So, where were we? Oh yeah, life. Post-storm life has just been moving at an insane clip. The week following the storm, after cleaning up and clearing debris, I spent the remainder of the time packing for our move to the new house. Yes, after all that, we still had to move. Apartment leases are just wonderful like that. Plus FEMA had already reserved our apartment for a displaced family, so we needed to be out as soon as possible. That was OK with me, we were already partially moved anyway and I had the week off (NASA was closed) so it was a good use of my time. So, I packed, cleaned, packed and moved what I could by myself until that weekend when we recruited some help from friends.

Then, last Monday it was back to work for a whirlwind week of catch-up followed by more packing in the evenings. Finally, last weekend we got more help from friends and were able to move the last of the furnature and boxes. We were completely out by the 30th and living in our brand new house. Of course, there are boxes piled up to our eyeballs, but that’s all par for the course.

We’ll be unpacking at least until Christmas. I kid you not.

We’re also having a bit of trouble with the utilities. Seems that cable can’t be installed because the drop from the poll to the neighborhood is lying under a pile of trees and broken fence pieces. Of course, it’s in the neighbors yard, who are renters and haven’t cleaned up anything yet. Comcast doesn’t do debris removal and won’t touch it until it’s cleaned off. So, my options are to wait until the end of the earth for the neighbors to pick up the fallen tree OR find a chainsaw. I’m going with option B. My Sears card is tingling.

Other than that, everything is going pretty well. The house is great. I can’t wait to get unpacked and make it feel more like home. Then I plan on doing all the crazy fun things I can to “hack” the house. I’ve got a 1000ft box of Cat5 and a 30 port switch to wire the house with, instructions to make home made mosquito traps, a bunch of old X10 stuff to install, and plans for building all sorts of crazy things like charging stations and peg board wiring things. It’s going to be awesome.

Matt out.