Random Thoughts

Here’s the view outside our living room. It’s quite lovely.

One thing I find really amazing here is that there is very little snow melt on the roofs of the houses. Maybe it’s just too darn cold. This morning I went out for a walk. Overnight (at about 3 AM actually, I was up) it snowed this really fine talcum like snow. All of the branches looked like they were painted white. Granted, it was 2 degrees out, but it really wasn’t that cold. The sunrise really lit things up, too.

So, if you’ve been playing along at home, you know I’ve been looking for a new car. My truck was getting really annoying, and increasingly becoming impractical. As I am want to do, I obsessed over research and model comparison. I bet I spent 20-30 hours on it over the last week or so. After trying to find a car that was the perfect combination of affordability, practicality, reliability and was something that I actually liked, I narrowed the search radius down to 3 cars: The Honda Accord, Civic and Mazda Protoge5. I drove a few Protoge’s, and while they were fun, I decided it wasn’t for me. I never did get to drive a Civic, every dealer that had one on the website was out by the time we got there. I ended up driving a ‘99 Accord 5-speed that I really liked. It was affordable, but had over 100K miles.

Not quite ready to go with a car with that many miles, I headed to another dealer to see one that they had advertised with 70K. That was gone when I got there, but they had just taken another ‘99 5 -speed in on trade. The kicker was it has only 49K miles! Strangely, the price was only about $2,000 more than ones with 90K+. After a bit of wrestling with the decision, I decided to go for it.

It’s almost the same car I had back in ‘98, only this one is an EX, which means 4-wheel discs, ABS, moonroof and premium sound. Back then I had the auto trans, which was fine, but I have to say, the 5-speed makes all the difference. As I was trying to decide, I remembered that the Accord was the only car I have ever owned that liked so much that I wanted another when the lease was up. So, now I have my wish. Oddly, it’s the same color combination, dark green exterior with beige interior. I picked it up today, and after just a few short trips, I really like it. I’m thinking Monday I may take a drive somewhere to a coffee shop to sit and read. That would be nice.

That’s all for now. Peace!

Wow, it’s hard to believe we’ve been here for 2 weeks already. In many ways it seems like much more. Everyone is settling in quite well, and we’re starting to have a routine, and sense of normalcy (as much as we ever did…)

This past week has been relatively uneventful. More unpacking of boxes, getting settled, setting things up, organizing my office. Big news around home is that I finally got the TV and surround sound system set up the way I wanted it. Though I’ve only watched it for a little bit (the opening scenes of Gladiator…), it was great to have full bodied sound and not worry about disturbing the neighbors. Sadly, it took 2 trips to Ikea to get the right countertops, but I’m really happy with the way it looks. I’ll try to get some pics posted soon.

Denise and the girls set up the Christmas tree this weekend, and in general the place is starting to look like our house.

My exciting news is that I’m looking for a car to replace my truck. We’ve decided that the truck, while handy for moving large objects, is just not that practical for our family anymore (plus it’s impossible to find parts for…). So I’ve been doing a ton of research on cars and have been out test driving a few here and there. I’ve another one to go look at today, about 20 miles north of here.

What’s weird is that when I lived in Canandaigua, driving 20 miles to go look at a car would not have been a second thought. Living in Bloomington for 2 weeks and already if something is more than 5 miles away, it seems like a long trip. This is a super-convenient area, I’ll say that.

Friday night was the CPC all-staff Christmas party. That was a good time to meet some staff I haven’t met yet (there are about 80-90 all told), as well as spouses. I have to say, it’s a really good group of people. Everyone has been very welcoming and have really made us feel like we are wanted and appreciated.

I’m having lunch with the Sr. Pastor of CPC on Thursday to give him my first impressions. That should be fun! I’ve heard he really likes to hear it like it is, but that some people have been afraid to tell him like it is. While diplomatic, I do tend toward laying it all out there, so I’m looking forward to a fun meeting.

Anyway, that’s about it. Not too much to report. I need to call the dealer up north to see if they still have my car (Mazda Protege 5) and get ready to roll out. Blessings to you…thanks for reading!

Wow, it’s hard to believe my first weekend as Tech Arts Director is in the can. And what an eventful one it was! A month ago or so, Upper Room’s worship leader moved on to another opportunity. So we’re now in the throws of auditioning new ones. Tonight was no exception. So we had a guest worship leader. No problem.

