Life Rhythm finding a Beat

It's been an interesting couple of weeks. I've moved, and started getting settled in. I've gone from seeing my boys every couple of days for a few hours at a time to actually having them stay overnight. This new-ish life is starting to take a shape, though I can't tell exactly what shape it is yet. I'll try to be brief on the chronology.

Keys
I got the keys on the 12th, and started moving in the flotsam from my folks place by the car load. I had the boys that evening, so we had a pizza-picnic on the carpet. They tried and approved of the pool. Great start.

Moving Day
The following weekend I moved the big stuff. I scheduled the move weekend without considering work impacts (not wise, but that was the available day). So, while moving things out of the garage, I got a call from work about some kinds of problems. Perfect. I got through the U-Haul rental stuff in record time, and then I was sidelined with a firefight. boo. Fortunately, by the time my helpers arrived, the panic at work had passed and we were back on track. Big thanks to my brothers and my folks for helping out. Before noon, we had the truck loaded and the bus on the tow dolly. 30 minutes of caravan-ing later, we're in an office park across the street from the new place. I dropped the bus there (and the tow-dolly), so we could empty the truck. By 2:30, the truck was empty, and the bus was snuggled into his new shelter. eye-witnesses tell me there was a good 5 inches of clearance above his roof as I backed him in. That gives me the room for bigger rims and the Riviera poptop... maybe.

Life Rhythm finding a Beat
The 14' truck carried a small subset of what's needed to create a home. That's where my sister-in-law jumped in. While I was returning the truck, she and Tim (a friend helping on the move) hit Ross and created an insta-home with dishes and decorations and stuff. Crazy. I was totally floored. We truly are measured by the depths of our relations, not by the content of our bank accounts.

Still, I didn't have the things needed to host my boys, so for the next 2 weeks, I saw very little of them. As much as I wanted to be enjoying the new-space creation, I missed them so terribly, it was very hard to. Work was chaotic, with a major release looming and budget cuts rumored. I was in a very negative emotional space. I pressed forward, though, locating the final items to host the boys, and finally having them for a sleepover this past weekend.

It is hard to describe the emotion of hearing them together in the morning when I got up. I can't tell you what exactly they were talking about, but it doesn't really matter. From the top of the stairs, I could hear quiet voices and giggling.... made my heart leap. It really felt like home. The morning of cereal and hanging out topped a weekend that included C shooting a hat-trick at his lacrosse game and a family get-together (uncles, aunts, cousins, grand-parents) to celebrate T's 13th birthday. Dropping them off was extremely hard, so I worked it out at the gym, like I used to. I'll have them over on Tuesday for the first week-night sleep over. It will be interesting to see how that morning goes. Now that it's started, though, I can make it through those days without them.

Thanks for following along. I don't have the boys this next weekend, so I may start looking at the bus as soon as Saturday. We'll see. Then, you just might hear about that progress again :)

pictures:
top - my helpers taking a break by the truck
upper middle - bus on the dolly
lower middle - bus and car in their new home
bottom - T hanging out (mostly) in the pool

after many weeks, Hapy speaks

I uncovered and moved Hapy out of the driveway yesterday. This was a tiny, yet monumental event. It represents the first time he's been legally parked on the street in over 3 years. To me legal means: registered, tagged and capable of movement under its own power.

This also represents the beginning of the end of my days living in Lake Oswego. Its been 8.5 years, and a new chapter opens on Tuesday - tomorrow - for I get the keys to my new residence then. I am not as melancholy as I expected to be today. Maybe it will hit me on Saturday after I move the items we've negotiated. Maybe it will hit when I next pick up the boys and I don't actually enter the old house. I don't know how or when, but I'm pretty certain the grieving process hasn't concluded yet.

Once I do get re-located, though, there is a rather sizable list of things I need to deal with. Of course, there are the usual just-moved-in things, like getting paper products, cleaning stuff, fill-in furniture, etc. More importantly, though, is the establishment of a new life rhythm. The material matters will resolve themselves; its the spiritual groove that will be more interesting. And then there's the bus work. I think I will find that putting effort onto the bus could act as a 'security blanket', of sorts, helping me bridge from my former life to me new one. I guess its a good thing I have so much left to do :) I'll detail below the stuff I'll be focusing on for the short term. Camping season doesn't really get fully going around here until Independence Day, so I have more time than my East Coast friends do.

Bus Fix-It Punch List:
- clutch cable adjustment. may require new bowden tube or adding spacers.
- OBDII plug at driver seat. should just require a single wire. necessary for coolant temp monitoring during test flights
- engine harness replacement. borrowed harness doesn't have oil pressure sensor wired in. Not good for regular driving.
---- could start test flights at this point ----
- interior cleanup. strip interior (behind front seats), deep clean, re-insulate / noise baffling
- pop top replacement. remove westy top, install Riviera top w/bed, etc.
- secondary battery re-install. with the new engine, the old set-up doesn't work. This step will include re-routing lots of secondary systems (radio, interior lights, eg) to the secondary battery.
- finish water supply install. exterior shore-water inlet was never added.
- propane system install. the stove is there, but none of the propane (tank, lines) is. This will include integrating the "extend-a-stay" system.

That looks like a lot. That's cuz it is. I probably won't get it all done, but I'll do it in that order, with some of the lower priority items fitting into the bare-interior period. Thanks for following along, and I'll post once I'm moved in with pictures of moving day :)

pictures:
top - C at the edge of the Willamette River looking for cool rocks
bottom - me at the set break at Dark Star Orchestra a couple of weeks ago at the Crystal. Yes, that's a crying splittie t-shirt.

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-