A Busy Weekend

This past weekend Cayne and I decided we needed to really get moving on some upcoming travel plans and on researching some new gadgets we wanted to buy. Since it was raining when we woke up on Saturday, we figured it was the perfect day to spend getting some of these tasks accomplished. Turns out it was a good decision because it rained almost non-stop all day Saturday.



We were able to book tickets to Florida for a friend's wedding at Siesta Key, get our hotel, and a car rental for a much cheaper price than we expected. We're both looking forward to spending a few days on the beach in September!



Cayne also bought us a Garmin nüvi 755T GPS with a Friction Dashboard Mount for our new car, after researching all sorts of navigation systems, this seems like the one that will work best for our needs. I'm looking forward to the fact that it tells you which lane you need to be in! We'll see how much we like it once it arrives.



Sunday, we drove over to Annapolis and strolled along the marina, the Naval Academy, and the shops on Main Street. The weather was beautiful and the town was very active. We stopped for an early seafood dinner at Pusser's Caribbean Grille (they have delicious Mojito's, which makes sense because Pusser's makes great rum).



The real winner this weekend was the cheap airfare I found to New Zealand for our wedding celebration. We were able to book tickets for the two of us on Expedia for basically the price we had been seeing for 1 person. I'm not entirely sure how it happened but the tickets are confirmed and we'll be spending Christmas and New Year's in New Zealand! Now we just need to get our airfare to Sydney (and a hotel in Sydney) for Jono's wedding and we'll be set.

The new baby

We made it home in one piece! Betsey got first driving honors, and is really wrapped in it.

New Car

Tonight Cayne and I are heading to the Saturn dealership to pick up our new Aura XE. We were able to get a great deal on this one (thanks, Dad!). We're both very excited to have our own set of wheels! For Cayne, it is his first ever brand new car.

For me, it's been really nice to be car-free for the past year and a half -- there have only been a few times where I really wished I had a car. Living in the city, it made much more sense to not have a car (especially with the parking prices in DC). The public transportation system here and Zipcars make it so much easier to not need to own one. That said, now that we are in the suburbs, having a car is much more necessary -- just for getting to a grocery store or pharmacy, Target or friends' homes. And now it will be much easier to take short (or long) weekend trips.

Settling in to the New Home

This weekend, Cayne and I spent most of our time shopping. We rented a base model Cobalt (it's such a pain to not have automatic locks, isn't it?) from the local Enterprise Company and off we went to our first stop, Target. We needed to get some very basic things for the house, including a garbage can -- it's hard to believe there are still places in this country where the garbage pick-up doesn't use one of the automatic-arm trucks and where they don't provide you with the large wheeled bins. Funny thing is...our paper recycling bin is one of those large blue bins with wheels, etc (and yes, the paper bin is separate from the smaller "other recyclables" that you have to sort. Oh - and yard clippings have to go in separate, special brown paper bags you have to pick up from the hardware store. I can't make up my mind as to whether this means folks in Arizona were smarter or just lazier since we never sorted anything (apart from keeping trash separate from recyclables) and just had one big trash bin and one big recycling bin to wheel to the end of the driveway each week.

After filling our car with home-goods at Target, we stopped home to unload and then took off for Bed Bath and Beyond. There, we got a new shower head that Cayne installed today (it's awesome) and also a kitchen garbage can. Gotta love those 20% off coupons at BB&B!

We spent today back at Ikea, where I think we've bought everything we need for our kitchen and for Cayne's office. We just beat the same-day-delivery cut-off so now we are just waiting for our purchases to arrive so we can start putting them together and take care of some of the clutter.

Oh Deer!

Q: What do you call a deer with no eyes?
A: No eye deer

Q: What do you call a deer with no eyes and no legs?
A: Still no eye deer

Sad...

While talking on the phone today, I spotted this in our back yard.

I have been told to be on the lookout for foxes as well!

Accomplishments

Well, we have officially gotten everything out of our little 700 sq. ft. apartment in Dupont Circle and are slowly settling into a much larger space in Kensington, MD. It's going to take a while to adjust to not having every single restaurant deliver (I think we're stuck with pizza or Chinese unless we use takeout taxi) and not being able to walk to the stores to run our errands. Since so much has happened in such a short amount of time, I thought I'd just list some of the accomplishments we've had in the past 2 weeks:

1. Packed.


2. Rented a car (small SUV) to help with moving and errand running on Monday.


3. Made arrangements with moving company to have furniture moved.


4. Found out moving company, although they had some decent online reviews, was a scam when they doubled their price on us the day before the move.


5. Rented a 10-ft moving truck on Thursday. This was a huge accomplishment -- the people working at (and other people renting from) the Budget truck rental in Silver Spring are not the sharpest tools in the shed, to put it nicely.


6. Drove the 10-ft moving truck through DC....twice.


7. Got my new Maryland driver's license on Friday.


8. Managed to make it through week one with about 5 hours sleep each night. Managed to get everything moved without breaking anything.


9. Spent about 4 hours at Ikea on Saturday.


10. Tried to test drive a Saturn on Saturday and Sunday. Had a good look at them after visiting a second dealership after they told us they would be open but they were actually closed.


11. "Tagged" a new Saturn Aura XE. Hopefully it will arrive at the dealer in the next few weeks.


12. Finished moving everything out of the apartment on Sunday.


13. Went back to Ikea to buy a bookshelf, kitchen island, and kitchen cart on Sunday. Came home with the bookshelf because everything else was out of stock. This works out because it would have been a pain to try to fit all that in the car and now we can use their delivery service.


14. Returned rental car on Monday morning.

Moving

News just in, our application to rent the house we liked was accepted! We get to move in on the 20th July, so much to do, so little time.