The Travelogue Begins, Appropriately Titled "An Inch to Barstow"

Okay, so I'm going to start the cross-country trip travelogue, now that I've got the pictures from both of our cameras downloaded and (somewhat) sorted. I'll devote one post to each day's travel, and hopefully won't run afoul of Blogspot's picture limit.

A few general words... There are parts of the trip that were beautiful, there were parts that were gorgeous, there were parts that were boring. Yet the boring parts were lovely in their own way, even driving (and driving and driving...) through the vastness of Texas.

It was interesting to both of us how the landscape changed so slowly, yet each state obviously looked different leaving it than it had looked when we entered.

It surprised me that many parts of main state highways were two lanes - one each direction.

There weren't as many trucks as I was expecting along the way.

Belinda - the car - ran like a champ. She consistently averaged between 37 and 39 mpg, getting over 40 mpg at one stretch! She's a little lower to the ground than we're used to, though, making getting in and out something we tried to do as little as possible!

The driver's job was to get car and occupants to the next stop safely. The navigator's job was to keep an eye on the map and GPS and road signs to make sure we didn't veer off course. The driver had to remember to put his/her cell phone in the little drawer to the left of the steering wheel, and to put on his/her sunglasses. The navigator had to balance paper maps, GPS unit, two cameras, water bottles, soda cans, and cassette books-on-tape, while making sure that the paper maps, GPS unit, and AAA trip-tix didn't send us on a wild goose chase, or try to confuse us by calling a needed road by a different name. At the same time, s/he had to be on the lookout for points of interest, gas stations, potty stops, and hidden speed traps.

On to day one...

Safe and Sound

Home again, after a wonderful trip. I'll be taking the next day or so downloading photos and trying to remember where we were when so I can write up some sort of travelogue. It was a great trip.

Perfect Timing

So around the end of February, my brother and I put my aunt's condo up for sale. Nice 55+ community, 2 BR/1 BA, overlooking a little lake, very comfortable place. Two or three years ago the comps were selling around $95 - $100K. Now, they're down around $55K, so we price it at $45K to move it quickly, because there's a definite season down here. Put something up after April and all the 'snow birds' have gone home. A house could sit and have no one even sniff it out again until they return in October. We were happy, then, that the first offer came in after a week or so. How much does he offer? $30K. Um. No. So much for happy.

No bites since then, so about 2 weeks ago, we drop it to $39.9K. Still no offers. Brother and sister-in-law go visit dad last week, clean out the rest of the stuff in the place, arrange for the carpets to get cleaned this week, basically making sure there's nothing at all in the place. Still no offers. Brother and SIL go home last week, DH and I fly in this week. We spend a day going through all the stuff that they moved from condo to dad's house, then arrange to meet the realtor today in person (we've been doing all the sale stuff by phone and email; I thought it would be nice to meet her in person and say hello). I also wanted to let her know that we had stopped making mortgage payments and HOA payments, and at some point, the house would get transferred from my brother and me to the bank.

We're eating breakfast this morning around 10:00 when my phone rings, and it's the realtor. I see her name flash on my cell, and figure she's just confirming our meeting. Yes, she was.... but only to make sure that we don't cancel on her because she had a buyer! Full price, cash sale. They had seen it yesterday, thought about it over night, then made the offer this morning. So between 10:00 and 3:00 when we met her, she had done all the paperwork, gotten their deposit and had them sign the forms, arranged for a title company, ordered the home inspection, and got escrow started. When we met with her, I signed what I needed to be signed, she scanned and faxed the docs to my brother in NY, and he got them back to her by 5:00. Done deal! (Well, mostly done... the home inspection will get done some time next week, but the place is in good shape, so we're not really worried.)

As we were signing the papers, I got to the date field and asked what the date was... May 6. May 6 is Aunt Irene's birthday. She would have been 76 today. I was feeling bad that we were going to have her house - her home, the place she lived over 12 happy years, the place where "her" egrets would come up to her patio to greet her during morning coffee - foreclosed upon. Now it won't have to meet an inglorious end. Happy birthday, Aunt Irene. I miss you.

Put a Fork in 'er...

...she's done! (Well, almost done... I couldn't find enough scraps to crochet the button-loops. Which is fine, because I don't think I have the right buttons anyway. I'll deal with The Button Issue when we're back.)

Where'd She Go?

Nowhere, actually; just be hyper busy, prepping for May when RP will be in Bhutan for pretty much the whole month. That means we need to get two months' worth of work done in one month. Been crazy 'round here.

I'm in the final stages of the Sensational Shirttail sweater. All the parts were blocked this week, the shoulders were seamed Wednesday night, the first sleeve was attached Friday, the second sleeve was attached tonight, when I also seamed up (and then down) the left side. Tomorrow I'll seam up (and then down) the right side. After that, it gets a little dicey. I don't think I have enough dusty pink Aslan Trends Guanaco yarn left. I have a ball of dusty blue, but I'm not sure how it will look with only a bit of blue trim. The crochet trim goes around the whole bottom of the sweater, and then up the front to create loops for buttons. On the other hand, I don't really like how they did the neck piece around the back. I think it needs something firmer to hold the back of the neck in place, so I've been thinking of putting an I-cord border around the neck. Maybe I'll do all the trim in blue; that might actually look sort of nice. Add some to sleeves and it might look like part of the design.

I've also been mulling over how to write about my "head, hands, heart" theory of relationships. It makes sense in my head, but I'm not sure how it's going to sound when I put words to it.

In the meantime, here's a picture of a tattoo someone on Ravelry recently got. It's awesome and fairly close to what I want my next tat to be... except I want the yarn to spell out "mom," "nana," "Aunt I," (and "dad," too - to be added later, since he's doing very well right now, thankyouverymuch). Cool tattoo.

Travelin' Woman

I suck at this code-y stuff. States I have visited:

This picture will have a few more states added to it once we're back from our cross-country drive!

Countries I've visited:

Hm. I think this one will stay static for a while... until our next cruise to an exotic port??

The Fix to the Bummerliness

Okay, Kadootje... you know I'm not talking about going up in show size, silly! The biggest size in the pattern calls for 72 stitches around, which I thought would be plenty enough for a stranded pattern (the gray yarn is Miss Babs, which I used to make his Pookie's, and only used 56 stitches for those).

While I would be hesitant to go up a needle socks for the foot portion of this sock, I think it will be fine for the leg (as far as I've seen, DH doesn't walk on his calves...), so I'll try #2 needles this weekend. If that doesn't work, I'll add some checkerboard flame-y stitches on the sides, as it will be hard to create another column of flames with extra stitches to the existing pattern.

In the meantime, I'm back to working on my Sensational Shirttail!

(Oh, and did everyone see Casey's April Fool's Day gifts to us today? Hilarious! I giggled quite a bit this morning!)