A lot’s happened since the last time I posted on here, so this entry might be kind of long (better hit the bathroom and grab a cold drink before you get started 😉 ). April seemed to go by pretty quickly. Easter had finally come and man did I have a major chocolate craving (it wasn’t as easy to give up as I thought it was going to be…) We took a trip up to the Soo to see Susan’s family and had an excellent Easter dinner. Susan’s grandma is moving into an apartment and this gathering was one last hoorah at her place. We also got to go “shopping” for various things we “needed” for our new house (more on this later). We managed to find the raquetball courts and played a couple of games (could have been for free… the guy asked us if we were students of Lake Superior State Univ., even though we had Michigan Tech sweatshirts on, oh well three bucks a person isn’t gonna break the bank). The courts were nice except for you couldn’t run (or stop) on them, they were pretty slick (I think they put a few too many coats of varnish on).

The next couple weeks weren’t too exciting, we already had our taxes in (though it took forever to get our return) and we hadn’t really started packing yet (though we thought we should, and it’s the thought that counts, right?) I managed to sign us up for a Marine Safety Class which was a lot of fun (not really…) In case you’re wondering, if you were born after 1978 you need this spiffy blue certificate to ride a PWC (personal watercraft, aka Jet-ski). Well wouldn’t you know me and Susan were the oldest ones enrolled. Yes that’s right, we took an eight hour class with a bunch of kids, even the instructor was born after us… For all you drivers out there, beware… the kids we took the class with will be driving soon, and boy am I scared… The class could have been cut to about four or five hours, but we ended up taking a lot of breaks (why can’t kids just sit still?) Basically we worked through a small magazine-type book with a few chapters in it. At the end of each chapter we got to watch a really cheesy video. This was to prepare us for the test at the end of the day. In case your wondering, I passed the test with flying colors (first one to be done, and I got a hundred percent, booyah!) Sounds easy, well your probably right, considering the instructor actually reads off the test and the answers right before he hands it out. To pass you need at least 38 out of 50, and if you get between 35 and 37 you get a second chance to reanswer a couple you got wrong. How could anyone fail, well sure be it there have been students in the past that actually fail this thing… like I said… beware!

It was April 27, our closing date was upon us. We had taken a walk through prior to this to make sure everything got fixed that needed to be fixed (everything looked great). I had worked some pretty long hours this week so I needed only to work three hours today (3 days of 10.5 hours isn’t exactly fun, but Friday was nice!) I had also taken a couple hours off on the 23rd to take a test for a full time job with Dow. The test went pretty good, I was able to finish the two sections pretty quick (even had time to double-check my answers). I didn’t find out how well I did until later, but at the time I looked around and noticed I had finished long before anyone else (thought, wow either I did really well or really bad…) Back to the closing, we were scheduled to meet at 9:00 AM, we had our down payment (personal) check ready to go and were getting pretty excited. Awhile back (getting lost yet in this paragraph?) we had ordered a fridge, range, and a washer and dryer, pretty essential things you need for a house. We told them they could deliver it to us on the 27th as long as it was in the afternoon. So here we are resting before we finally sign the papers, we get a call around six in the morning. “We have your appliances and will be at your house to deliver between 8:30 AM and 10:00 AM.” Wow, what great timing, that’s almost the afternoon… After a few phone calls, we were able to get a hold of the guy that we ordered from that got a hold of the home owners (at that time) who were able to let the delivery guys in! Whew, didn’t know things could get so complicated. Back to the signing… as I mentioned before, we had a personal check for our down payment and handed it over… no where did anyone tell us we need a certified form of cash. The lawyer didn’t really appreciate this, so it was off to the races! I quickly made my way to the credit union to get a cashier’s check and the lawyer preferred this method of payment (heh!), and I made great time. We got to meet the builder’s/owner’s and they seemed like really nice people. Closing only took about an hour and then it was official, me and Susan were homeowners, scary, huh?

