Blogging from Zephyrhills

Brighthouse came today, on the day they said they would, on time and with all the equipment and supplies they needed to do the job. One hour later, we have phone service, cable TV and internet, which I am using right now to post this. I could name a number of people who could learn a great deal from Brighthouse Networks. My purpose on this planet is not to spend every day sitting around waiting for people who never show up or call when they say they will.

Debbie drove over Saturday night after work with a load of stuff. The place is really starting to fill up and we don't even have a third of our crap here yet. I'll be calling Restore to pick up another load of left-overs from the previous owners and some of the pieces we've removed that are still in good enough condition that someone can make use of them. That will open up a couple good-sized holes for us to fill back up with bins full of things we have no idea where to put. I'm thinking "landfill" sounds good, but we'll probably try to find new homes for most of it rather than dumpster it.

One thing we had to get done before we moved was to get a hard-wire network connection for Debbie's computer. For poking around on the internet, her laptop's wimpy wireless connection was good enough, but for running a voice and data VPN connection so she can work from home, a 56K network connection just wasn't going to do the trick. I had peeked under the trailer to see just what would be involved in running a wire for its entire width. It was ugly. Seriously ugly. So I picked up a 50-foot fish tape at Lowes, dug out the Ric's Stuff box that has all my network cabling supplies and tackled the job while Debbie was here to be the second pair of hands. It actually went pretty smooth and we were all set in a couple hours. That was the only thing I had on the to-do list for the day, so we made the decision to make a round-trip to Sanford to get our bed.

Our bed doubles as storage, and for the last week or so, we've been kicking stuff from pillar to post here in the trailer that will ultimately be stored under the bed. I made the bed so it breaks down for easy transport, and I thought it all fit in the back of the Durango. I measured how much space we had to make sure. Seven feet. No problem. A queen bed is only like 80 inches, right? A hundred miles later, we discover that either our queen bed is eight feet long, or I need to practice more with a tape measure. So we grabbed a bunch of other stuff instead and headed back to Zephyrhills. We were making pretty good time, until we got to the jackknifed semi blocking all lanes. We were able to get off I-4 and go around the mess without loosing too much time, but it meant that Debbie would have to drive back to Sanford after dark. She finally got home around 9pm after a (thankfully) smooth ride home.

So yea. Not one of our more productive days, but at least at this point, we're about 90% livable. I'm waiting on one more phone call from someone who was supposed to call me Friday and promises on poor ol' Granny's grave that he'll call me today. If I can get his ass out here before Debbie comes to pick me up Thursday night, we can move in and actually be living in a legal residence. How first-world. I'm not holding my breath. But no matter what, we'll be living here by the end of July, even if we have to take our baths in a galvanized tub sitting over a wood fire.

Well, I need to call the Restore people and set up another pickup and set up the truck rental for this weekend. And wait for a phone call, of course. It will be so nice when we get past this.