I was tasked earlier in the week with coming up with a way to have a box wrapped up like a present on stage that could hold a camera that we could use to project pictures up on the screen during the gathering (aka, service). I whipped that right up. No problem.

I knew when I took the job that I was coming into a facility that was not up to par technology-wise. I didn’t realize how bad it is until this weekend. Specifically, when we lost control of the lights and color changers and they just started acting on their own. It was kind of like in iRobot, when the robot went off and did his own thing. Did I mention that this was during the service? Our intrepid light tech twice had to run to the other side of the room and unplug lights to keep them from flashing on and off. During the message. We re-booted the board, and even the dimmer packs to no avail. Yeah, no problem.

The amazing thing (though by now I should not be “amazed”) is that God worked a great work in the hearts of those who were there. Even with flashing lights (or no lights), He spoke into their hearts and during the experiential part of the gathering, people came up and shared their hearts. It was very moving, especially when Robyn showed up on stage to share. I was blown away. I had to keep my back to the guys for a minute because my eyes began to sweat.

Afterward, we had some time to meet with the worship candidate. Good guy. Seems God is taking him on a similar journey to mine. I hope we get to meet again.

I can’t tell you how much of a relief it is to have tomorrow off. I got home around 10 PM, relaxed a bit, warmed up some awesome mac & cheese and am now just sitting here writing. I don’t have to get up early tomorrow and go to work. Having Saturday’s and Monday’s off is a gift from God. Seriously. All churches should do this for their staff. And this is only my first week. I can’t wait until I’m not still unpacking and can actually do something fun on my days off!

In other news, I found out that a lot of people on our street have snow blowers. And they love to run them. I shoveled my drive last night (6″ or so) so I wouldn’t have as much to do today. When they plowed the road, we got plowed in. When I went out to shovel it out, I met Mark, the guy across the road. He had done his drive, the drive on the other side of him and was on his way to do another when he stopped and asked if I would like him to do mine. Sure! So in less than a minute, he saved me 10 minutes of work, not to mention my back. Later, I looked out, and the guy behind us was running his snow blower down my drive widening it out some more! Love that Minnesotian friendliness!

So that’s about it. Tomorrow we set up bank accounts, get our insurance switched over and all that stuff. We should have new MN cell phone numbers also, so look for an email with that info if you’re someone who might actually call me one day. If you don’t get it and think you should, leave a comment here. Peace…

This will likely be a multi-part post as I am running low on battery, and we need to run out and get some stuff.

Day 1
Turns out staying in an empty house and sleeping on air mattresses looked a lot better on paper than it did in real life. Not sure I’ll do that again. Especially in Minnesota. In November. Turns out we arrived just in time for a somewhat unseasonable early cold snap. As I lay on our air mattress under only one thin blanket, freezing, I kept wondering why the furnace was running so much. I had time to ponder this because I don’t think I slept much. Mainly because I was freezing.

When I got up from my freezing bed, we discovered that the temperature went from a balmy 31 when we went to bed to a downright nippy 8 by midnight. The winds picked up quite a bit too, which caused the turbine roof vent to spin rapidly. I mention this only because the bearing seems to be shot and it caused a high pitch whine, up around 2,000 Hz, which was clearly audible all night long. After a cold and sleepless night, I was ready to start my first day.

Actually, it was quite good. We had all-staff meeting first thing, where I was once again introduced and made to feel especially welcome. I’ll say one thing for Minnesotians, they’re a friendly lot. Afterward, we had a good small group time, where I got to know a few people a little better. Then it was off to Christmas in my office, where I unpacked and set up my new MacPro editor. It’s the mac-daddy of all computers. Pictures will come soon (still waiting for some shelving to complete the ambiance…).

Craig, my boss, has done a great job of letting me start slowly and get up to speed. When I started my job at the ad agency a few years ago, I felt like I was dropped into the middle of a lake and had to learn to swim. Here I feel like I’m standing over a treadmill with my feet on the sides. I don’t have to walk yet, and when I do, I have control over the speed. It’s a nice feeling. Everyone’s been really great.

Day Two
The truck arrived.  That was a good thing. When I got home from my first day at work, the truck was close behind. I spent a few hours (with able assistance from Katie & Robyn) getting the mattresses off the truck and into our rooms. The second night was much better. We had blankets, warm mattresses and food.

