nichtszusagen

• I've been promising to do one of these for a while now. It's been four months since the last one, so this will probably be long, and short on details.
  
  
• So. Where was I? It was right after graduation: . So there's the whole move, and the trip to the States, and coming back, and moving in, and... oh, boy. I may have to break this up a bit.
  
  
• First, the move. It seemed like I spent a lot of time sorting things out--what we wanted to keep with us between the time our household goods were picked up and the time they were delivered to our house in Heidelberg, but I was still scrambling the day the movers came. It's always like that--probably because we don't move as frequently as a lot of other military families do. Our last move was four years ago, and the previous move was seven years before that. Yes, we're spoiled.
  
  
• After the movers packed things up, we had ten days until we could get into our new house in Heidelberg, which meant camping out in the empty house--hence the importance of keeping the things we'd need. Fortunately, we've got good air mattresses. The camping chairs got old after a while, but it could have been worse. We could have moved into a guest house in Heidelberg on July 1st, saving us three days, but didn't for two reasons: 1) the idea of moving all that stuff twice was daunting--it took more than one trip with Moby, and 2) we wanted the boys to be able to spend the last couple of days with their friends.
  
  
• We took everything up to Heidelberg on July 3rd. It took a lot longer to pack things up than we'd expected, which I'd expected. We always tend to underestimate how long it'll take to do things like pack. So we didn't arrive there until late in the evening. The movers came with our stuff at 7 a.m. on the 4th of July.
  
  
• At least the weather was gorgeous for the move. And since it was the same movers delivering our stuff who'd picked it up, it went pretty smoothly. Nice thing--these movers were also craftsmen. They fixed a couple of bookshelves that were loose, and a glass cabinet door had broken when they were loading the truck, so they called a glazier and fixed it before bringing it. Other moves, we'd have had to put in a claim for the damage and then get it fixed ourselves.
  
  
• Once the movers left, we walked over to the 4th of July celebration on post. There was a lot going on: a live band, lots of stands with food and entertainment. We got something to eat, but we were too tired to enjoy much. We did bring our blankets back for the fireworks, though, which were great, and accompanied by actual cannonfire. You could tell I was tired, because I initially thought they were shooting the fireworks off with the cannons.
  
  
• Until we left for the States, it was a blur of unpacking and trying to figure out where to put things. Curran spent most days taking the train back to Miesau to spend time with his friends and girlfriend.
  
  
• Carl's mom took care of the fish, the turtle, and Diva while we were gone. We'd taken the aquariums to her house before the movers picked up our stuff.
  
  
• The flight to the States was long and painful. And even more unpleasant because Aunt Flo arrived that day. At least the plane was more comfortable than the one that brought us to Germany four years earlier.
  
  
• Our first mission once we got to San Antonio was TxDOT (Texas Department of Transportation). We had to get Curran his license and driving competently in 30 days. And I needed a new license--mine had expired, and I'd tried to renew it online, but my replacement never arrived. Forget all the horror stories you've read about the DMV--the office in Universal City was staffed by friendly, helpful people, and we hardly had to wait at all. And OMG. The next time I want my photograph taken, I'm going to them. I thought it was a rule that driver's license photos were hideous, but... just look at this: and that's after the scanner made it about three times the size. Anyway. Curran was able to take the written test right then, and had no trouble passing it. He'd taken an online driver's ed course before we left Germany.
  
  
• Next up was a car. We got him a 1999 Ford Contour with 50,000 miles on it: (this isn't his car, but it looks just like this.) Carl took over teaching Curran to drive, and I was really impressed with both of them. Carl was extremely patient, and Curran learned extremely fast. My mom came to visit for a week, and we drove down to North Padre Island to the beach and stayed overnight. The men went in Curran's car with Curran driving, and we women went in Dagny's car. Even on the drive back, when everyone was pretty tired, Curran handled driving through the downtown San Antonio traffic extremely well.
  
  
• Basically, it was all going just too well. The day before Curran was going to take his driver's test, two things happened: the transmission started acting up on his car, and his girlfriend broke up with him. Via an IM. The poor kid was crushed. And when he tried to call her on the phone, her mother took the phone and cursed at him. Unfortunately, time was getting really short, so we told him to go ahead and take the test, and use it as a trial run.
  
  
• Which was the third blow. He was driving Dagny's car, as his was still in the shop, and the first part of the test was parallel parking. His tire went up on the curb, and the lady doing the testing (not one of the really nice ones from before) said "unsafe act," and failed him on the spot. So we gave him a day to recuperate, then Carl took him out to the testing area the next evening and they practiced parallel parking until he could do it in his sleep. The day after that, he went out and passed with flying colors.
  
  
• Backing up a little here. Dagny's birthday was a couple of days after we arrived. The necklace in the picture was one of her presents. Her boyfriend came down from Austin, and we took her out to Outback for dinner and back home for cake and presents.
  
  
• Well, this is taking longer than I expected, and we're off to go do some sightseeing. I'll catch up some more next weekend.

Labels: about me, weekend update

// posted by Darla @ 10/05/2008 01:02:00 PM