Newest Hurley

This is our new baby kitten. We have decided that she will have the nickname Meep, but are still working on her "real" name. Helen likes Picasso. She also thinks a little blog support would encourage the kitten's early development. And maybe help with the naming. Now all we need is a house to keep her in. Ha!

We miss you guys...

Jackie, Jacob and Kathryn. And all you other guys too ;-) We are really excited to be back home in Texas with friends who we've known for a long time, but we made some friends up there in J-ville who we will never be able to forget. You all mean a lot to us so please keep in touch. If you move, we really want to know where so that we can call you when we remember to. Heck, maybe we'll even come visit.

Oh yeah, and for those family who we saw along the way, we made it alive... about 3 days ago ;-) Sorry. We've been so busy seeing and doing and visiting that we forgot to call or write or post here that we were okay. So, we're okay. Thanks for opening your homes to us while we were travelling. Helen and I both really enjoyed seeing all of you again and meeting our NEW cousins!

It's been hard for everyone to remember that we're not on vacation anymore. The two main differences are that we don't have to see everyone in the same week, because we'll be here for the forseeable future, but also that we can't really afford to visit for much longer because I need to start school and Helen is working on a couple of job offers. It's been hard for us to slow down too and remember that we have lots of work to do. It's going to be good.

Jacob and I are already working on our next movie project. You can see our most recent handiwork here. It's not very high quality, but that's because it's YouTube. Oh well. He and I shot that in about 5 hours with no prior planning while I was on vacation right after I got back from Iraq. Unfortunately, we ran out of time before we could finish the story, but he put together what we had and it worked out rather well. It looks like our next project will be a re-make of "The Cloak Project"... or perhaps a continuation... or maybe an expansion of it... we'll see what happens. So, look forward to the next one!

Helen and I both love you guys. We're glad to be back with family, and we're sad to be away from good friends. Keep in touch.

More later...

Almost home...

I can't tell you how good it felt to cross the border into Texas. I know it sounds silly, but Texas really is my home and I love living here.

I didn't post yesterday, obviously, but we had a bit of an experience at our stop on Monday night. It was pretty seedy and Helen was worried, but Matt, Helen and I were all in the same room and I brought my pistol inside so she felt better after that. It was pretty interesting. The next day we pushed pretty hard because I wanted to get to Murphy early enough that we could say "hi" to everybody before we went to bed and still get a decent night's sleep. Driving that 22' truck through Dallas traffic was a hair-raising experience. It was definitely the most stressful hour of the trip, but we made it through unscathed, praise God.

Last night was good. We got the chance to rest for a while before everybody got back from Six-Flags and then we got to socialize for a while before we passed out. This morning was good too. Eating out is good every once in a while, but after 3 days of Mc D's, Wendy's, Hardy's and such it was really good to have a home-cooked breakfast.

Today is going to be good too. We get to go see Dark Night (the new Batman movie) at the IMAX!! Not just any regular theater where we'd pay $9, but a theater that's actually WORTH $9. We're not sure when we're going to do that, but it'll be good whenever we do.

Hopefully, we'll be able to spend the night tonight and drive home early tomorrow, in time for our appointment (seriously, what mini-storage makes appointments? whatever...) at the mini-storage that's going to give us a free month's rent. Helen even asked "what if we only want one month?" and they said "then you store your stuff for free." Pretty cool deal if you ask me. We've also gotta get the truck weighed before that, and after that (full and empty) and all before we get the truck back to Penske... before they close. We'll see how that goes.

It's going to be good to be home again. I'm really looking forward to living near family, friends, and good memories. I'm also looking forward to starting school at Blinn (as soon as I actually apply, that is), working on the fixer-upper that we might buy, and making more progress on this movie thing with Jacob.

It's good to be... almost home.

Progress!!

We have arrived in Augusta, GA after a long trip that started about 5 years ago... but that's another story. Thank God for great friends like Kim and Kat! Kim brought Helen up here about 6 months ago to help her move in right before I got back from Iraq, and now Kat is helping us move back! Helen and I had originally planned to have a company move our stuff and then we'd drive both of our cars back. But then things got really crazy and it became a great deal simpler to just rent a truck and move ourselves. After measuring the Honda to decide if it will fit in the back of a U-Haul ;-) we decided that we had three vehicles to drive back to Texas. So, I called Kat and said something along the lines of "so, you wanna fly up here tomorrow or the next day?" and he said "well, the prices are the same, so why don't I come up today?" So 4 hours later, he was on a plane to North Carolina. Now, after driving for 8.5 hours, we've gone 350 miles with an average of 40 mph. Yeah, that giant, 22' long banana that I'm having to drive doesn't tolerate driving very well. The steering is really loose, the suspension bounces a lot, and it HATES Georgia roads. The very instant we crossed into GA, the rhythmic lumps in the pavement set up a harmonic vibration in the trucks suspension system so that it started bucking harder and harder until I finally slowed down enough to throw off the synchronized rhythm. It was really strange. Anyhow, as long as I don't go 50 or 55, I'll be okay... I think. We'll see tomorrow.

Goodnight...

We have Orders!!

Huh.

I've got stuff to do!

The best laid plans...

Thursday.

Still no orders.

Still no TMO.

Still can't plan anything.

Hate movers.

We're renting a truck.

We'll be home eventually.