Day Three
The truck is unloaded. A few ambitious and able-bodied helpers from the community (Upper Room-speak for church) came over and unloaded. Though it was 15 degrees and really windy, they were troopers and we got the whole thing emptied out and most everything in the right rooms in about 2 hours. Thanks Matt, Robyn & Eric!

I was pretty whipped by that point, and we didn’t get much else done. Mostly stacked boxes where they were going to go, and finding the flannel sheets. Turns out it does get cold here after all.

The rest of the week was much the same. Unpacking, the TV was delivered (50″ hi-def bought online at a great price from Best Buy the day after Thanksgiving…sweet!), and we started getting organized.

Last night (Friday), Denise & I went to Ikea and picked out our dining room table and chairs, as well as some other stuff. I put them together this morning, and we got the living room cleaned up. Almost looks like a living room now!

We also arrived just in time for the first snow storm of the season. I hear we’re supposed to get 7 inches today. It’s been snowing all day and looks like they could be right.

Dish Network was here in the morning to install our TV. Sadly, they couldn’t get a clear view of the bird, so we’re without for a while longer. By sheer dumb luck or divine providence, there was a DirecTV crew installing a dish right across the street at the same time. I asked the guys if they could come take a look at our place to see if they could get a signal. The lead installer stopped over after a while and said, “No problem. We’ve got a clean shot.” So I guess we’re going back to DirecTV. Probably take a week of scheduling to make it happen, though. Oh well.

Like I said, it’s off to the store to pick up a few more things. Tomorrow is my first service as TD, so that should be fun. Then I get another day off. I think I like this already!

Sorry it’s taken so long to get the final leg of the journey documented here. I feel like we’ve been on a marathon for the last few days just trying to get our stuff in the house, set up and get acclimated to work. It’s been good, but there hasn’t been much time to do anything but unpack.

As many of you know, we arrived at our house on Monday at about 1:10 PM. We got into the house and emptied out the CR-V and truck. The trip here was really uneventful. Driving from Rockford to here was not at all a bad trip, just a little long. Wisconsin was much more rolling and hilly than I expected. It’s been about 17 years since I was last in the cheese state, and I really don’t remember it. The weather was mostly grey and yucky in Illinois, and it continued all the way up to Eau Claire. After we finally stopped going north and turned west, the skies began to clear.

Traffic was very light and moved along well. By about 11:30, everyone was anxious to just get to the new house. I was watching the GPS tick off when we should be there and kept hoping we would be the eta. We didn’t. I called Betty, our landlord, as we approached St. Paul and we beat her here by about 5 minutes. One very pleasant surprise was a card with a gift card inside for Noodles & Company (a local restaurant that the girls really liked last visit) and some movie tickets, compliments of our landlord. That doesn’t happen often. Since we had dinner provided for us the first night, we haven’t used them yet, but I think we will tonight.

Anyway, here are some pics from the trip. I’ll write about the first week in another post.

Robyn caught the Welcome to Wisconsin center as we drove by. Looks like a nice place, though we didn’t stop. We did feel welcomed, however.

Lower WI looks remarkably like IN, OH and the rest of the lower plains. This is apparently where they grow the corn to feed the cows who make the cheese. It was a good 2 hours into WI until we saw our first bovine, however, so I can’t really verify this.

Once you get about 1/2 way north in WI, these strange rock outgrowths start showing up. They remind me of being further west, like in NM. They are really cool and I would have loved the chance to walk around and get some really good pictures. But I really just wanted to get to the house.

Whenever I see birch trees, I think of Robert Frost’s poem, “Swinging Birches.” All along the roadside, you can see these interesting forests of conifers and birches. The contrast of the white birch bark and the green pines was really cool. Robyn took this one; good job!

Again, like those strange rock sculptures, they have these mountains just popping up all over northern WI. Hard to tell exactly how tall they are, but they look impressive. As I mentioned, there was a lot more terrain in WI than I expected.

This kind of summarizes what we did for about 3 days; go down the long and winding road (or in this case, go up). I have to say, of the 7 states we traversed in 3 days, WI was one of the prettiest. Since we’re only about 1/2 hour away, we may find ourselves running over there from time to time.

