the rule of 3...

wow...you never realize how much crap you have until you have to move...this will be my 3rd move in less then 2 years...and every time i have gotten rid of 'a ton' of stuff (or so i thought)...dom and i went dumpster diving again on sat. morning looking for boxes...we were very successful!! (in fact we might have too many haaaaaaaaaaa)...we spent the rest of sat. packing...wait let me back up and start at the beginning of the day...
friday night i picked my car up from the body shop (brad was fixing it before the move to vermont)...as we were driving to meet kev for dinner in shakopee (pablo's of course)...my low oil pressure light came on and told me to stop the engine...i kinda freaked out...we stopped a couple of blocks from the restaurant and turned off the car...we checked the oil and it was fine...i started the car back up and the light wasn't on so i thought maybe the sensor had gone bad or something...well we had dinner with kev and later that night kev drove it to see if the brakes were going on it and the light came back on...so i decided to take it to the dealer on sat. morning....
ok now you have the background info for the saturday story....
woke up saturday morning and called the dealership to get the car in...the guy i usually work with wasn't on so i had to work with someone else...fine...except this guy was not all that friendly with me...i took it in and had a mechanic ride with me to see what he thought...the light came on while i was driving with him (which i was happy about now they had to believe me)...so this mechanic wasn't working sat. he was just there doing some stuff to his car...bob (the service guy i was working with) said he wanted to wait til monday and have steve (the mechanic) work on it since he had ridden with me and knew what was going on...i said fine...they gave me a loaner for free which is one nice thing about the dealer...so i left my car and headed for home...i got home and dominic had been working on getting my gmail account working with my yahoo...so that my yahoo mail would go right to gmail...well he got it figured out but my mail hs to go through charter because yahoo is weird about it...so he got it to work and went to look in my yahoo inbox and there was nothing there...charter saw 25 emails coming at once and thought it was spam and deleted it...(thankfully i had just sorted through my mail the other day and put stuff into folders)...dominic felt horrible...i was upset that i lost everything but i appreciated him trying to get it to work for me and i know it was an accident...so that was #2 for the day...(things come in 3's right?)...it was after this that we found all the boxes...and a bottle of rotari in my fridge...i thought that maybe my 3's were going to end up being good...wellll i was wrong...we went to dinner and came home to my house being 90+ degrees....turns out my ac went out...it tripped the circuit breaker for some reason...(it had done this right after i left and kev got it working again)...we flipped the circuit breaker and nothing...dom went out and took the top off of it and looked inside to see if he could see something wrong...nothing...so we turned the breaker off...turned the air off...let it sit for a bit then flipped the breaker...then turned the air on again...and for some reason it worked...who knows?....so i thought that i was done with the bad...again i was wrong...
woke up sunday morning to yog needing to go pee...i took her out and went to close the garage door on the way back in and it wouldn't go down...crap i thought...tried again...no go...so dom came down and looked at it...couldn't figure it out...steve came over and played with it a bit and couldn't get it to work either...dom got it closed manually and we went to my soccer game...it was the last game i was playing in before the move...i scored a goal...which i was pretty pumped about it was a great one too...(at least i thought so)...after the game we packed a little bit more then headed down to shakopee to pick up some stuff that i had stored at mike's...then off to joy's for a get together she had for dad and shar...we only planned to be there for an hour or so and ended up staying for 6...it was nice though to hang out with them in a chilled atmosphere...
woke up monday and dominic had done some reading on garage doors and he tried some things and got the door to work again!! yeah dom!!!
we did a lot of running around on monday getting things for the send off party that night...didn't get as much packing done as i would have liked but that is totally my own fault...

siblings

i have been thinking about my family a lot lately....probably because this move is one of the biggest things that i have done in my life for myself...even writing this brings me to tears...
i have been thinking about my siblings mostly...
I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!!
you are my best friends and such an amazing support system for me...you have been there through it all for me with unconditional love and acceptance...
you are all such amazing people!!!

forever my heros

i know this is a few days past the 4th of july but i still wanted to get this on here...

