the move

So I realize I am a little late to start this as I've already been here two weeks, but I'll recap.

Three weeks ago (which at this time feels like a lifetime ago) we were packing, cleaning and saying our good byes.

Our goodbye picnic was really nice and a lot of people showed up, although I was said that a few people did not come. The picnic was held at Minnehaha park where we did a lot of grilling and socializing. Both my family and Darren's sisters and kids were there as well as friends and some fellow librarians from school. It turned out to be a beautiful day weather wise and although we only had two picnic tables, we made due. After the picnic, I had originally thought I would go out with friends, but in all reality, I was exhausted. Claire was in town from Madison, so Claire and Darren and I went back home and drank some left over picnic beers.

We still had to work through Wednesday, so we tried to get as much as we could that weekend, but Thursday rolled around and we still had a ton to do. My dad came over (thank God!) and helped us pack the truck. I know that we never could have packed the truck so well without him! It took us several hours, but luckily it was one of the cooler days of the summer, so even though we had to run up and down stairs, we survived.

Friday, Darren and I got up early and had breakfast with Tony. This was nice. I hope Tony can hold it together, things are tough right now for him and I feel awful leaving him now. After Tony, we cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. It pretty much sucked. We got done just in time to go out with some friends and say our final good byes. Terah, our new friend who lives in Nashville (but is in Minneapolis for the summer) came, Britt, Matt and Steve (which was really nice because they missed the picnic), Andy and Taylor and Erin and her roommate Dexa. Sadly, Erin and Dexa got there pretty late and we had to leave soon after because we had a "walk-through" scheduled with our landlord. I do miss everyone already... at least Terah will be here soon!

Saturday morning, we got up around 5:30 and were on the road by 7. The first day of driving was surprisingly not too bad. I had lots of books on tape and the cats slept the whole way, so we make it to Farmer City, IL by 4:30pm. We relaxed at motel and the animals adjusted pretty quickly. We got pizza, drank whisky and watched cable. It was a good break.

Sunday, we were back on the road, but this day we only had a six hour drive rather than eight, so it was pretty good. We hit some really bad traffic in Kentucky, but got there about 15 minutes before the scheduled movers, luckily. I figured we weren't going to want to unload our stuff after driving for two days, so I hired two movers to unload it for us, it was the best thing I ever thought of! They did it in about half the time it took us to load the truck and it was only $190, money well spent if you ask me!

That night, we decided we weren't even going to think about unpacking, so we decided to head out to the Three Crow Bar for food and drinks. So I put on this dress that I had recently bought. The zipper was really hard to zip so Darren had to force it up. So after sitting at the bar for about a half hour the zipper broke!!! There was nothing I could do, every time I moved more of my back was exposed to the world! I went to the bathroom to try to fix it, but i made it worse, the dress was totally unzipped. I ran out of the bathroom straight to the car! I couldn't even finish my drink! My first night in Nashville- so embarrasing. Well, I'm over it, but it was really funny! After I went home and changed, we went downtown, which is pretty much all tourist stuff, but, still fun. We went to this kareoke bar- holy crap, I have never heard such good kareoke. We aren't talking about one good singer, like at the VFW, but every single person. This city has way too many amazing singers, I will never do kareoke again. I have retired. I'm pretty sure one of the guys was a homeless guy who sounded like Billy Joel, really probably better than Bill Joel... crazy.

Ok, I am getting sick of writing this tonight, but I will update with part two tomorrow or later this week and bring you all (y'all) up to speed with the last two weeks living here. One exciting highlight- I got a super cute scooter and motorcyle license to go with it!

Photo documentation of everything is available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kittycar/sets/72157600862813777/

More to come, I promise!