Thursday, December 25, 2008

Merry Xmas!!!

Thursday, December 18, 2008

song of the day

Simple, Starving to be Safe (live) by Daphne Loves Derby. DLD is one of my favorite bands from the past few years. This song is beautiful. And Kenny the singer has such a great voice.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

James Bond, Greenleaf, and Hancock

First I'll get Hancock out of the way. We watched it on DVD with Jo's parents tonight. My one word review - okay. Not great, not the worst film I've ever seen, but it really didn't hold my attention too well. If you've got something more productive or more important to do, don't bother with Hancock.

Second, James Bond. Since Jo and I are living with her parents for awhile, we have free babysitting. So this past Friday we went out on a date. We actually did dinner AND a movie, something we haven't done in a long time. Dinner was Zaxby's and the movie was the new James Bond flick, Quantum of Solace. 2 thumbs up, 5 stars out of 5, etc. I thoroughly loved it and think Daniel Craig is by far the best Bond. One complaint I heard about this film was there weren't a lot of gadgets, but who cares when you've got such great action. Loved it!

Lastly, Greenleaf Vineyard Church in Chapel Hill, our new church family. We're in the process of moving to CH to help Greenleaf Vineyard Church anyway we can. But we had yet to actually meet the people there or go to one of their services, mainly because we were in Philly. But now, since we're in VA and only 3 hours away, this past weekend we drove down to CH be a part of Greenleaf's Sunday service for the first time. It was weird because there were all these people there who know us because Rodger and Angela have been telling them about us. But we don't know them, at least we didn't until we met them. They still probably know more about us than we do about them. Jo and I were both a little nervous about meeting all these new folks that have been hearing about us for a few months. But meeting them made things better because they are an awesome group. Now we absoultely can't wait to move to CH and be a regular part of that body.

Friday, December 12, 2008

song of the day

Before we left Philly, my good friend Dave Campbell made me a CD of some cool tunes. This is one of the tracks on there. I'm diggin' it! This group is from Sweden, which makes them instantly cool. Anyways, check them out!

Peter Bjorn and John - Young Folks

Saturday, December 6, 2008

PHL to ROA

In a nutshell, we moved. We're not in Chapel Hill yet, but are several large steps closer to being there.

Here is a brief synopsis of the past few days. On Wednesday some great friends helped me move us out of our house. Then Thursday we had the settlement on our house then drove from Philly to Roanoke, VA. Yesterday we unloaded the truck. Today, we're relaxing.

Now here are some details:
Our house sold in an extremely sluggish housing market. It only took 45 days to sell, and considering the market, that's amazing. At the settelment on Thursday, we ended up making a little money on our house. And by 'a little', I really mean a little. I was handed a check for $6.14. Yes, you read that correctly. We'll end up getting some money back from escrow, which will be about $300, but the profit was only $6.14. The fantastic thing is that we didn't lose any money.

After the settlement on Thursday, we left Philly to come to Roanoke. As soon as we hit the expressway, I realized that the rental truck was painfully slow. I called Jo and said, "This is going to be a long trip." On the whole way down, it never got above 61 or 62 MPH (going downhill) and usually stayed at about 55 MPH, and that was with the pedal floored. We left Philly around 1:40 pm and arrived here at 11pm. So a 6.5 - 7 hour drive took 9 1/4 hours. Hurt me! I was getting passed by everyone, and I mean everyone because the speed limit the whole way was either 65 or 70. So I was 'that driver' - the one going so painfully slow that other drivers zip by like they're standing still.

Since we're staying here in Roanoke with Jo's parents until I can find a job and we can find a place to live in Chapel Hill, we brought all of our stuff here to store. Unloading the truck yesterday was so much easier than loading it. They have a huge garage and a huge walk in basement, so the unloading was rather painless. No stairs to climb or descend. No moving stuff out of attics or up basement stairs. Just right into the garage or right into the walk-in basement.

Last night, after the truck was unloaded, I was going to move the truck from the driveway to the street and it wouldn't stay cranked. I tried several times, but it would not keep running. I did manage to get it down to the street and kind of park it before it died. It didn't need to be back until this morning, so I didn't worry about it too much. I just planned to get up this morning and try to crank it again. And this morning, it wouldn't crank at all. So I called Budget and to explain the situation (they were very helpful). About 2 hours or so later, a mechanic came out to try to fix it. He was a real country boy and it took my ears a minute to get used to his drawl (I'm from the South, but my ears are used to hearing East Coast speak). Long story short, he couldn't get it to run either. He told me, in his mountain man/ mouth full of chewing tobacco speak - "You ain't gotta worry 'bout this truck no more." And about an hour after he left, a tow truck came and got it.

On the trip down I had these terrifying visions of a breakdown or a crash where all of our stuff would either have to be unloaded from a broke down truck onto another, or strewn all over the interstate because of an accident. But neither of those happened. How awesome though that the truck didn't break down on the drive from Philly! And as a bonus, I didn't even have to return the truck, a sweet deal if I ever heard of one.

Now we're just relaxing, trying to rest up and enjoy a few days break. I don't have a job right now and that's okay. Being here in VA will be like an extended holiday. So we're here, about 4 big steps closer to being in Chapel Hill. The great thing is that CH is only 3 hours away from Roanoke, which makes job hunting and apartment/ house hunting much easier.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

the last days

That's right, the last days. Not THOSE last days of 4 horsemen and all that other apocalyptic stuff, but my last days. Specifically, my last days here in PA. Its been great being here in PA for the past 3 years. Today I have my last day at work. Tonight we'll spend our last night in our house. Tomorrow, I'll walk out of our house, get in the moving truck, and drive away for the last time. And early Thursday afternoon, we'll leave PA and drive south towards VA. And this may be the last time I'll be in PA, maybe for a while, maybe ever.

A lot has happened here. We've had 2 kids. We bought and sold our first house. We made some amazing friends. We were a part of the best church that, up until now, we've ever been a part of. I shoveled snow for the first time ever (a real novelty the first time, but not so great after that). We bought our first minivan (making us official grownups - I knew that when I stopped drooling over pickup trucks and SUVs with large tires and high ground clearance and started looking almost exclusively at minivans that I was growing up).

Whenver I leave a place and go somewhere else, I think of what I will and won't miss. I will miss lots of things here - Blue Route Vineyard and all our fantastic friends there, our house, some aspects of my job, Rita's water ice, Iron Hill, Total Wine in Delaware. There are also things I won't miss - east coast drivers, east coast abruptness (otherwise known as rudeness, but I'm trying to be nice), having to buy beer by the case, some aspects of my job, etc. These are not by any means exhaustive lists.

Its hard for me to be extremely sad and look for closure right now. Partially since phone calls, Facebook, blogs, and emails mean I'm in almost daily contact with most people I know. But also, since Jo and I have been married, we've had big transitions every few years and this is just one more biggie. In brief,we came back from China in 2001 and got married. We moved to France in 2003. We moved to Morocco in 2004. We moved to PA in 2005. And now we're moving to NC. Jo and I just look at each other and say, "God please let this be the last big transition for a while, please?" We'd love for our kids to grow up in Chapel Hill. We'd love to really plant ourselves there and really invest ourselves there. We'd love for lots of things to happen.

So in these last days, 'mixed feelings' is definitely the way I would describe the way I feel. But as cliche as it may sound to some people, I find my greatest comfort in the promise of Jesus, "I am with you, always."