We are "home" finally!

Apologies for the lateness of this, our drive this morning was actually pretty short, about 4 hours, so we didn't really stop anywhere suitable for posting, and then when we got here it was all about getting settled, exploring, figuring out where to put things, dealing with huffy kitties and finding out that at some point along the trip our Xbox was stolen.

So, yes, we are here and we are safe and sound and the cats are starting to forgive us for all the indignities we heaped upon them.

Than is exploring the possibility that we can do an insurance claim on the Xbox, but we aren't holding our breath. We are looking at it this way. On a long trip there is always something that goes horribly wrong. This time it was a 300 dollar game system (he'd said 400 to me earlier but he's since looked it up and it was 300, still a lot of money) It wasn't the cats, the car, or us. It sucks, but it is certainly not the end of the world.

Here are some pics of the new digs. Sorry, some of them are a bit dark and some are a bit blurry, but I snapped them in a bit of a hurry and didn't check them. We wanted pics before we moved our mass of stuff in and messed it all up. I'll try to take better ones once I get our stuff situated neatly.














We then went for a drive, picked up some breakfast foods, obtained adult beverages, had dinner at One Pot Shabu Shabu (OMGAWESOME, Google it, it's fabulous) and then did a little walking tour of the place where he will be working soon! We are back now, it is 10PM here so... late for most of my friends and family. Lots to do tomorrow, lots and LOTS.

So close we can smell it

But not quite there yet. We are currently in a very nice room at the holiday inn suites in Bakersfield, CA. This one has a full bar and we are taking advantage of it whilst the kitties explore the new single serving digs. One more day on the road and we will be in our temporary home in Los Gatos! Will probably post something more substantial later tonight or in the morning, I have too many pics to go through to do it right now, but here is a shot of the spinach artichoke dip we are about to partake in.

It's official!

We have now officially entered California!!

Fritters for critters and also some knitting

Having breakfast in Holbrook AZ, and since we didn't stay at a "real hotel" this time we had no breakfast bar, so off we went to the closest thing that offerred a food like substance, Donuts Plus. We didn't expect much from the nondescript appearance of the building, but woah. What a surprise! Free wifi to start with, lovely fresh donuts and real coffee.
Here you can see that the little critters highly approved of our breakfast selections...

Don't judge, I'll go back on weightwatchers when I have a damn kitchen again :P Also don't let the cups and such fool you, this place is called Donuts Plus, not Daylight Donuts, but whatever, those donuts were goooood.
I haven't been able to do quite as much car knitting as I'd have liked due to the fact that I ended up having to keep the littlest cat in my lap to keep her calm (in her carrier of course, not loose) but I've done some, and my Piper's Journey is coming along. I finally decided I had enough of the stockinette part and started the knitted on border. I have like 280 stitches on the needles now.

It's freakin gorgeous, I love this yarn! The lace pattern was easy to memorize so I'm going to keep at it and see how far I can get in the next two days.
Ok, enough of this lolly gagging we have to go now and commence with the torturing of innocent kitties, because we are mean and don't love them at all. :)

One step closer

Dodgy internet again, so I'm just not beating my head up against the wall trying to get in a long post. I get better connections at the welcome centers and Love's Travel Centers, so I'll post more at our first stop tomorrow. Since I do rely on wifi to post through my iPad, and it sucks to post a big long post from my phone.

I do want to thank all of my many many MANY friends and family members for understanding that we are on the road, wrangling cats and dealing with spotty intermittent network connections, so if we can't respond individually or remember to post about every single detail we REALLY appreciate all the patience you've shown. The last thing we need during this little adventure is more stress, and all of your understanding allows us to deal with as little of it as possible, and we sure do appreciate it. Really, seriously... like.. a lot! :D
Now I'm going to have a nice adult beverage and have a little relax time before everything goes boom and explodes with fun again!

Also here is a picture of a cute sleeping kitty who is exhausted from meowing incessantly since we left Shamrock, TX.

Silly interlude

Just a quick post from a rest stop near Gallup, NM.

In Kentucky we stopped at a place and I saw this cute lil guy.

I didn't notice at the time that his "name" was supposed to be Santa Claws, (UGH) but even later I noticed how they had him listed on the receipt! I didn't see the resemblance at first, but then I did a bit of doodling and voila!

HO HO HO! I had no idea Santa Claus was really a tiny stuffed lobster...and now I know!

Another very fine rest stop

Not quite as nice as the Oklahoma welcome center, but still very nice, is the welcome center of New Mexico, I40-W. Free wifi FTW! The coolest thing here, and the only thing worth taking a picture of, is this bronze cast of a brontosaurus bone, complete with chomp marks.



Now for a bit of a proper blog post.

The trip yesterday was fairly uneventful, but we did see these fantastic windmills going through Oklahoma.


The picture doesn't remotely do them justice. I also got some video of them as we passed, and I did manage to get at posted on YouTube. You should be able to see it here. Let me know if that doesn't work. The music in the background is Billy Cobham, from a cd burned for us by Than's dad. Excellent jams!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdUtxCsDvOQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Passing through Oklahoma City we saw this and I JUST managed to snap a quick shot of it.


Turns out this was the Skydance Bridge, which is a Big Deal there and they light it with pretty colors at night. I'd like to come back and see that someday, I bet it is a gorgeous sight. Here is a pic I found on the Internet.



Google it, there are lots, it is awesome!

The cats are fine, but Trinity seems determined to meow for the entire trip no matter how much Valium we give her. We are starting to hunger for kitty steaks!