Well you can’t go to Wisconsin without getting cheese. Actually you can, and we did, but here’s where you can get cheese if you want to. Here’s the odd thing; we’re a half an hour away from where they make the cheese, right? And cheese is more expensive here than it was in NY. I don’t get it. Milk, too. Must be the WI cows are better organized than NY cows and have a better pay scale or something. Have to look into that…

The sign we all were anxious to see. As you can tell, the skies brightened considerably once we arrived in our new home. IN and IL were downright dreary (how do people live there anyway?). But in Minnesota, it’s all sunshine and lollipops. Our fortune was about to change, but we didn’t know that. Anyway, it was nice to arrive in the sun and have time to go to Ikea to get some really cool chairs. More on that in a moment.

So that’s our trek. All in all, it was long, but good. It took about 16 hours of driving time and covered just over 1,000 miles. The vehicles performed very well, no one got car sick and we avoided unplanned off-road excursions and collisions with quadrapeds.

Thanks to all who prayed for us during the journey. We could tell the road ahead was being cleared in advance for us. Things went really smoothly. Now we’re on to the task of setting in and assimilating into the new culture. More to come!

It’s official, we live in Minnesota. We arrived today in good shape, and in good time, just past 1 PM. We got the cars unpacked, started putting some stuff away and Katie & I went to Ikea to buy chairs. They’re the best. Seriously.

Then some great folks from church brought us dinner. After we ate, Denise and I went shopping for food and other stuff. It’s been a really long day, and the next few will be as well, so it may take a few days to get the final driving pics up here. But we got some good ones, so there will be pics.

Okay, going to bed now…

Well, our biggest day of driving is behind us. We made it to Rockford just about 5 PM local time, which means we were on the road for about 9 hours. I think our actual driving time was closer to 7 1/2 hours, as we stopped and visited Denise’s Grandparents in Delta, OH on the way. We also stopped off in Indiana for lunch. We got held up in Chicago a bit in traffic, which was expected, but it wasn’t terrible. According to the GPS, we lost about 45 minutes there. We also got tied up a the IN/IL state line, as IN has yet to embrace 20th century technology and get EZPass lanes going. Hey Indiana, we use computers now!

Anyway, we had a nice dinner at Cracker Barrel, and are now just chilling in the hotel room. It’s nice to be relaxing and not moving for a little bit. I’m used to driving a lot, but the drive was tough on Denise. Especially in Chicago where we got separated for bit and had to make sure we ended up in the right lane. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little easier (I know it will be shorter…). According to Google maps, we have a 5 hour and 22 minute ride. Hopefully it will be that or less.

Here are some of our sights from today’s drive.

Cleveland’s skyline from the famed “Deadman’s Curve.” The day started off really pretty and I had high hopes for a sunny drive. But then…

Oh yeah, first we drove past the Jake (aka, Jacob’s field, where the Indians have a knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory…)

Yup, northwestern Ohio is just as boring as it you think it is. It’s flat, and barren and well, dull. And it goes on for what seems like forever, right, Cindy?

This was spied in Swanton, OH. Apparently, you can get yourself a bra at a great price while your muffler is being replaced. It’s two, two services in one!

After your new bra and muffler, stop by the Big Buffalo Pawn Shop to pick up whatever else you may need.

It was about Indiana that the skies started to change…The clouds rolled in and it got really gray. In fact, about 2 PM it looked like it was closer to 4:30 it was so dark. Good times.

It’s remarkable how much Northern Indiana looks like Northern Ohio. Flat and boring. Only with more snow. Thankfully, it’s a narrow state…

Welcome to Gary, Indiana, the armpit of Indiana. As Katie described it, “Gross!” Best to keep on driving. At least it was cold and therefore didn’t smell as bad as it does in the summer!

Ah, Chicago, just like I remember it. The traffic was like this for about 20 miles, or all of downtown Chicago. By the time we got to Shaumburg, it broke up a bit and we got moving again.

So that’s it. The next post will be from the new house! Peace out, yo!

Today is a day off for us. We’re hanging out at Denise’s mom’s and not really doing much. I took a long walk in a park nearby this morning, and Denise is going to do a little shopping. It’s nice to be able to chill out for a few hours.

