The Happy Bathroom

Before my connecting flight home I popped in one of Charlotte's Airport bathrooms. This bathroom had an attendant. Usually bathroom attendants that I encounter are very sullen and sit in their chair gloomily. I don't blame them for being grumpy. I would be grumpy too. I think most people don't dream about being a bathroom attendant. But this attendant was a very happy lady. Her accent sounded islandish like somewhere in the Caribbean and she was singing a very jolly tune. She welcomed everyone as they entered the bathroom and she wished you a Happy New Year when you left. When I gave her my tip she was extremely thankful and showed it jovially.

It is simply amazing what a smile and a happy hum can do to brighten up one's stressful day of traveling. It just takes one person to spread a contagious smile to hundreds.

Give a stranger a smile to bring in the new year. Happy New Year!!

Let it Snow

For a week the weather forecast was snow on Saturday. It started raining Friday evening when the temperature was 38 degrees. The temperature was supposed to drop during the night to turn the rain into snow. But instead the temperature increased and it is still raining. Everywhere else in the region the temperature is below freezing and the rain is snow. It is snowing in Lexington, Florence, Cincinnati, and across the river in Southern Indiana, but not in Louisville.

I am disappointed that it is not snowing today. I was looking forward to spending the first snowfall with my husband and to watch my little dog experience snow for the first time. It doesn't look like that I will be here for the first snow, but hopefully there will be enough snow in January to build our first snowman together, as a family.

Life and Adventures in Kentuckiana

Late Thanksgiving night we decided to attempt the Best Buy Black Friday doorbuster. I sent my husband out at 1:30am on a scouting mission. He reported back that a line of tents went around the building past the loading docks. We then decided to go to sleep and slept until noon. Apparently even in a recession people still need their HD TVs.

Earlier that day we went to a farm in Southern Indiana for Thanksgiving dinner with some family. It was very yummy and the portions were huge which left plenty of leftovers for all of us. The drive was very scenic through small farms and quaint old homes. We also saw a beautiful black and white woodpecker with a bright red head flying by.

Thanksgiving marked the beginning of cold weather for us, but the past few weeks were warm and sunny. We went hiking in a research forest just south of Louisville. It was very pretty and serene with the changing colours. We will be heading there often. (Even in the snow; I love snow hiking.)

Life has carried on with some similarities to California, but mainly differences. For example, I had to buy a pair of work shoes suitable for snow and ice; an act that never occurred in San Diego. Experiencing both new and familiar events has been fun and I can't wait for more (especially the first snow fall).

Sunshine Days

On Friday the storm clouds were moving across the sky faster than I have ever seen before. Just as the storm passed over us quickly and the sunshine came down to us, some goodness has entered our lives. To start AT&T did pay us an unexpected visit and fixed our phone lines. Now we can dump our awful cable. We found a "sushi" restaurant that we liked. Our local grocery chain (Kroger) has really good fried chicken for a good price. Sephora had one last bottle of my discontinued perfume. And I saw a hedgehog running around outside my front door. It is so lovely to be able to walk around amongst trees with falling leaves and seeing wild creatures that I have never seen before. The skies are sunny today and so is the outlook on our new life in Kentucky.

Sunny-side Up

This move has not gone according to plan. To start we hit the road a day late after two very exhausting days of packing and cleaning. Then we unloaded our truck into a cute little house with a great back yard minutes from family only to discover the place is a slum and have to rent another truck, reload it and move all of our belongings in the rain to a one bedroom apartment outside the city. With a third of our belonging still in boxes because we downgraded from a two bedroom in California to a one bedroom here, we made due without setting-up cable and internet because we were waiting for the promised AT&T U-verse to be installed. But on Tuesday after four hours of the techs trying everything thy could, we were told that the signal is too weak and the lines too old. It might seem silly to be upset about having to get cable instead of U-verse, but we had U-verse in San Diego and we loved it. (Keep in mind that we are children of the TV babysitter and we take comfort in watching our preferred shows.) Having to revert back to inferior cable was just one more thing that has gone wrong.


Now we have to figure out what our new Kentucky lives will be like. We are testing out local grocery stores (though I am really upset that Whole Foods shut down Wild Oats), trying new restaurants and bakeries, and driving down roads we've never been to discover whats there. It has been difficult so far and I am sure that more problems will arise, but we are trying to find the bright and sunny parts no matter how small or spread out. And just maybe, AT&T will decide to update their lines.

