We’re back from a very relaxing vacation… 10 days, 3077.3 miles of driving and 5 states. Highlights include seeing Colonel Mustard at a rest stop and Denise almost getting blown off a mountain.
Pictures are here.
Our approximate route is here.
Baby Countdown...
Denise and I are on Day 5 of our southwest road trip. After landing in Phoenix, AZ, and spending the first couple days with my parents down in Green Valley, we hit the road. Day 3 took us up to Laughlin, NV. Kind of a funny little version of what Vegas should be… or used to be before the Strip took over.
Day 4 brought us up to St. George, UT. On the way, we visited another cool little city, Mesquite, NV. Today, the plan was originally to visit the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. That was before we saw that the drive is over 5 hours… each way! Obviously that’s why most people visit from the south side.
So we decided to alter our plans a little and hit the Grand Canyon on the way back into AZ. Instead, we made our way to Grand Junction, CO. On the way, we saw Zion, Bryce Canyon and Arches National Parks.
Denise is feeling pretty sore today but in general she’s doing remarkably well. Anyone who with us earlier and saw the Explorer at the towing place today would have to agree! Here are some pics of the aftermath.
I had a very long, very stressful night last night. Denise got in a rather nasty accident with the Explorer last night. She appears to be fine, except for some bumps and bruises. Thank God for that!
Unfortunately, the Explorer wasn’t so lucky. Oh well, it had always been a beater anyway and now its been officially put out of its misery. And it gave its life for a good cause.
I spent the last couple nights rewiring a good share of our furnace room. A little background, when they built our house they installed a very basic thermostat. It wasn’t even programmable. But after a gas bill that I would consider to be excessive, it was time to change that.
I could’ve just swapped it out for a $20-30 5-2 programmable model you can get anywhere but that’s before I heard of the Honeywell IAQ from the fountain of all knowledge. It’s a state-of-the-art system that controls everything to keep it running as efficient as possible. You can only find them on eBay since they’re only sold to constractors. But since the cheapest I saw them for on eBay was $130, I had to talk to the wife. After telling her the whole story with absolutely no bias whatsoever (I swear!), she surprisingly said, “well I live with a geek, we pretty much HAVE to get the cool one!”
Fortunately, I managed to snipe one off eBay for a mere $96. Tonight, I got fun of drilling a hole in the side of the house so I could run an outdoor temperature sensor. Check out the attached pictures. This little beauty is now controlling our furnace, A/C, humidier and air exchanger.
(No comments about the outside temperature!)
That’s right, the big move-in day is tomorrow! We have our final walkthrough this afternoon and Denise and I are beyond excited!!
A couple days, a successful surgery and a healthy chunk of change later, our little patient is home and doing fine! She gets her bandages taken off on Friday. Then her sutures get removed in 10-14 days and she’ll be good to go. She’s supposed to have “restricted activity” for 8 weeks but if today is any indication, she may have other ideas. Oh well, at the very least we’re keeping her from doing any jumping.
Oh, and she also successfully went #1 and #2 outside today!
Apparently discontent with the already high number of changes in our lives recently, Denise and I took the plunge and decided to get a puppy that we both fell in love with yesterday. She’s a 10-week-old American Eskimo/Papillon mix named (Captain) Morgan.
Morgan and Denise
Oh, but that’s just the start of the adventure! After only owning her for a mere 2 or 3 hours, Denise came back downstairs with her after showing her to her parents. As she was bending over to put Morgan down, she suddenly kicked away and fell awkwardly onto the berber carpet downstairs. She immediately started to yelp loudly and her front paw seemed to dangle oddly.
So… off to the vet we went. We learned that she had a clean break of the two bones in her lower limb and she’ll need to have surgery tomorrow. As you can probably imagine, that won’t be cheap!
It’s now 11:30pm and we’re home… puppy-less. She’s staying overnight at the vet and probably tomorrow as well. Denise is obviously a little broken up over the whole matter and she feels a little guilty for “breaking our puppy”. But hopefully in a week or so, she’ll be good as new. Both of them. 