I love you Jake! you are my brother, my friend, and forever my hero...

thank you for all that you do so we can live how we live!

you are an amazing man and i admire your strength, courage and ability to stay true to what you know to be right!


the rest of my brothers from another mother...i love you all! thank you for bringing each other back safe...you are also amazing men...i am so glad my brother has you on his side and with him all the way...
see you when you get back home....

milk crates and box hunting

tuesday was a first for me...we started packing dom's stuff up and he likes to use milk crates....so we walked to cvs to see if they had any sitting out back...they did so we became owners of a couple of milk crates...we packed those up and ran out of things to pack in...so off we went again in search of more milk crates and/or boxes...we took the car this time...we drove around stopping at a couple of liquor stores to see if we could get some boxes...they had a ton of boxes but wouldn't let us have any of them because of everyone buying booze and needing a box to carry it home...they told us to check back on the 5th...so we were driving around looking for a parking spot so we could run into the grocery store and ask about boxes when we spotted the jackpot...on a side street there was a whole pile of boxes next to a dumpster....(someone must have moved into the neighborhood)...we filled the trunk and to add to our joy we found 4 more milk crates at a different cvs on our way home...
i should let you know that we spent some time in the morning walking up and down the alley behind dom's place looking for boxes...we did find some good ones...kinda an odd feeling walking around looking in people's garbage for boxes...haaaaaaaaaaaa
we spent the day packing and sorting things out...thankfully not a lot was destroyed in the flooding that happened in the basement...
we met up with some of dominic's friends later for a few drinks...went to bed with the sound of thunderstorms in our ears...

weekend in michigan

this 2 of the walls in that 2 star hotel that i told you about in the last post...the door to the room barely shut...the tv in this room was massive...it took up almost the entire room...needless to say it looks like i won't be picking the motel/hotel from now on...haaaaaaaaaaaaa...we woke up saturday morning and got on the road about 8:30am or so...we drove an hour to the canada/u.s. border...i called pappa at 9:30am and told him we were just getting to the border...he said once through we were only about 3 hours or so from them....great! we sat waiting to go through the toll booth for a long time...finally got through the toll and then sat for even longer waiting to get to the border...i had to pee so bad at this point...we were halfway over the bridge...which for those of you that know i have a little fear of heights when i don't feel safe...i kept imagining the car going over the railing or me getting out the car and going over the railing...haaaaaaaaaaaa...yes im a dork.....anyway...there was a huge rv that was in the lane next to us this entire time...i was sooooooo tempted to get out (i was driving) and ask if i could use their bathroom....but alas i did not do this....we finally (2 hours later) got across the border...and we were on our way after a bathroom stop that should have been timed i had to go so bad...haaa.....we rolled into pappa's place about 3:30 or so that afternoon...uncle dan and aunt barb came over and we all went into grand haven and walked the boardwalk...it was beautiful...(i guess the rain has lost us with all this travel)...dom got a pronto pup with barb....i tried it but i like corn dogs better because there is more corn on a corn dog...which is good especially if you don't really like hot dogs...hahahahah.....
we ate dinner at a restaurant called kirby's...the food wasn't that great all around but the company was amazing...it was sooooo great to be able to hang out with pappa, darlene, dan, barb, dom and i....usually when i see them it's at some family event and we don't really get a chance to talk....
i should mention that my pappa was an engineer and so this caused or prompted a lot of conversation between him and dominic...pappa was full of questions for dominic about what he does in an outage....was funny...
we got back from dinner and dom, pappa, darlene and i stayed up til 1am talking...it was so fun...but man did i sleep hard that night...i didn't realize how tired i was and i don't think i realized how much finding a job was taking out of me...but i slept through the night (a first so far this summer)
we got up about 10am sunday and had our coffee with pappa and darlene on the deck...dan and barb came over and we all made our way to the beach...it was windy but we found a spot by a sand dune and it wasn't as bad...dom, dan and i played frisbee for awhile...it was relaxed and chill...very nice...then went back to pappa's place and played euchre (it's a card game)...i have played it before but long ago...we beat them 2 games to 1...nice...dinner was grilled steaks, potatoes, beans, and salad...it was great....ice cream with fresh fruit on it followed for dessert...dan and barb left about 9 and the rest of us stayed up til about midnight talking again...
dominic and i weren't in a hurry to leave today so we got up (i slept through the night again!!)...got our coffee and we all went out on pappa's pontoon for a coffee boat tour...we went up to grand haven it was really nice and relaxing...
clifford joined us as well and had a good chat with pappa...we stopped on the way back at a little deck restaurant and had lunch...then putt-putted our way home...dom and i packed up and started on our way to chicago...which is where we are headed now...seems like a quick trip (only 3 hours) compared to what we have been doing and what we will be doing in the next couple of weeks...
well off for now...we are going to dom's place and will find out how much of his stuff has been destroyed by the flooding that happened in the basement (his room) when chicago got downpours of rain last week...we'll see...til the next post...oh yeah incase you didn't read close enough in the last blog...I GOT A JOB!!! sorry just really excited about it....haaaaaaaaaa