Brie told me I had to make a post today, so here it goes. I've been spending most of my time unpacking and organizing. I've vowed to stay on top of laundry and I have been very surprised that what that means is that every other day I have to do two to three loads of laundry. With the laundry area actually in the house though I find that to be much easier, though time consuming.

Sebastian started school this week and took right to it, I must say I'm quite amazed. A couple of nights before his first day he melted down with fear. We took him to his new doctor for a physical (required by the school) and he had to have shots. The doctor almost immediately identified Sebastian as having PDD and said that although it was probably no big deal in 3rd grade when he got older and socialization at school becomes more difficult and stressful we might want to have him go back to home schooling. That's actually fine with me, we had planned this all along; by High School Sebastian would probably need to return to home schooling. By then I'll be in a much better place to be able to help him focus.

Keegan is sooo excited to start school this year, he has wanted to start Kindergarten for sometime now. It's hard for me to imagine that come September it will be just Maddy and I at home for hours at a time.

Still no internet connection in the house. I am sticking by my refusal to do anything, but broadband. Someone down the street has DirecWay and once I have the time to switch to Win 98se I'll get that all up and going, but the office is the last room I plan on tackling since it's going to be an office and my music studio all in one, it's going to take a full day or even two to set-up.

A few of you might wonder how I am holding up personally, Brie and I made a big change in our lives, something not everyone can probably do. I can honestly say that I haven't been this happy in a long time. I love this house, I feel very "at home" here. There is nothing outside of cosmetic changes that I would change. I particularly love standing on the back deck and looking into the woods. There is no one to be seen and I really like that, I have a sense of peace that I haven't felt in a long time. Even the things like having to drive 20 miles to get to a grocery store seem pleasurable.

Financially we do have a long way to go and that still is a point of stress for me. We had to spend a lot more money to get settled here, far more than we had planned. We hadn't budgeted for a new clothes dryer and we have been focused on putting money aside for our trip to Fresno in August, so we have had to keep things very tight around here. I'm not sure if we will actually start to see the finacial benefits of living here until perhaps late August. Ugh!

Well we made it. The trip went as smoothly as I had hoped. We had no problems finding places to stay with the dogs. Any Super 8 Motel or Quality Inn will accept pets for $5. My body had some issues with being inb the car for 12 hours day, in particular my hips, but it wasn't too bad. After all we travelled 2900 miles in 4 days!

I discovered I really don't like the Southwest I didn't enjoy the view from the car until we got to Oklahoma and it started to get green. Went to dinner in Oklahoma with Cindi and Larry, at the end of our meal the power went out, that was exciting. It also dropped to 29 degrees, it was so pretty with everything iced over. I found the cold doesn't bother me at all, I actually am much more comfortable in cold weather than hot. I don't think we experienced anything above 45 degrees the whole way here.

The major stop of the trip was Graceland, in Memphis. It was great. I am glad I took the time to see it. The house itself is really nothing special, though it captures the 70's pretty well. What I really liked was the "Trophy Room" and the Racquetball building that they have converted to a clothing display. Had we had more time and better weather I would have loved to have stopped at Dollywood, I didn't know we were going to be within 20 miles of it. If I am a reincarnation it must be of someone from the South. I just feel at home here. I loved going through the Smoky Mountains and we got caught in a snow flury so everything was white and so beautiful. Made me so thankful I have the Durango. It handle the icy/snowy roads with no problems at all.

Now that I'm here what do I think? First off it is dead gorgeous. Our backyard is in the woods and every morning I look out and feel like I'm on a vacation. This house has almost every thing I ever wanted. Jacuzzi tub, crown molding, textured walls, no "popcorn" ceilings, and lots of space. I really do think I could live here for a long time. The downsides? Well, at this point it would be that the nearest "town" is as small a country town as I've ever seen. Everything closes at 5 on Saturdays, not open on Sundays, and 8 during the week. It's 45 - 60 minutes to get to any major shopping areas so we will really have to learn to be self-sufficient. I am not complaining though, it's one of things Brie and I need to learn. By far my biggest problem is that I don't have Broadband right now, as I type this I am connected at 14.4 through Brie's laptop. I will give up the internet all together before I go back to dial-up. In order to get DirecWay satelite broadband I need to up my OS to Windows 98 SE, right now it's the original 98.

So tomorrow is the morning we head out east, I am excited. I wish I had more time to take it all in, but still I am thrilled to be going cross-country. I probably won't get chance to make any entries from the road, but I've got my digital camera and I'll take lots of pictures and create a photo journal when I get to Va.

Emma had a alergic reaction to something she was exposed to at the kennel and the inside of her ears broke out in hot spots, it was really quite gross and smelly. I finally broke down and took her to the vet. They gave her a steroid shot and put her on antibiotics and she is already doing lots better.

Cindi's train arrived nearly 3 hours late tonight, the train she actually was suppose to be on got derailed, but I'll leave the full story for her to tell.

So my work around here was finished by Monday as I planned. I didn't replace the door Brie broke after Maddy locked herself in a room, but that's becasue I don't have the tools to do the job. I also didn't touch-up paint, but that's becasue my sister keeps talking about all the colors she wants to paint the walls and I see no reason to do it twice.

Yesterday, I went out to lunch with my sister's family. Trying to go to the few local spots I know I'm going to miss. Then I took Beth to the fabric store and we got the 7 pm showing of Chicago. I really liked the movie, though I admit there wasn't enough dancing in it for me. I bet I would love the stage version. It's not an easy task to capture dancing on film I would have liked it better if he had some used more wide shots of the whole stage. I also wish the theater had played it louder. The sound wasn't loud enough to engulf me so I was never swept away. I felt sorry for Catherine Zeta-Jones, next to the waif Renee Zellwegger she looked big and I know she's not. Maybe it's a stigma of what she loooked like at the Oscar's. Not that I care, all I kept thinking of when I would see Renee was that she was flat chested.

An opinion; I have a theory that men who find these waif little women attractive are actually just gay and afraid to admit it to themselves or they have control issues and need to feel dominant. Top on my list is Johnny Depp, he only dates these flat-chested, 100 lbs., pixies like Winona Ryder and that's just wrong. They look like little boys and that scares me. I've said it once and I'll say it again, if I were single I would never date anyone smaller than a size 10 unless they had unusually large NATURAL breasts. I'm a firm believer in the Rubinesque female form. Oh well, I guess I'm lucky I already have the perfect woman for me.

I still need to go get the shot records from the doctor for the kids and I need to figure out what I'm going to do about lodging for the road trip. Finding a place that looks like it would be nice and still allow me to have George and Emma is proving difficult. I'd like to say I look forward to getting to Virginia and resting, but I know that when I get there I'll have even more work to do. Talk about burn-out. All I want to do right now is climb in bed naked with my wife and spend a night acting like porn rabitts. I'm a walking testosterone fueled wreck right now and I hate it. I have this constant level of nausea and I'm fidgety. That's one of the big reasons I'm not getting much sleep lately. My dreams tend to be like XXX hardcore version of an HGTV desigining show. Ugh!