New month, new house, new commute

New month, new house, new commute.

Today is my first day back to work after our move and the break provided by the Thanksgiving holiday. Commute this morning was really not as bad as I had anticipated. The scenery switched out between typical freeway to rolling countryside, which made for nice breaks. I was shooting to be into the office by 9am and was here by 8:30. May leave slightly earlier tomorrow to see if that makes any difference as well.

Lots of stuff going on, some I cannot discuss as it would tip off prying eyes. When I can, I will detail. In the meantime, though, our move went relatively well. While we are still sorting through mountains of laundry and breaking down boxes while trying to organize each room, things seem to be coming together slowly but surely. My biggest complaint about having used a moving service: About $300 worth of Blu-ray DVDs and several PS3 games have mysteriously disappeared. I have literally searched through each and every box currently in the house and garage, through each of our vehicles, and have even gone back to the old house and searched through each room. Nothing. We have lodged a note with the rep, but I am not hopeful. Thankfully, Amy let me replace a few of the items and I can resume my addiction to Civilization Revolution anew...

Another frustrating incident involved DirecTV. I had set-up our move with DirecTV a month earlier, confirming what I wanted, which rooms, getting some upgrades to units and making certain they had our new address. The day the installer was expected, I was putting the finishing touches on setting up surround sound in the man cave (i.e. garage) when I got a call:

"Hi, this is [name not recalled] with DirecTV and I am here outside of your house but there does not appear to be anyone home."

My response: "Well, that is interesting because I am in my garage with the garage door up and there isn't anyone outside."

Turns out whomever set-up the order, put in our OLD address as the NEW address. Amy got on the phone with the and reamed them for about 45 minutes or so, got us some price breaks and waived fees...but we had to endure Thanksgiving with no football in HD. Bummer. Turned out ok, though; instead of the new DVR for the bedroom, we managed to get a new HD DVR for no additional cost. Sweet.

We got Sloan set-up for her new high school yesterday, but only after drama created between the new and old school regarding immunization records. Very frustrating. She started today, however, and I am looking forward to hearing her report about her first day. Devlin is doing really well, although teething like a monster.Spike and Brooklyn have adjusted to their new surroundings and it is helpful that we appear to not have any dogs on either side of us for them to harass or be harassed by.

Thanksgiving was great. Amy cooked all day (she had managed to get the kitchen cleared out enough to work in) and everything turned out perfect. We even had a pumpkin pie delivered to us from one of our new neighbors, welcoming us to the neighborhood, which was really nice. Had dessert that night with The Silveria Clan, which was awesome.

We are still getting our bearings and sorting out and checking into things, but I think this move to Tracy was worth the trouble. Time will tell, of course, but after the harsh year we have had, we are looking forward to new beginnings...