an.epic.update [3000+]

in the beginning, there was...

ike.
as many of you know, if youre following this, I last left off before ike had even entered the picture. Which gives you some idea of how long its been I suppose. Well we were gearing up to leave town and go to denver and ike was still in the gulf. Needless to say we’re all aware of just what kind of damage came out of ike, but safety first, so im going to fill you in on where I and mine stand in the wake of ikes devastation. First of all, everyone is fine. Everyone is healthy. Everyone is safe. Karen and I actually missed all of ikes havoc even though it came right through Cincinnati and did some serious damage up here. Its still being called the worst storm in the history of Cincinnati. Ike hit cincy with hurricane force winds and gusts up to 80mph causing serious damage to a city that was in no way ever prepared for a storm of this magnitude. I doubt before this cincy had even seen tropical storm force winds. When it was over with, over a million people in the ohio river valley were without power, huge trees that had been here for centuries (literally) had been up rooted (and their roots stood 11ft high!) steeples from historic churches had been relocated in buildings across the street, and many people had roofs blown off and pretty serious wind damage. To this day (over a week since ikes landfall) people in cincy are still without power. It blows my mind, but duke energy is doing all they can day in and out to get it back up, and people are trying to go on with their lives as best they can. Apparently our apartment lost power for about 17-18 hours, but other than that, no damage at all. The most Karen and I actually even saw of ike was a lot of rain in western Missouri while we’re on the road, but it wasn’t even very hard rain.
As for our families, we’re not dumb people and being that everyone lived on or near the coast, everyone evacuated. Now that its all over and it has been over a week, heres the status report. Texas city, from what ive heard, had very minimal damage compared to the rest of the region. From the news reports ive heard and read, the texas city seawall or “skyline” as we call it, was the only seawall in the entire coast that actually did its job in this hurricane. Im sure a lot of that is because it’s a little taller than some of the others in the area, and by the time the surge got that far inland it wasn’t nearly as high as it could have been anyway. Either way, the power is on in texas city, my family is at home, and theyre slowly cleaning up and repairing what damage was done. Miraculously, that damage was little to nothing at all in the grande scheme of things. I say miraculously because with my dad in Saudi Arabia before and during ike, my mom was unable to put the storm shutters on the doors and windows before evacuating and miraculously, there was no damage at all to our house, not even a cracked window from what ive heard. However, the trees and gates and fences at our house were not as lucky and all of them have been in the process of being rebuilt either completely or partially over the last week. But other than that, everyone is safe and the house is in the same condition it was before Ike hit.
As for karens family, well theyre islanders, so their fate wasn’t quite the same. At this point, they still haven’t been able to get back on the island to go and see the house (as far as I know) but they do know some people that have seen the house and to my understanding there has been some damage but it could have been worse. They live in a beach house type structure so the lowest level is garage and utility and the actual living space is on large piers and starts at 14ft above grade. From what ive heard at this point the lowest level of the house has sustained some pretty good damage and I don’t know to what extent, but its not good. Karen’s mom’s car I believe is upside down on the lawn, and theres definitely been damage to the yard and landscaping. That’s really all I know about the damage to the house, but her parents are safe and hopefully will get on the island at some point today or tomorrow to further evaluate the damage and go from there.