Our New Apartment

We have left the house of dirt (got all of our money back) and moved into an apartment about 12 miles from the center of Louisville. We moved everything (with the help of my brother-in-law) on a very rainy day last week and are still trying to unpack towers of boxes.
It is a shame that the little house was unlivable, but we will make due with our clean one bedroom apartment. We have lost square footage from our place in San Diego, but we have also decreased our monthly rent significantly. Also on the positive, the community has a lot of trees and walking paths, a fitness center, a pool (for when the weather warms up in Spring) and a maintenance staff.
This relocation has been a very long process and is still ongoing, but for now we are off my brother-in-law's futon, have found the Ikea in Cincinnati, and the bathroom and kitchen are fully functional (the two most important rooms). And in a week we will have internet and I will post more regularly.

The Rental House

We walked into our rental house yesterday and it was filthy. There was dirt, hair and plastic bits all over the floors, layers of dirt and dust in all the vents and even a cigarette butt on the awning in the second floor room. We spend over four hours sweeping, mopping, dusting and disinfecting, and that was only the rooms that boxes were unloaded into. The bathroom, kitchen, second floor, basement, garage and backyard still need to be cleaned before we can start unpacking. The house wasn't even cleaned before the walls were painted and the floors varnished. There was hair painted into the baseboards, and dirt and hair (along with a plastic tag, a screw, a bobby pin and a sticker) varnished into the wood floors. The backyard is very nice with a large shade tree, but it is littered with broken glass, bottle caps, cigarette butts and other garbage. The garage is filled with leaves and broken glass and has a warped-shut old dresser filled with who knows what. However, with a lot of cleaning and hard work this little house might become a nice little home.

Double It

The best advice I can give to anyone moving is to plan out the time and resources you will need and then double it. I gave my two weeks notice a month before the move date leaving me two weeks to spend time with family and friends and pack up the house. In practice, four weeks were needed. I planned one day to load the truck and clean the apartment, but it took two days (and that was with my husbands entire family helping). We leased a 16' truck which was recommended for a 2-3 bedroom house, but we filled up the whole truck with our two bedroom apartment and that was with selling off our washer/dryer, bed frame, coffee table, desk, storage bench and two chest of drawers. Everything I planned needed to be doubled.

Quick Update

In between driving and sleeping there has been no time to blog. The blogging will start up again next weekend. Until then, a quick update.
We left San Diego Monday night after two solid days of packing, cleaning and loading the truck (with a lot of help from my in-laws). We only made it two hours before stopping Monday night but have been doing much better since. We have made it to Oklahoma so far, and should be arriving in Louisville Friday afternoon.
P.S. If you have a dog that gets motion sickness like my little one does, try a little ginger powder. It has worked wonders. He is as happy as he can be on this very long road trip.

Flan

My mother-in-law makes the best flan I have ever had. Two years ago while at my parents house I attempted to make flan. I had the recipe and it was very easy as I had made custard pies before. The only challenging aspect was caramelizing sugar. I had never caramelized sugar before and had been told that it was very difficult to do by many sources. My mother-in-law said that it was easy and her advice (translated from my husband) was to use a pie or cake tin (the mold for the flan) to caramelize the sugar. After 30 minutes and no melted sugar, I hit the internet which advised using a double boiler. As I was trying the second attempt at caramelizing sugar, my husband opened up the refrigerator and the flan filling tumbled to the ground splattering everywhere. The next hour was spent cleaning the kitchen floor and under the refrigerator. In exasperation, I told my husband that I would not make flan until his mother showed me how.
The other night my mother-in-law showed me how to make flan. As soon as the sugar hit the hot cake tin it instantly melted. I was aghast. She hadn't done anything special or differnt than I did; why did her sugar melt and not mine? Apparently it is all in the pan. "Always use Wilton pans for flans," she told me. One of my first purchases in Kentucky will be a Wilton pan.

The Day After

Yesterday was my last official day of work and today I am unemployed. Last night I dreamt not about stability time points, acceptance criteria or HPLC leakage but about boxes, packing and the moving sale. There is only two weeks till the big move and there is so much to do. Besides all the sorting, packing and cleaning, there is the rental truck, shipping the car, DMV forms, change of address notifications, price tagging for the moving sale and most importantly, going to the beach. I am going to take advantage of my unemployment and de-stress by going the beach and museums, taking a hike and working on my 2000 piece jig saw puzzle (that has been on the dining room table for months). A person can't spend their whole life stressed; you should be able to find fun in everything. So on my first day of unemployment i am going to the beach with friends, work on the puzzle, watch college football and pack some boxes.

The Lease

Today I signed a lease on a three bedroom house that I have yet to see in a state I have never been. This is my leap of faith.
I quit my job during a recession and am moving across the country to Kentucky. I do not have a job lined up and am not sure what I will be doing, but that is the point. This is a new adventure; a chance to try new things; to find a career that I love doing. I am confident that I will find a special nook in the worlds of science and art that I fit into perfectly. Moving east is my chance for new discoveries, new knowledge and new possibilities; an adventure filled with mystery and excitement. This is my journey.