Hotel living... there's nothing like it!  A cardboard box under the bridge is starting to look pretty appealing. At least it would be something I could call my own. Our family is starting to get on each other's nerves in large part to a lack of sleep. We aren't sure but it appears that a group of insomniac Sumo wrestlers occupy the room directly above us. Continual pacing and frequent body slams at all hours of the night keep us from drifting into a deep sleep. Then there are the weekend pool parties and sleep overs. Last Saturday night we had 9 girls between the ages of 10 and 17 camped out in our room. My 14 year old daughter took the liberty of slugging me each time I drifted off and started to snore - each slug harder than the last. Fortunately the bruising is covered by my shirtsleeves.

We're counting down the days until we're in a real house again (May 9th). The first leg of the move went well but we were exhausted. It's a good thing we started packing a month in advance because we just finished in the nick of time. Friends absorbed six pickup truckloads of "stuff" and about 12 garbage dumpsters were thrown out. All this cleaning and we STILL needed 2 moving vans to haul all our "stuff" to the new place! It was sort of embarrassing. I'm looking forward to unpacking with mixed emotions. I get to see my tools again and set up a new garage and home office. Fortunately there's no deadline in unpacking, as there is in packing so much of it will be able to be done at my leisure or at my wife's insistence.

The weather worked against us. To help speed up the move we stored our packed boxes in the garage so we could open the door and easily load them on the truck. In the 11 years since I put the garage addition on the barn we haven't experience more than a cup water on the floor. The day before we moved strong winds and heavy rains (almost 3-inches in a couple hours) pushed about 10 gallons of water under the garage door seal and saturated the boxes at the bottom of the pile. The rain soaked boxes gave away under the weight of the top boxes and everything came crashing to the floor in a wet - broken mess. Is this the luck or what? How often do you have everything you own in one place?

Before	After

Then to top it all off, out of nowhere a HUGE bolt of lightning struck the church that sits next door to us just as the congregation was leaving the first service. It blew away about 18 vertical feet of stone that smashed several cars and sent debris flying for over a city block. We were just leaving the house and thought we'd been hit. Miraculously no one was seriously injured. Neighbors had windows blow out of their homes and electrical equipment damaged but we didn't suffer any damage to our property - another miracle.

Storing the car...
What a mess! If you've been following this saga for a while you may remember the mention of my wife's mother and father passing away late last year. A few years ago they decided to sell their home and purchase a condo-like semi-supervised living unit from a local assisted living center. For a tidy sum you can own your own 2-bedroom "apartment" with a garage on their grounds. When your care needs increase and you can no longer live on your own; they will sell it and reimburse you 90-percent of your initial investment. They took the money from the sale of their home and paid for the unit in full. After they passed away the empty unit was still owned by the estate so I figured this would be the ideal place to store the car for a while. Imagine my surprise when we pushed the car off the trailer and up the driveway only to open the garage door and find the unit was occupied!

To make a long story short, the assisted living center sold the unit and refuses to honor their agreement. Each owner of the assisted living center has filed bankruptcy and the corporate name has changed. They say that because of this they don't owe us a cent. In short, they are bilking the elderly and we are now taking them to court for fraud and conversion. Nice people eh? My father in-law would roll over in his grave if he knew they stole his life savings. In the mean time these people continue to live comfortably on his money.

The 40-minute car move turned into an enraging all day event. Needless to say, the car storage situation had to go to "plan B" and is now stored in a friends garage while his ride sits outside. I'll want to bring the car home as soon as possible and I owe him big time.

Until next time -

Keep the shiny side up!

Scooter

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