Author Archives: Josh

Coffee and road rage

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Everyone is so nice in Texas. With two exceptions:

  1. Starbucks Baristas
  2. Anyone driving a vehicle.

Seriously, It’s observable and repeatable! I’ve met ONE nice barista, the rest have all been surly. I think early 2000’s snobby coffee culture maybe just arrived here or something? Either that or Starbucks is piloting the mandatory lunchbreak electro-shock therapy here.

On the issue of cars, I think they’re second only to California on my list of places where people are actively trying to kill you while driving, it’s actually pretty insane. Doing 15mph over the limit keeping pace with absolutely solid traffic ahead of you? People will tailgate you until you merge out of their chosen lane or they decide to go around you. I was held up in traffic yesterday for 3 full changes of a single stoplight because people just park in the middle of the intersection, preventing anyone from going anywhere when the light changes.

After this picture was taken the guy in the lane to my right pulled forward into the intersection because he wanted to make sure he got through the green light, but the traffic in the next intersection didn’t go anywhere for a full light cycle, so he was blocking the traffic moving from left to right.
THEN a semi-truck pulled into the intersection from the left and blocked all that traffic…

In california it made sense, they were all terrible people either in their cars or not. But everyone here (barring baristas) is super friendly. Until we go all destruction-derby on each other apparently. Very weird.

I can’t even comprehend it…

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Me: Traaaaaaaaaaain!

Bevin: Hoot Hoot!

Me: [incredulously] … Hoot…?

Bevin: You know, the sound a train makes?

Me: [doubly incredulous] Don’t you mean “Choo Choo”? It’s owls that go “hoot”, what kind of books did your parents even read you?!?!

I wish we had a video of me boggling my eyes at her. “incredulous” barely does it justice. Hoot. Hmph. Trains do not “hoot”.

In other train related news, the GE locomotive plant down the road has bays named “test hospital” and “paint hospital”. I enjoyed the idea of a locomotive going to the paint hospital.

Perchance to dream…

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I still can’t share images because something has gone wrong either with WordPress, or with Android, and suddenly my phone is taking images that WordPress won’t upload. Yay, more things to solve.

Imagine though, a mattress on a floor, with a pile of shoes and blankets next to it.

Yes, that’s right, we are re-homed! All but a few boxes are unpacked and inspected, (although FAR from put away…) we no longer have a hotel room or a rental car, and everything we own is inside these four walls. And now we’re so tired we’re going to pass out.

It’s pretty exciting. First night actually sleeping here, now that we’ve got, you know, stuff to sleep on.

And so much kitchen stuff. Oy.

Tomorrow, hopefully, pictures of the last few days of adventure, and the wreckage of unpacking.

The silence of the cardboard…

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Stuff was delivered today. I’m a bit backlogged on Blog posts because I’m having trouble uploading images. There will be some posts about our last few days of adventures soon as I get a chance to fix that.

In the meantime:

  • Car is here, nice and clean and undamaged.
  • Stuff has arrived. Minimal damage to some fairly trivial stuff, nothing serious so far. (only one thing missing)
  • OMG we have too much kitchen stuff.
  • We’re having a pretty decent lightning storm. I’m gonna need some UPS’ and surge protectors!

We just grabbed some Dominos to munch on while we keep on unpacking and checking for damage! Busy evening ahead…

Startling visions…

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A brief moment of panic just happened. Got out of the car and thought I was going blind.

Apparently it’s just really muggy this morning and my sunglasses fogged completely over instantly.

That seems like a fun omen for the afternoon.

Filbert arrives in style!

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Heard some rumbling outside, it must be that time!

That looks promising! Yep, there’s Filbert hanging out on the tail there! You can also see the tiny American flag I bought for a dollar at home depot. Probably best to be patriotic in these parts, but really I bought it to make it look a bit more like our house was occupied and not potentially for sale still.

There’s our Filbert, hanging out on the tail there. Looks good so far, pretty dang dirty though so will need a good cleaning to be sure.

Sadly arrival was just 10 minutes too late to make it to the car spa. So Filbert gets cleaned tomorrow and then we’ll be extra certain there are no issues from transit.

The guy who drove the truck with Filbert onboard makes the trip twice a month, Portland to Dallas/Austin/Houston and then back home. Lots of miles on the road, but he really likes the company and has been doing it for 7 years. Nice to know the relo company found good companies for us, I have no complaints about that, so far, even if dealing with the relocation company itself is a bit laborious sometimes.

Grabbing some sushi for dinner.

Was not expecting to find soy sauce in this packaging. Very amused.

Back at home the refrigerator has completed it’s 24 Hour chill-down cycle. Tomorrow: grocery shopping?

A haunting of funny ghosts…

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No, we haven’t suddenly taken a trip to Disney for the Grim Grinning Ghosts, but we have our very own hautnig now, a Casper!

Inside the big stripey box is our new mattress! Exciting!

The little box is networking gear. Also exciting, but probably only to me. (and maybe Brian)

All our utilities are finally set up, so nothing will get disconnected on Friday, good news there. Going about contacting the ISP we’ll be using temporarily until Spectrum wins their battle with the Union Pacific railway and drags a fiber cable over to our development, probably in September.

They have these big radio towers here, lacking any sort of, you know, mountains….

Fortunately we have a great view of one from our backyard, so that’s where internet will come from for a few months.

Unfortunately the router got packed in the truck by accident rather than in my suitcase with the AP, so no internet until Saturday at least either way.

On to the next project!

Arrivals

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We’ve got appliances!

Car arrives hopefully tomorrow or Thursday. Mattress is arriving tomorrow, and our moving van is now scheduled to arrive Saturday! (did they drive all the way from Portland in first gear? Hopefully that means everything is nice and safe. 😂)

Gonna be able to spend our first night here soon! So exciting!

(I’m about halfway done rewiring all the network/coax, should be done with that today, so we’ll be all set on the internet side by time things are here too! Home sweet Wi-Fi!)