Following closing, it was finally time to move (dang, we should have packed our stuff before now!) We didn’t spend the very first night in our new house, but we had an air mattress filled and ready the next day. And so began the great haul of 2007. I managed to pack more stuff in my car then I thought was even possible. I lost track of how many car loads it took, but luckily the drive was only about 15 minutes. It took all week to get our stuff out of the apartment and it still wasn’t completely emptied (I couldn’t fit the really big stuff in my car, or could I?) Susan’s folks had planned to come down with a trailer full of stuff from the Soo (we inheirited a lot of stuff…) There was a lot of confustion about the trailer, but in the end it all worked out, and we managed to pack the rest of our stuff into the truck and trailer. We finally had our very cushy queen-sized bed back (yes we are spoiled… that air matress doesn’t come close to a good night’s sleep on a Sealy). We even got a lawnmower, even though we don’t have a lawn per se, but we did have some dandelion fields that needed to be cut down. After heading to the store to pick up a stud finder we hung a beautiful painting (that we got from Susan’s grandma) above our fireplace. We were busy unpacking and organzing, and unpacking some more, and some more organizing. It’ll take awhile but we might get all our boxes unpacked. Beth stopped by with Marcus to check out the new house and he kept us entertained for awhile.
What about Scout? I just realized I haven’t mentioned anything about Scout yet. During the transition phase she got to have the apartment to herself. I stopped by after work to pick up the mail and to feed and water her (she was always happy to see me, and not just because I brought her food…) On our trip back with the trailer, she got to ride in the cab of the truck, and wasn’t too fond of the drive. Once we got her to the new house she was pretty confused I think. She darted upstairs and around the house until I finally caught her and set her up in the bathroom on the first floor. She meowed quite a bit and after awhile quieted down. She grew pretty comfortably in that bathroom and wouldn’t come out all day (we think she was really scared of the baby…) Everytime we took her out she’d take off for that bathroom. She liked going up on the counter and just lie there (one time I actually found her lying in the sink… silly cat). It took a couple of days but Scout has gotten used to the house. She’s got a new bed that she just loves… she does like to sleep under our newly inheirited couch, but I guess that’s better then the bathroom.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’d have realized I didn’t mention the results of the test for the full time job with Dow. Apparently I passed the test and went to the next step in the process, which was a phone screening. I had scheduled the time to be at the same time I had a meeting with my supervisor (doh! I thought my meeting was at two, but it wasn’t…) I managed to get myself out of the meeting with my supervisor and was able to proceed with the phone screen (she actually had a conference call anyway, so it worked out pretty good…) I thought the screen went pretty good, but I found out the other day I didn’t qualify for the next step (an actual interview on-site). Oh well, it was worth a shot… Things are going pretty slow at my current job, the project I had been working on since I started (last October) was cancelled, so I have a few things to finish up by the end of May and I’ll be starting work on a new project (yes… more boring documents to write, I can hardly wait). Susan might be getting a promotion soon, it sounds like she’s going to get it we just don’t know when right now (hopefully everything works out, her boss’s boss has some quirky business policies).

Our house is looking better each day, though our lawn needs some serious work. I mowed it again this weekend and put some weed killer on the front lawn (it’s a very long and tedious process to spray that stuff). Hopefully most (or all) of the weeds die and we can plant some grass in the fall. Next year, we’ll have a beautiful lawn (I hope). We got our mailbox up and mostly straight. I learned how to use a post-hole digger, it’s a lot of fun, trust me (especially when the dirt is hard and has rocks in it). We also put some shades up this weekend, they look pretty slick. We’re still trying to figure out what we want for our big living room window, but that sounds like a girl thing to me…

We finally got the internet back (it was rough living without it). Charter’s contractors were to come last weekend (May 5th) and get us hooked up. They actually got there earlier then I expected and the contractor was pretty nice. I helped drill the hole in our house and get everything hooked up. The cable worked fine, but the internet was a different story. It was about 10:30 at night and I finally got my computer hooked up (wow pretty good for a CS major, two weeks without his PC), and wouldn’t you know the internet didn’t work. Alright, I’ll give Charter a call and see what happens. For those of you who don’t know, 1-888-GET-CHARTER, does not work on cell phones, but I did manage to find a bill and a number to call. After being on hold for awhile I finally got through to someone. After unplugging, shutting down, replugging, booting back up, the internet still didn’t work. Apparently our modem needed to be provisioned, but the provisioning software was down, but I could call back in four hours and should be able to get provisioned. I didn’t call back at 3:00 in the morning, but I did call before church. After waiting on hold again, and doing the exact stuff I did last nite, I was then informed again the provisioning software was down… (silly me for thinking they’d actually have it working…) This time I was told to call back in a day or two to get provisioned (sigh… gotta love Charter). I did notice different lights were flashing on the modem later that day and tried the CD they provided us (before it hadn’t worked, but now it seemed to be doing it’s thing). I gave Charter another call, and success… they finally got our modem provisioned. Then the guy tried selling me stuff which was kind of funny. Here’s a transcript of the call:

Guy from India: “What do you use the internet for?”
Me: “Surfing forums and posting messages.” (almost…)
Guy from India: “What webpages do you visit most often?”
Me: “I don’t know, my computer’s not on and I can’t remember.” (hah, I almost couldn’t hold back laughing… he had told me to turn off my computer, but hadn’t mentioned to turn it back on yet)
Guy from India: “Do you use the internet for music, video, or gaming?”
Me: “No.”
Guy form India: “John, how would you like to upgrade to a faster internet?”
Me: “No.”
Guy from India: “…” (didn’t catch what he said, the connection was going bad).
Me: “What?”
Guy from India: “…upgrade…” (again missed what he said)
Me: “Okay?”
Guy from India: “Okay thank you very much, John.”
Me: “Wait! What? I don’t want an upgrade.”
Guy from India: “No, John we wouldn’t upgrade you without your permission.”
Me: “Okay… bye!”
Guy from India: “Have a…” (click)

So yeah, calling Charter’s a blast, especially when your tech support becomes a sleezy salesman.

We also got our bikes out yesterday and went for a “tour” of the neighborhood… becoming very jealous of the other lawns in our subdivision (someday…). We did get some good ideas about what to do for landscaping and I can see the gears in Susan’s mind are already turning… We also managed to find a really good ice cream place only a short distance away (you can get beer there too, beer and ice cream must go good together…) We also got to see Spiderman 3 the other weekend, man was that awesome, definetly recommend it! We’ll probably be hitting up Shrek the Third this weekend and I’m hoping it’s as good as the others!
And with that you are now up to speed as to what is happening in the lives of Susan and John (go ahead and pat yourself on the back for getting through this, you deserve it 😉 ).