is quite a lot for me.  Things were looking up, the food was good, the beer was good.  All I needed was for a few people to leave and then we could bust out the games.  A few of the people with kids left pretty early, so that was a good start.  Around 9, a few more people decided it was time to go home to the kids.  A few more people turned into nearly everybody and all of a sudden the house was empty except for 2 guests.  WTF?  9 PM?  Our friends Rick and Kirsten stayed until around 11:30, but I think that was because Kirsten wanted to stay and talk to Sharron as she hadn’t had the chance in a while.  No games were played.

I guess I just didn’t realize how “mature” this crowd is that they needed to go home to the kids (read: bed) at 9 PM!

Since moving in to our new house, we’ve discovered that it’s not as Parker (Dog) friendly as we’d like.  The back porch is a great place to keep him outside, but it’s not covered and doesn’t have any place for him to use the bathroom.  There’s a really large area next to our house that we’re responsible for, but it’s not fenced in and Parker isn’t really voice trained.  The solution has been to walk him more often, but he doesn’t like to use the bathroom (#2) on the leash.  Our solution has been to seek estimates from contractors who will build us an awning for the back porch and a fence for the yard.

Yesterday, an add on Yokota ads was pointed out to me with a free awning.  I got in touch with the owner this morning and was told that it needed to be taken down in like an hour.  Whoa!  I got ahold of my contractor and together we went over to the house and took it down.  It took like a hour and will need a lot of reconfiguration to get it to work with our house, but hey, free supplies.  :-)

After doing tons of cleaning and getting ready, culminating with another half day of the same on Thursday, we were finally moved from off base to on base on Friday.  Hooray!

The movers were scheduled to show up at 8 AM on Friday, but didn’t arrive until 9.  Their plan was to completely pack all of our stuff, move it and then unpack it all in one day.  We figured they’d show up with a small army of packers to facilitate this process, but instead only 2 guys showed up.  To make things worse, after 90 minutes they felt the need to take a 30 minute break!  At around 11, a third guy arrived and we then finally started to notice some significant progress.  The moving portion of their team arrived after 12 some time and we really did have that small army finally.  They were able to get everything packed and loaded onto their trucks by around 3:30.  They told us they were going to take a lunch break and would be at our house at 5.  We weren’t optimistic that they’d be able to unload us and unpack us all in one day, so we headed to the Air Force hotel on base and checked into the room we’d reserved just in case.  They were true to their word this time and arrived promptly at 5 and immediately began unpacking.  Sharron and I had already come up with a plan for where we wanted everything to go, so she positioned herself upstairs and I sat in the entryway and directed traffic.  It took them maybe 1.5 hours to unload the trucks before we started unpacking.  The deal is that they have to take away all of the boxes and packing paper, so they needed to unpack everything they’d packed that morning.  We all went into double time and managed to get all of the boxes unpacked within another 1.5 hours.  They were able to leave a little after 8 PM.

PHEW!  By this time of day we were beat.  We headed to the bowling alley for some dinner at their Thai place before heading to the hotel to hit the sack.  We’d already decided to sleep in on Saturday, so we didn’t bother to set an alarm.  :-) 

We ended up getting up at around 8 AM and headed to the Enlisted Club for breakfast (it’s the best around).  After breakfast we headed to the house and started moving furniture around.  I wish I could say we started organizing, but that project is a ways off I think.  The movers were required to unpack us, but they weren’t required to put everything back onto the shelf it originally came from.  We got the stuff situated enough that we could move on to the major project of moving the furniture.  We started in the bedroom so we’d have a place to sleep and began to notice that our original plan wasn’t going to work (What craziness is this!?). 

“A plan is just a list of things that aren’t going to happen.”

Ryan Phillippe’s character Mr. Parker in The Way of the Gun

We rolled into plan B.  Then into plan C.  Probably into plan D we finally managed to find something that worked.  What’s great though is that it REALLY works.  It’s like our stuff was meant to fit into the bedroom.  This would be an ongoing theme as we moved furniture throughout the house.  It didn’t work at first, but when we were finished it seems that everything was meant to fit exactly where it is.  Our living room and office are SO well layed out that it’s really nice to just be in those rooms.  Our rooms in our off base house were nice, but they just weren’t the right dimensions to really fit our stuff into.  I think we finished with the layouts last night before dinner.  :-)

I’m leaving in a few minutes for our move out inspection.  Hopefully we’ll get our entire deposit back and make all of the cleaning we did worthwhile!

EDIT:  Success!  They gave us back our entire security deposit and said it was the cleanest house they’d ever received back.  Wow, that’s QUITE the compliment coming from a Japanese person!  :-)

Sharron and I are still hooked on Lost.  We even discuss our theories with any of our friends that will listen.  On the net though, I’ve read a lot of complaints about the show.  People seem very critical of it and seem to think that the producers are just making stuff up as they go along.  Isn’t that like, every show?  Just because we want the answers SO badly doesn’t mean they should change their story telling style.  Now I agree that it seems we’re given answers at a snails pace, but that’s what the show has always been about.  It will end of a cliffhanger and then not pick up that storyline for several weeks.  I think that’s what I actually enjoy about the show, there’s so much going on that they can take a break from one story and go with another, and somehow that story will end up being connected to the previous one.  It’s cool.

Don’t forget, Survivor has been my favorite show lately, so what do I know?  ;-)

This morning, housing again told us that our move in date would be delayed.  Sharron and I had had enough of this crap, especially since we have ORDERS in hand that state what our move in date is, and we’d already schedule the movers, a hotel, pet boarding, internet install, telephone install, furniture delivery, etc., so we decided to run our issue up the chain of command (with which we can beat people with).  We decided to just show up at the housing office and wait to speak to the flight commander.  We only waited about 10 minutes before being shown in to her office.  We told her about our situation and how we’d been receiving bad service and how we were drawing the line there.  She agreed with us, spoke to our housing counselor about why we’d been delayed and then told us that it would be no problem if we move in on Friday the 18th, the day our orders state.  Victory!  (finally)