Status: pending

One would hope that this update would contain some guaranteed information... but it doesn't. Matt still does not have his orders (or Form 10660 or something like that). The reason this is important to you, the casual viewer (and to us too, now that I think of it!) is that Matt has done all the checking out that he can (including spending 5.5 hours waiting to give the Marine Corps their stuff back) without this piece of paper. Unfortunately one of the places that needs the paper to function is TMO, who is in charge of moving us. Basically, we have not been able to move forward on our planning for the move because we haven't been to TMO, specifically TMO's counseling session, and we don't want to do anything unreimbursable.

In summary, nothing to report.

Also, if anyone knows of a good moving company, I'd like to know about it. We have one picked out, it's a member of the BBB and American Moving and Storage Association (AMSA), but it has a C- from the BBB. The one with an A- from the BBB seems really sketchy, though, so I'm not really sure what that means. Blah!

But pizza is still yummy!

Update

Well, you see, what happened was...

The short version is that due to administrative issues, Matt no longer gets to take terminal leave (for those of you just joining us, that is the leave that you take right before you get out, presumably so that you can continue to get a paycheck for a few weeks after you stop working and are applying for unemplo... I mean looking for a job). We are now able to leave on the 19th (he did get one day of leave, apparently). They do pay us for the days he doesn't get to take, so it's not a total loss. And we do have more time to figure out the whos and whens and wheres and hows of moving. If we had known this earlier, however, half of our house wouldn't be packed when we still have to live in it for 10 days. We haven't decided if that is a good thing or a bad thing. At any rate, our homecoming is somewhat delayed, but certainly not canceled.

Also, we had a snake under the porch yesterday. Yup, a big one. Probably 3 feet long, not a pit viper, dark brown on top and orange on bottom. Orange as in a florescent cone that's been left in the sun too long. Weird. I was clomping up and down the stairs putting laundry in the car to take to Jackie's, and I turned around to back into the house for more stuff and I saw this not insignificant snake head poke up under the stairs that I had been using for at least 3 trips to the car now. He was obviously trying to find a place to hide, and I was quite glad that he did not find the house (the glass door was closed now, but it has a gap at the bottom, and I had even left it open earlier!). He eventually slowly crawled off (with his head off the ground, which I thought was unusual) and under the house where there was a gap in the skirt. As long as he stays down there, I'm ok with that. If I find him in my toilet, or in a packed box, we're going to have some problems.

After a little research, I have determined (using the Davidson College website, thanks guys!) that my snake is most likely a Nerodia erythrogaster, the redbelly watersnake. Here's a glamor shot:
Photo J. D. Wilson.

The one I saw wasn't in the water, his tummy wasn't quite so bright, and he was a lot bigger. Here is a link to snake information: http://www.herpsofnc.org/herps_of_NC/snakes/Nerery/Ner_ery.html
Mine looked more like the picture on the bottom left.

Well, the time has come...

Yup, I'm going to post! I know, I know it's exciting, but as the grandfather from The Princess Bride says "Keep yer shirt on."

Okay, maybe I'm not that exciting, but I try. Anyhow, the ACTUAL "time" that has "come" is the time for putting into action those critical skills that Helen and I learned in Highschool. Yes, it's time to cram! My last day at work will be on the 11th, so I'm interested in leaving that afternoon. (Yes, Jacksonville is that bad; yes, Texas is that great.)

There are a couple of problems, though. We haven't finished packing yet and we don't know who is going to be moving us yet. Due to Helen's inferior procrastination skills we did actually start packing on Sunday. I haven't taught her well enough, what can I say?

In the mean time, I'll be running around like a crazy man trying to get all of my administrative stuff done before I leave the Marine Corps (not my fault). Helen, on the other hand, will be desperately trying not to pack the WHOLE house while I'm gone at work (also not my fault).

If we can leave on the 11th like I want to, then we'll take a week or so to drive home. I'm really excited about stopping along the way to see family and friends. It's also going to be good to take it easy and not kill ourselves trying to get home. There'll be plenty of work to be done once we get home, so we'll enjoy the transition for a while. I'm not looking forward to shopping for houses, but I AM looking forward to owning a house that I can customize and make our own. It's one of those things that you just kind of have to do. It's also one of those opportunities to make some really big, really expensive mistakes all at one time. One does what one must...

I'm also looking forward to going to college. I still haven't applied to Blinn yet, but I will, I promise. Eventually, I want to graduate from Texas A&M with a BS in Computer Science and a BS in something else (I'm looking at Astophysics right now, but we'll see). Then I want to go to the Vizlab and get an MS in Computer Visualization Graphics. Unfortunately, my copy of Lightwave (the program that they used to make Jimmy Neutron and all the Star Trek special effects) is making me cry, at the moment.

For some reason, Lightwave suddenly decided that it doesn't want to work for more than about 5 minutes at time. After just a few minutes, it just crashes without saving any of my progress. It's very frustrating when I just made about 5,000 polygons, and then have to go back and make them again and hope that I have time to save before it crashes again. This means that I can't compile any kind of portfolio for my application to the Vizlab. Additionally, if I'm going to do any kind of serious projects, I'm going to need several computers and a better video card. I could build a few computers that would do the trick for about $400 apiece, but the problem is that the video card that Lightwave recommends for their software goes for about $3000. The one that I've got is top of the line (for PC workstations) and would probably suffice, but I think it's the cause of my stability problems with Lightwave. I guess that's what I get for choosing a very expensive carreer.

Anyhow, that's pretty much all I have to say about that. Now I'm going to go run around Camp Lejeune like a chicken with my head cut off.

More later...