For the past several weeks we've been packing and purging, donating and selling, all in preparation to move to another city in another state. That state is Texas, which I'm told comes from the Spanish word tejas, or roofing tiles. Really it's supposed to mean "friendly" but in the 2 seconds of research I did just now, I could not make the connection. So I gave up.

The move went well. We rented a Budget truck, sixteen feet long and eleven feet tall, and stuffed it full. We'd had a sale on the Saturday prior to the move to unload all of our furniture on unsuspecting yard-sale shoppers, which was fairly successful in that we sold Kris' car Susie (of Empty fame) and most of our furniture. We did not manage to sell our sofa and loveseat, so that got piled into the truck. We also brought our washer and dryer with us, since we will never again be without them or a suitable replacement. We loaded in dozens of boxes.

On the night before we were supposed to drive away from Savannah, it became apparent that we were not going to be able to get rid of the second computer desk (mine had sold several days before the apartment sale), so we packed that up too. Trouble is that the computer desk has a 3' by 5' tempered glass top, and the truck was already packed. Kris just leaned it up against everything in the back of the truck and we prayed that no one would get killed when we opened the back door upon arrival.

We finally got the apartment cleaned out and scrubbed, and went down to the office to turn in our keys about about 12:45PM. The office staff was out to lunch, so we had to wait to depart. We still had to drive back to Budget to pick up the car trailer hitch... we had decided to drag my car to Austin rather than try to drive it. By the time we were on our way out of town, it was 2:15PM.

We made it as far as Mobile the first day. We drove until we could stand to drive no further, and I'm proud to say that we didn't get ourselves stuck anywhere -- with the tow trailer you can't back up, so we had to be careful that we always parked somewhere that we could pull forward. The motel in Mobile was the seediest trap I've stayed in in recent memory, but we were in Hurricane Victim territory and it became apparent that we should have called ahead to find a vacancy, so we took what we could find.

Day two on the road was also uneventful. We saw a lot of trees snapped in half, billboards crushed, and debris along the side of the road. The roads were good until Louisiana, where they roughed it up for us before we got there. Once we crossed the border into Texas, the distance to Austin seemed to stretch out before us as though we were driving on a treadmill. Finally reached Round Rock at about 11:15PM greeted by good friends and a warm bed.

No one was killed when we opened the truck the next morning. In fact, hardly anything had even shifted in the truck, which was far more than we had hoped for. It took 5 people just a few hours to unload everything.

The new apartment is fabulous¹. Kris had taken video when he first scouted out the place in January, so I already had a feel for the layout. The space is much larger than I had imagined though; the first few days I was here I kept forgetting about the other "wing" -- second bedroom for an office and second bathroom. We have a lot more storage space, that is everywhere except in the kitchen. I think I am going to have to squirrel away the lesser-used small appliances in the bedroom closets.

Hopefully in the next few weeks we'll be able to replace all the furniture that we sold; we bought bookshelves this evening which should arrive on Friday. When things are cleaned up a bit more, I will post some photos. We've toodled around town a bit and are amazed at being in civilization once again. Savannah had so few places to shop, and we had to wait almost a year and a half to get a Target. Here, we are surrounded by places to shop, eat, and be entertained. We are also one block away from the post office and grocery store. I was worred about moving to Austin because of the traffic, but as it turns out, we don't have to go anywhere!

¹There are trees and green grass! This is a big deal since the last apartment had gone down hill quite a bit since we moved there. They chopped down all the bushes around the apartment buildings during "renovation" and had since kept the stumps trimmed of any growth.