I was thinking this morning during my walk that it’s kind of surreal this move. The last 2 times I’ve done an interstate move, I woke up in my old house and went to bed in my new house. This one, being as prolonged as it is doesn’t really seem like we’re moving. It feels like we’re visiting Marty for the holiday. Tomorrow as we drive further west it will probably sink in. Like I said though, it’s hard to believe that on Monday we’ll roll into Minneapolis and begin an whole new adventure.

But that’s all the news for now. The weather forecast is good from here on out, so I don’t expect we’ll have any trouble. Tomorrow I’ll be posting from Rockford…

Well, we hit the road today. The first leg of our journey is under our belt. It’s a bit strange, as we’ve made this trip literally dozens of times before (we’re at Denise’s Mom’s in NE Ohio). In some sense, it doesn’t seem like we’re really going anywhere other than a trip to Mom H’s. The only difference is we won’t be coming back this way for a while. And on Sunday, we’ll drive on to Chicago.

I’m sitting here in my mother-in-law’s front room snitching wireless from a neighbor across the street. The MacBook Pro is pulling in a full signal, and it’s darn fast. Thanks for leaving your net open, neighbor!

This leg went well today, all things considered. We experienced a wide variety of weather, as you’ll see from the photos. We had grey skies, snow and a great sunset. And we drove straight into the sun. That was interesting. Overall, we made good time, just about 4 hours of total time, and 3:40 of drive time. Katie was excited to see snow in Ohio. We stopped at the welcome center and there was a good 3 inches of snow on the ground. Most of it has blown inland by the time we went through, so we didn’t get much coming down other than a bit in Erie.

I didn’t expect this part of the trip to be a problem, and it wasn’t. I am, however, so incredibly grateful that we didn’t have to pull a trailer. With the load in the bed, my truck can hardly get out of it’s own way. I can’t imagine another 1,200 lbs. of trailer weight. That would have been tough. We also learned that our big trailer made it to Chicago on Wednesday, so I’m guessing that it will be delivered on Tuesday of next week, which is really good.

Anyway, on with the photos:

Some threatening skies over southwestern NY. This was taken just past the Dunkirk-Fredonia exit if I recall correctly. The shafts of light coming out the clouds looked really cool.

Still in NY, some really cool clouds. I loved the way the sunlight was trying to burst out.

Welcome to Pennsylvania! The only real snow we hit on the whole drive was around Erie. It wasn’t bad, and there was only a small bit of slush in the passing lane in the middle. No big.

Once we got into Ohio, the skies cleared up, and the sun was setting. It kept getting prettier and prettier as we went.

This was just breathtaking. Taken outside of Ashtabula, OH.

It’s all fun until someone gets an eye poked out. Or until you’re driving straight into the sun. This was pretty crazy. The road lined up perfectly with the setting sun, and all you could see was this big, huge ball of light. Wow! People were slamming on their brakes because they couldn’t see, and people behind them couldn’t see them doing such. Welcome to Ohio!

Despite the danger, it was pretty beautiful.

It took a few shots to get this right (which is tough when driving at 70 MPH and not looking through the viewfinder). The sky was really pretty, and I like the trees. This would have been great in about another 5 minutes, but stopping on the interstate wasn’t a good idea.

So that’s our trip, leg 1. We’re staying here tomorrow, and moving on to Rockford Sunday. Look for a post and some more pics Sunday night (possibly late). The hotel has free wi-fi. It’s the only way to travel!

Well, we have begun our week of nomadic living. We’ve spent the last 2 nights at my brother’s in Honeoye Falls (though the girls have slept at Grandma’s down the street). I spent yesterday on the phone trying to arrange stuff for our new home. I think I have everything set up. The good news is that we will have internet the first night we are there. That means Katie can watch Heroes. And we’ll be keeping up to date.

I tracked our moving truck and it made it as far as Chicago yesterday, so there’s a good chance that it will be there on Tuesday. We’ll be without TV until Saturday, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.

I ran out to Canandaigua yesterday to pick up some stuff at the house, but forgot our mail. I also forgot to go to the bank and the pharmacy. So I may have to run out again tomorrow. After lunch tomorrow, we’ll be heading west to Cleveland to stay a few nights with Denise’s mom. On Sunday we drive to Rockford, IL; then on Monday on to Minneapolis.

Thanks again to all those who helped the loading of the truck go so smoothly. It was a really good time. More later…