Hey Strangers

I apologize for not posting anything in the last couple of months. After that last post, describing a pretty radical life change event, I kinda left you hanging. Honestly, not much has really happened since then... at least it doesn't seem like it. I'll run down some highlights, though.

New Digs
I have a lease on a place near where I work in Beaverton that I found on rent.com. I tried the usual CL, but it wasn't as effective as I would have expected. I take possession in the middle of April, so I'll be couch-surfing for a few more weeks. I was unexpectedly able to land a townhouse with a 2-car garage, so I'll be able to complete the bus work in a dry location. When I consider that my commute will shrink from 30-45 minutes each way to 5 minutes (by car or 10 by foot), I will gain almost an hour. The key will be not wasting that time at work :)
I have lots of unfinished projects on the bus that I could get after with that time. I intend to return to my regular postings here to keep me honest about that. The townhouse has the usual apartment complex amenities, and the boys liked that - swimming pools... movie stars... The fact that a 7-11 and a Subway are very close met with their approval as well. Its funny what boys find most important. They were unmoved by how far it is from their mom's place (30 minutes), for example. Funny.

Office Move
As if there weren't enough changes already, by employer is moving a handful of departments from over-crowded conditions into a couple of new buildings. My department is one of them, so the end of March will be consumed with that move too. To paraphrase an old Jerry Seinfeld bit "when you're moving your whole world becomes all about boxes". Yeah, I totally hear that. Boxing the office, and boxing my at-home possessions have an eerie parallel.

Allergies Again
My St. Patrick's Day joke has arrived a few days early this year. I don't think I made a big deal about this in previous years, but every March, around the start of March Madness, my allergies kick in without warning. I think of it as the St. Patrick's leprechaun cursing me. I get dizzy so I can't maintain vertical and sleep like 20 hours a day while I remember again that its allergies and take lots of anti-histamine. This year is no different, and after spending a long Saturday at the house packing up the last of my bus parts, CD's, some books, etc, I spent Sunday couch-ridden. Like previous years, it will take a few days of Benadryl at night and Zyrtec in the morning to chase this nastiness away. Now that I have a clear pattern, though, I hope next year, I'll remember better and start taking my Zyrtec on the first of March.
If you're suffering now, trees are blooming, so you probably have tree pollen allergies. The trees of interest are cherry and apple, for fruit trees, but there are many non-fruit trees producing pollen right now: maple, red cedar, sycamore, oak, elm, walnut, birch, hickory, ash, poplar, and cypress. Of course, if you live in the Pacific NorthWest, you have mold and moss at this time of year too, so you could have an allergy there.

That's all I have for now. I haven't touched the bus except to load stuff into him for moving. I'll be car-hauling him behind the truck rather than driving him. I haven't taken enough test flights to be sure I won't have a cooling issue. One more thing for Spring-