I’m riding down the road on I-20 just about to cross back into Alabama. Josh and I have been helping a friend of ours move to Greensboro, NC this weekend. What a trip it has been! We left out in our 15′ Ryder truck yesterday afternoon thinking we’d have plenty of time to get into Greensboro, get a motel room and get a good night’s sleep. I’m sure glad that we got started when we did, because the thing that none of the maps including Google, Mapquest or an actual Rand-McNally atlas told us was that the route we were taking was so rough once we got out of Knoxville. In about 11 hours (with only brief stops for fuel, food and stretch time) we finally made it in a motel at around 1:30am Central time. Problem is that we were in Eastern time so we were actually about 2am getting settled in. We had to be at the apartment with the truck at 8am local time, so we got up around 7am and hit the road. Thankfully that part wasn’t too bad.

Of course, I being a consumate geek, I managed to find a Verizon wireless broadband card to make the journey better! (Yep, i’m actually posting this riding down the road)

We decided that it would be better to try another route, which unfortunately led us through Atlanta, which by the way if you were thinking “Hey it’s not too bad at Atlanta around 3:00 in the afternoon”, you’d be wrong. Of course, somehow I ended up driving through the worst parts going both ways (just kidding Josh… I know you didn’t mean it to happen that way) There really is nothing like driving in downtown Atlanta for the first time.. and it’s even more of an adventure in a 15′ box truck! Sheesh!

Well, anyway, It looks like we’re going to make it home sometime around 8pm, then I have another hour drive to the house. It’s my first time away from Micah, so that’s been kinda bad, but I think we’ll make it.

Thankfully we didn’t load or unload the truck, the people at the church that she is at now loaded and the ones at the church she’s moving to did the real “hard work” on each end, but I honestly would rather load the truck! Eh, Rachel, if you’re reading this.. you do owe us.. big time, but it isn’t so bad. I know that Josh needed the time away, after the long couple of weeks he’s had. His PawPaw died on Monday and the funeral was on Thursday, and it was a pretty stressful ordeal for him. It’s good to get out of that evironment for a while. (Maybe we should have just gone to the beach!)

Anyway, so that’s the adventure of the weekend. We got about 4.5 hours of sleep and we have a cooler full of caffine and a floorboard full of snacks. We’re making it pretty well, and I think the Alabama line is just in sight.

One more thing: Road construction is horrible… everywhere…

For those who said a prayer for us, much appreciated… we’re heading home

Sweet Home Alabama.. we just passed the sign!

Have a great night everyone.

Not nearly as easy as just ‘eating right and exercise’, but lately I have started loosing a few pounds here and there. I do have a significantly larger amount of physical activity in the new job, and I have been eating salads for one meal almost every day. (So I take weekends off… shoot me). It has made a tremendous difference. Ann on the other hand is loosing weight too fast because of being kinda sickly for the last 6 or so weeks. She’s on her way back from the Doc as we speak. Maybe we’ll get her leveled out soon, but the good part is that she’s starting to fit in clothes she wore in high school. I’m not arguing, I just hate that being sick was the cause. (I’m also not catching up right at the moment… *sigh*)

We have a good opportunity to drop the weight now, i’ve lost a pant size already with only minor adjustments… I can probably keep this up. I just know that one meal per weekday I eat a salad. It may have some meat on it, perhaps some boiled egg or something to give it a little protein.

Caught up with an old friend in Wal-mart today. It was good to see her. Ya know, 2 kids later, she still hasn’t changed much physically or… well mentally either for that mattter. Ann and I are going to have her and some of Ann’s friends from high school over for a cookout sometime soon. That is if we ever get all these blasted boxes unpacked!

Progress has been made on the boxes, we have a very large pile of empties on the back porch, and slowly but surely the closets are gaining clothes. It’s the “slowly” part of that phrase that kills me.

I just realized how much i’m rambling. You probably aren’t even reading by now. You are thinking “Geez… he hasn’t posted in over a week…and this is what I get?” That is if you are, in fact, still reading. Oh well. I’m gonna shut up now.

To borrow the phrase… “love, peace, and chicken grease!”

Unfortunately, i’m not quite as happy about it as Willie Nelson is in that famous song. I know it’s almost done, but we have 2 more stores. They are small stores, which is good. The bad news is, the smaller stores usually have the least maintenance, therefore they are the ones with gremlins. Last night, we had 4 workstations. It took 6 hours. First a dead workstation… then a dead printer. Stuff just kept going wrong.

As a note, if you have never been to Chattanooga, there are some pretty interesting things to do here. The Aquarium is a great visit, just make sure there aren’t groups of 400 screaming children already on the tour if you go. Be sure to hit the IMAX while you’re there.

We are going to take a couple of days off next week to try and get ourselves settled in the house and all of the boxes unpacked. Sounds like great fun, huh?

Always seems like i’m looking toward the next big event in my life.. I finish one thing, excited about the next until I get into that thing and then start looking forward again. This time however, I have a better reason! On May 18th we stop travelling for the business and come home. This means those boxes stacked up everywhere might get unpacked… furniture might be put in place… and just maybe… I could have a meal cooked in my own kitchen again.

Anyway, in the way of news, I traded in the Malibu last week. Got myself a truck, which I reason to be an acceptable move since I now live in the country.I got an 06 Chevy Colorado.

I’ve already had it out in the pasture getting some mud on the tires. But hey, I caught a 5 lb bass in the process ( gotta love them ponds in the middle of a pasture!)

Things have been quiet other wise. They delivered my son’s headstone last week. It’s another step in a process that will never completely end. We are so glad to have a permanent marker there. I can’t really explain the psychology of it, but it gives yet another level of closure.

Anyway, Ann is grumbling cause i’m making her wake up from her nap so we can go grab some supper. We are in the Eastern time zone, so it’s actually 5:30 here.. gonna hit some grub and then go to the pharmacy for tonight. Only 7 more stores!!!!!!!!!!!!

at least this blog gets one more entry!

Sorry for not updating, and I know there are some folks in LR that haven’t heard from us since we moved.

Well, the move went quite well, I didn’t get to help much, since I wasn’t home for the entire week before the truck rolled up to the door.

To give more of the story, I came home from work on Friday afternoon during the really bad tornado outbreak in TN/AL. I had to get to Little Rock… so the family and I loaded up and went. God is faithful, because we drove right between 2 tornadic supercell thunderstorms. The worst weather we encountered was moderate rain.

We got to LR about 2am, crashed, got up about 8:30 and got started packing the rest of the house, and going to get the truck. Finally about 6:00pm we finished up and got on the road, which in a 24ft truck means we still didn’t get home until about 2am. We finished unpacking the truck on Sunday afternoon and Monday I went back out on the road. Ann stayed behind and started her new job (same company) and worked some on the house.

SIDE NOTE: Say a prayer for Ann, she is not feeling well.

Anyway, this week, Ann is on the road with me, which is a good thing… she’s assisting me on these Server upgrade deployments and we are getting to spend some time together after 2 weeks of only seeing each other on the (very hectic) weekends.

So that is the update… the new job is fine… the contract i’m on right now is pretty sucky, but i’m working for great folks who are really trying their best to take care of me. Hopefully i’ll be off the road for a while after may 4th.