For those that didn’t know yet, Denise and I are building a house up in Blaine. We were fortunate enough to stumble into a really good situation and we’re really excited about it! We have a tentative closing date of November 26th or sooner (obviously we’re really keeping our fingers crossed for the “sooner”). They should be able to give us a firmer date in a couple weeks when it all gets framed in.
So far, we have the beginnings of a foundation complete with basement walls. They just backfilled it a few days ago. Check out pictures here.
After a series of delays for various paperwork-related reasons on the buyer’s end, we finally closed on the condo and moved out yesterday. We’ve now officially taken up residence (temporarily) with the in-laws in Cottage Grove. We expect to get some good news from the bank within the next couple days on the short sale we’re pursuing up in Blaine. So hopefully we’ll be living here a month at the most!
For some post-move pictures of the condo, click here.
About a week and a half ago, we completed a task that we began over a year ago when we undertook a whole series of home improvements… we finally put our condo on the market. Quite shockingly, we got an awesome offer on it a mere 3 days later! And just like that, a 12-year chapter of my life will come to an overdue close when we move next Thursday, 7/10.
Making the transition somewhat difficult is the fact that we may not be able to move into the house we fell in love with last week up in Blaine until the middle of August, although that could possibly change (knock on wood). So the tentative plan is to have the movers store our stuff while we shack up with Denise’s parents which is, unfortunately, way down in Cottage Grove!
I experienced a definite highpoint in my life tonight. The wedding? Not even close. I actually got to meet Chocolate Rain guy (Tay Zonday), perpetrator of one of the most viral videos of the last couple years! We were at Leeann Chin and he just happened to walk in. So, much to the embarrassment of Denise and my mom, I went and asked if I could get a picture with him…
For the uninitiated…
It’s good to be back but at the same time, it kinda sucks that it’s over. Here are some stats from the road:
- Total distance driven: 4,365 miles.
- Number of states driven through: 17, not including the District of Columbia (MN, IA, MO, IL, KY, TN, GA, FL, SC, NC, VA, MD, PA, NJ, OH, IN and WI).
- State capitols driven through: 7, once again not including D.C. (Des Moines, IA; Nashville, TN; Atlanta, GA; Richmond, VA; Harrisburg, PA; Madison, WI and St. Paul, MN).
- Most expensive gas seen: $4.19 somewhere in PA.
- Number of Wal-Mart trucks seen: 51.
- State with most dangerously conservative drivers: Iowa.
- State with most dangerously insane drivers: Florida.
- Money spent on tolls: somewhere in the $30-40 range… stupid northeast.
- Philly cheesesteaks consumed by yours truly: 2.
- Number of viscious sea gull attacks resulting in loss of pizza: 1.
We had a blast at Six Flags Great America today! Although Denise hated the very first ride we went on, the Superman Ultimate Flight ride. Don’t get me wrong, Denise is no wuss when it comes to rides, she pretty much goes on them all. But she hates the ones where it’s only the harness that lowers when you get on that’s keeping you from a painful, messy death. And the Superman ride is the epitomy of that.
Similar to the Batman ride (which we rode on twice and loved), where you’re hanging from the track, the Superman ride throws in an extra twist. Just before it starts, the chairs spin you forward 90 degrees so you’re facing the ground which, as the name would indicate, gives the illusion that you’re flying like Superman. I thought it was a blast but Denise, not so much.
And as long as I’m apparently reviewing rides, the Raging Bull has to be the freakiest roller coaster I’ve been on so far! The only disappointment of the day is that the new Dark Knight coaster was just days from opening! We’ll have to come back for that one. 
Anyway, we left around 5:30pm and drove a few hours up to Baraboo, WI, near the Wisconsin Dells.
Today was a travelling day. We drove from Cleveland to just past Chicago in Gurnee, IL, so we can go to Six Flags Great America tomorrow!
The big highlight of the day is that I got to cross another fast food joint off my list of chains that I had never been to, Fatburger. All in all, quite tasty.
