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Texas Chapter 1
August-2001
J left Lexington and spent 3 weeks by himself in a hotel before L joined him (it was rough but he managed). During that time he found a house for us to live in and made all of the various calls to get services connected..... among his other adventures.
J had much good news for L starting with "they have Vietnamese Noodle restaurants here!". We hadn't had noodle soup since we left Calgary and we missed it greatly. J also discovered a neat place called The Talking Book Store. They rent all kinds of audio books on cassette and CD. Just perfect for those half hour drives to and from work.
L got her first really good look at the house 2 days before their furniture and other possessions were due to arrive. Apparently, the previous tenants were evicted and did not leave quietly. The house had been painted throughout, there was new lino on the kitchen and dining area floor and all the holes had been patched. Most of the doors still need replacing though as many of them won't even close properly. Still, it was a nice looking house.
Our new address in Fort Worth.
The bloom faded very rapidly when, after a day spent with a bucket, scrub brush, and bleach, it was discovered that the kitchen cupboards (besides being filthy) also had cockroaches! In spite of the fact that L had never seen a live roach she had no problem identifying it, and the following day called the rental agency to have "something done about this because where I come from it is NOT acceptable!" The lady at the rental agency assured her that it was not acceptable here either and the bug spray man arrived the next day (AFTER the furniture and boxes were delivered, of course). He put a paste type bait in all the places where they were appearing and told us to hold off on putting food in the cupboards for a while. That way, the only thing they would have to eat would be the poison bait.
Five days later we were no longer finding and vacuuming bug bodies out of the cupboards, and figured that it is now safe to bring food into the house. We had been eating out of our hands in the garage, or in fast food joints for the past week. The Labour day weekend (our first in the house) was spent unpacking boxes, changing electrical outlets (plugs kept falling out of the old outlets), and running back and forth from the hardware store. We also replaced the bathroom and kitchen outlets with proper GFIC outlets, just to be safe. We even managed to get the lawn mowed and meet the neighbours on both sides of us. Nice people who seemed to be happy to have us here. J was glad to get back to work on the Tuesday morning because there, he wouldn't have to work so hard! (There are mutters about L making him work too hard on his days off....). The other shoe dropped this AM when it was discovered that it would be another 5 - 10 working days before we are reconnected to the net! While ordering phone service, J decided to sign up for DSL service instead of cable (more on that fiasco later). So here we are.....hot, cockroaches, lizards that run through the living room and scare you in the middle of the night, and NO INTERNET CONNECTION! L is grumbling, and not very quietly either!
There was, however, lots of work still to be done around the house.
Dining Room (before and after).
Living Room (before and after).
Kitchen (notice the new 'frig and dishwasher?)
While searching through the boxes in the garage, looking for something else entirely L found some of her gardening hand-tools. This was fortunate as she had also discovered what had been a flower-bed in the front lawn before it was taken over by quack-grass (what they call Dallis grass around here) and other weeds. The small trees/shrubs were still there and bravely trying to flower.... It took 3 days, working in the shade, after taking J in to work for the flower-bed to re-emerge. A trip to the local green-house for some of the end-of-season sale plants have brightened things considerably. By the way; the "winter flowers" are just starting to make their appearance (pansies by any other name) and L is already planning on a flat of them when the frost kills her begonias. We are now in growing zone 7-8, and L will have to re-learn a lot. Plans for J's first raise include all the plant material she has never been able to grow...............
09-Sept-2001, Sunday
Our weekend explorations took us to the section of Arlington known as "little Vietnam". A lovely, clean, huge market, 3 different noodle shops, and a place for Dim Sum! As we had already eaten breakfast before beginning our tour we have agreed to go back next Sunday for Dim Sum. After returning home we unwrapped and have hung a little over 1/2 of our art work. It is starting to look like someplace that L & J live.
Pictures and L's silk carpet.
20-Sept-2001
The restaurant for Dim Sum proved to be very good. There were many familiar dishes, but they spice a little differently (not near enough garlic or ginger, and no 5 spice in some of the dishes that usually have it). There were some new dishes for us to try as well. All in all it was very successful and we left way too full as is usual when going for Dim Sum. A $30 price tag for the two of us, though, means that we won't be going there too often.
The DSL (high speed phone) internet connection kit arrived mid-last week. After spending 2 days to get it working more or less properly, we were finally able to communicate with the world again. It wasn't handling Hotmail on Outlook Express very well and, almost every time we opened Outlook or MS Explorer, we got a message saying that no internet connection was available, did we want to work off-line or try again. Hitting "try again" usually worked but it was annoying. DSL wasn't automatic either; you had to dbl-click two icons and then click on "Connect". It was usually pretty quick (much quicker than dialing) but sometimes it took a couple of tries. On Friday, however, after L took over 85 tries to connect to the server, those little annoyances reached a peak. J called the cable company to come and install cable internet service and then he called the phone company to disconnect DSL. The cable guy showed up on Monday but, due to some conflicting device settings (due to the fancy video card J was using), he was not allowed to install the @home software. Unfortunately, J was at work and unable to swap out the card for him. We had to reschedule the install for Thursday.
Monday, however, was still a good day for J; he got to bring home his new Saturn. He had ordered it before L arrived but it had to be special ordered because there were none around with the exact set of options he wanted and, this time, he wasn't going to settle for anything less than exactly what he wanted. It is pretty much the same as his old Saturn, Georgie, except that this one is silver-blue instead of just silver, it has the rear spoiler and fog-lamps that he wanted before but was too impatient to wait for last time, and it has an AM/FM/CD/Cassette player. He named it Phoebe, after one of the smaller moons of Saturn (J says he was looking at a list of Saturn's moons and that one just jumped out and said "Pick me! Pick me!".
J and Phoebe.
The last couple of days L has spent making new curtains for J's bedroom, his window is a very odd size (35" X 70"). It seems almost every place L has ever lived she has had to make at least one curtain, and this place is no exception. J had found some material at the Wal-mart that he really liked and so he now has curtains with a real "Southwest" flavour (maybe Navaho or Hopi, decide for yourself).
J's new curtains, and his silk rug.
Next weekend, we go to the zoo.