As I mentioned, the last stop was pretty much sub-par, but the beds were comfortable and the place was clean, so no real complaints aside from the ridiculously bad Internet access and the horrible coffee in the morning. Trillian did manage to scare us by getting up under the bed where we had to literally lift the mattress and box spring to get to her, but she was safe and sound and no harm done.

Neo resisted dosing so vehemently that we decided to let him stay sober, and honestly he is just fine, he's the quietest of all of them, so that's one less thing to worry about there.

Our next stop is Holbrook, Arizona, which google maps is telling me is about 7 hours away. That puts us there around 10PM Cincinnati time, 8PM New Mexico time. Hopefully the Internet access will be better there.

Ok, enough rest, the road is calllinnnggggggg.....

Still alive

Made it to Shamrock, TX, the town and hotel were pretty meh. The hotel wifi was terrible. All the rest stops want 2 bucks for an hour of net access. Will blog properly when I find an open node that doesn't suck!

The best little rest stop in Oklahoma

Than pulled over randomly at a rest stop and so we go in to take care of things, like you do. It's the Oklahoma welcome center on I-40 west. First thing I notice is these fun teepee like structures providing shade (kind of) for the picnic tables.



Going inside I had to do a double take, I thought we had walked into a hotel lobby..


And this awesome work of art hangs over their heads.



There's free coffee that doesn't suck, comfy chairs, clean facilities, super friendly people, and free wi-fi too. I don't think I've ever felt the urge to blog about a rest stop before, but there you go :P now it's time to get back on the road... Yayyyy

Coffee zombies in cyberspace

Finally we have a connection! Wooo!

Nothing to actually post right now, need coffee. just sayin though, yay internet and yay coffee!

Still alive, so far

Made it to Arkansas, no internets where we are staying so I'm having to post on the phone. Therefore I will keep it short.

This is what most of the trip looked like.



The cats were fine once the drugs kicked in, and we got in JUST as they started wearing off. Than's parents graciously provided a sumptuous feast and (more importantly) wine! I am now going back to the part where I am drinking wine and not typing blog posts on tiny keyboards. Will be at his folk's house tomorrow and they do have internets so may post more then.

Kbye!

Here we go!

We got a bit of a late start, it was hard to get to sleep last night. Had some breakfast at the hotel and finished loading the car up, drugged the kitties and stuffed them in their little boxes.

It is now 9:40 PM so I guess we will arrive in AR around 8:40PM. Later than we wanted, but nothing can be done. :(

No pics yet, tired... Pics later.

Ready, set, go... tomorrow

We had a nice time at the BBQ, Than really took a shine to Claire's pretty maine coon cat, Victoria.


Got back to the hotel in plenty of time to play tetris with the rest of our stuff in the back of the car. Got the car packed up except for the things we need in the morning and, of course, the cats.

Hanging out with Joe and Barbara last night was great, we had yummy champagne and cheeses and great conversation, and I got to show Barbara some neat things she can do with her iPad. She took a very nice pic of Than and myself that I actually like, and everyone knows how much I hate pics of me :D


Up in the morning, dosing the cats with kitty valium, loading up the car and headed out of Cincinnati as soon as we can manage. I'll try to take more interesting pics, I wish I'd taken more pics of the group while we were hanging out, but I never do think of these things when I have a chance! My friends will just have to post lots of pics to facebook :)

And now for something completely different

Went to my last knit group at College Hill CC, (sniff) and a last quick trip to the new textile shop in the area, Silkroad Textiles. You crafty Cincinnatians should really check this place out. They are getting quite a respectable inventory and the people are omgawesome! I got these cute Lantern Moon nesting bags, seen here modeled by my ladybug friends and Lani Kitty! Also in the shot is the knitting project bag I made with my Knitting Lorax fabric, also obtained at said textile shop.

These are a couple quilts they have on display, which I had grabbed a couple shots of because the MIL is a quilter and I thought she'd like to see them.


So I'm posting this from Marty's Hops and Vines, which has been one of our favorite places in Cincinnati... Definitely one of the places we are going to miss most. You like beer and wine, this is the place to be, and they have a nice little bistro like atmosphere and the people are amazing and friendly. We couldn't leave without having one last beer at Marty's. Even better? Today they had Mt. Carmel Imperial Coffee Stout on tap! OMG it's one of my favorite things ever and you can't buy it off the shelf! I was just lamenting never getting to have it again before we left and we pop into Marty's and there it was!
So now we head back to the hotel to do the final pre-pack and then to Claire's BBQ, then early to bed early to rise, on the road bright and early to start the real adventure!

Testing blogpress in offline mode, now with more sushi!

This is the sushi we had at Fuji's House last Saturday with my awesome, wonderful friends...


And we forgot to use the Groupon we bought for that occassion, so, as not to waste it, we went back last night and had more sushi!



Fuji's House has incredible sushi, and they are super generous with the portions. If you live in Cincinnati and love sushi, I highly recommend you try them!

Testing Blogpress App for iPad

Than is playing Angry Birds at Starbucks... He is not actually angry!

Quick test time

Posting a quick pic to see how much of a PITA it is to post to blogger from my phone.

For your enjoyment, this is a pic of Than playing Doom 3 on the very nice hotel television this morning while we had our coffee.

Moving Pictures

Trying out Blogger instead of Tumblr since Tumblr just sucks. Don't want to repost all the previous posts so I'm just reposting all the pics I had up from Tumblr into one post here.

The move happened on August 1st and went off without a hitch! We are staying in a very nice hotel with 3 moderately unhappy kitties (except for right now Trinity is purring happily on daddy's chest, so I guess she's not doing so badly :P) 

I've found no way to directly integrate blogger into facebook, so if anyone knows how to do this please let me know!