trip.
so we ended up embarking on the trip to denver as scheduled on saturday morning at about 4am. if you remember from the itinerary we were originally going to stop in kansas city to check out a museum and stay the night, near salina to see a little attraction and then on to denver. then two museums in denver, and two more on the way back in st. louis. well not everything went as planned… everything was fine on the way out until we got to illinois at around 10-11am. At which point the serpentine belt that I had just replaced a week before (if you remember from an earlier post) popped on us and left us stranded on the side of I-70 in no-where Illinois. Well after battling with triple-a on the phone and giving up, theyre absolutely worthless, and contacting a tow company on our own via a sheriff’s advice, we found ourselves in Effingham Illinois to get the truck repaired. Effingham - where the t-shirts actually say “where in the Effingham are we” if that tells you anything. (although they do have a 900ft tall silver cross that can be seen for miles around and serves absolutely no purpose at all from what I could tell, lol!) anyway, we were in Effingham for about 3 hours while the truck was towed and repaired and then we were back on our way. We made it to Kansas city, but certainly not in enough time to make it to the museum and we already had hotels booked elsewhere, so we decided that stop was going to have to be postponed. We did try some of the famous Kansas city bbq while we were there and speaking as a Texan who knows real bbq… I was more than disappointed with our meal. I wont go into detail, but I would recommend NOT getting bbq in Kansas city if you ever had the option.
So the next morning, Sunday, we got on the road again and we did make our stop at “rock city” near salina. It was actually pretty cool and the huge nerd I am, I ate it up. Took dozens of pictures, if you know me, then you know whats up, haha. After saline we finished our trip and made it to denver around 8-ish mountain time and actually were able to meet up with a friend of mine, cody, that night for dinner and to catch up.
Monday we were supposed to do museum stuff all day but discovered that both museums were closed on Monday so instead we took care of other things. We got my truck inspected and my license plates renewed in Colorado, a fairly lengthy little process, and then picked up the u-haul and ended up emptying out my storage unit and getting all that done on Monday before 8-oclock even hit. After talking with a few other friends I was able to get ahold of while we were there we ended up meeting up with bob for a drink @ 8:30 at the rio, and then we had sushi with chris and nick @ 9:30 at konas. It was really great to get to see the friends I could while I was in denver and catch up on things before I had to leave again for who knows how long. Part of me does miss denver…
Tuesday we decided to ditch the u-haul at the hotel and try to get the museums in before leaving as early as we could. Since Karen and I had both been to the dam before she just wanted to get some pictures of it for her research and we did that pretty quickly and then moved on the the mca. Now personally I love the mca, if you ever get the chance to go there, do so. The dam, not so much, but do whatever you like I guess. So we went to the mca and had a blast, we toured the museum and were able to take a ton of pictures and even left with a few souvenirs. When we got back to the hotel to leave we discovered that the u-haul wasn’t balanced as optimally as wed like and wanted to rearrange things before getting back on the road, but the door was seriously stuck – not good. Something must have been jammed in the track we assumed, and there was no way we were going to make it with it bouncing around the way it was so we went through circles to find a u-haul place closer to us (the one we got the trailer at was a half hour in the wrong direction – the u-haul people do not know how to locate a nearest location on the phone to reserve your trailer…). Eventually we did find one and luckily they were able to help us open it (there was something jammed in the track) and we were able to get things balanced better and finally get on the road by about 4pm… definitely later than we were hoping so we cancelled the hotel reservation we’d made in Kansas city and got one in Abilene Kansas instead and I drove until we got there at about 1am central time.
We left there Wednesday morning and decided we were definitely stopping for the museum in Kansas city. So we stopped at the nelson-atkins and it was awesome. Stephen holl did a fantastic job on this one and we enjoyed every second of it. Again we got tons of pictures and between taking longer at the museum than wed expected and the u-haul seriously slowing us down, we decided to spend the night near st Louis at about 10pm. (we were both exhausted) we didn’t end up getting to go to the two museums in st.louis or really get to enjoy the gateway arch, but we went by all of them and got as close as we could and took what pictures we could while we were in st.louis. maybe some other day we’ll be able to go back and get the full experience, but for now it just wasn’t in the cards.
So Thursday, a day not originally intended to be on this trip, we drove the rest of the way to cincy and got back around 2 or 3 if I remember correctly. We were pretty beat from the whole trip but we got it done. Friday, Saturday, and a little on Sunday, we unpacked the trailer into our apartment, mostly into our storage here in cincy and then returned the u-haul and finally got this all over with and now we’re all organized and finally settled back into cincy again. When all was said and done it took us 19 hours to get to denver, and approximately 23 hours to get back and I hope I never have to drive cross country with a u-haul again. It sucks.

house.
So on Friday before we left for cincy, we got a call from the realtor, and they had finally sent us an official 20 page contract to read over and sign. Obviously that wasn’t going to happen right away given the circumstances of our cross country adventure, so it got put on the back burner until we got back to cincy. Friday when we were back in cincy we went to the realtor and went over the contract and signed it and actually got it to them quick enough that they responded and told us theyd forgotten 2 pages we needed to sign originally and via internet we were able to sign and email those to our realtor and were able to get them to the bank before the end of business on Friday. At this point, its Tuesday afternoon and we haven’t heard anything back as of yet, but we’re hoping it goes pretty quick. The contract weve signed does have a closing date of October 6th, and it even provides time between when its approved by the seller and the closing for inspections and possible negotiation of price, so the games not over yet, but we’re definitely getting into the later innings (finally!) so stay tuned for more updates on the house as soon as I have them, but for now we have gone by there since the storm and the house appears to have not been touched at all by it as far as we can tell. Guess we got lucky on that one, but now we need to close the deal and get going on the next little adventure eh?

truck.
Well in addition to the serpentine belt popping on us, theres one other short update on the truck. The stupid effing truck… grr. So the locking mechanism on the driver side door was giving us problems the entire trip and on wednesdays trek it got so bad that we finally got it closed and locked it and I climbed in and out of the window every time we needed to get out the rest of the trip. It was like i was in nascar or something… translation - I felt like the biggest piece of white trash to ever walk the planet… on Friday I made the mistake of opening the door again and that was all she wrote. It would not close. Luckily it was while we were out running to the realtors and a few other errands so we didn’t have the u-haul hooked up. Well we ended up going to a dodge dealership in Kentucky and they got us all fixed up and squared away in about an hour and a half. And, for those of you who know my truck, not only did they fix the locking mechanism, the shimmed the door panel and made it more solid, fixed the door handle so it would stop falling out, and did something to the hinge so the door closes easier than it ever has since ive had that damned truck! What a deal, haha, I guess. I still hate that truck and want to get rid of it, but for now its transportation and itll do.

work.
So when we last left I believe I had had an interview that went very well with a firm here in cincy. Well it went very very well actually and over the course of the trip I had a few more phone conversations with the firm and they even made me an offer on Wednesday! So I reviewed the offer and discussed things at length with Karen and came to my decision. I had a hard time getting in touch with the principal id been speaking with for the rest of the week however and it made me very nervous that perhaps they were changing their mind or backing out…
On Monday, yesterday, Karen started her new job here in cincy as part of a co-op for her masters program. She will be working for this firm for the next 6 months and she gets credit for 2 quarters in school as part of the program shes in. its actually kind of cool I guess because while not all schools force you to get work experience like hers, they do all encourage it, and since shes being forced, it works out well. The school was very helpful in her finding the job and shes being paid pretty well (thank god! Because ive been out of work for a week now and we spent a fortune on that damned trip to denver, lol!) and if yesterday was any glimpse of the future, she seemed to like it there okay. So that’s great news! As for me, I did not go to work yesterday, I waited on a plumber all morning who showed up for 5 minutes and then disappeared… our shower has been leaking since we moved in and I guess the landlord finally decided hed lost enough money from it and was having a plumber come fix it. Well for whatever reason they didn’t get things straight yesterday and he didn’t do the job.
However, I did call the firm and they were still very interested in me and actually scheduled a meeting at 3pm yesterday afternoon. And im happy to report that when I left that meeting I officially had a job and I start work on Monday! Its not a job with a lot of fluff, its very cut and dry as far as my salary and benefits go, but it’s a job and its money and while im not working yet, it is finally settled. So Karen and I are extremely happy about that and we feel a lot more relaxed in our future.

a final note.
The plumber did come this morning and, after 2 and a half hours, he has successfully fixed our shower! Now it has all kinds of sparkly new hardware and its no longer leaking so that little saga can be closed as well. Well, I think that’s all ive got to report at this point. Life is getting interesting here in cincy hm? Hope youre all enjoying these little updates. Ill try to keep them coming, but for now (at over 3000 words) im done for the day, adiosa!