Goodbye, Big Texas Truck

It turns out this Texas girl doesn't know how to deal with winter weather. I learned that last year when I tried to drive my giant Texas truck up and down the hills that are pervasive in this part of Virginia. (In the snow. Uphill both ways.)

It slipped and slid all over the place. I solidified my decision that I needed to get a different vehicle during one particularly rough snow storm, in which I skidded into a highway guardrail and then fishtailed into a ditch in my neighborhood on the way home from work one day. Once I was out of the ditch — thanks to the help of a kind neighbor — I couldn't get up the next hill, so I abandoned Esmeralda and walked home. My feet did not get frostbite, but they felt like they might. Matt had to rescue the truck later.

(Note to self: don't wear flats if there is a risk of snowstorms. Boots. Always wear boots.)

I knew I needed something with all-wheel drive or four-wheel drive. But I hated to say goodbye to my beloved truck. It made me feel big! Powerful! Like a badass chick!

It looks so sad! It looks like it hit a bear!

But, you know. Safety first. I'd like to not fear my own death this winter.

So we bought a new-to-us Toyota Highlander. It's a 4x4 with a snow mode, whatever that means. And it's not too much of a mom-mobile (provided we leave the third row of seats permanently folded down for trunk storage, as we plan to do), so I'm happy. :)

Bonus: I can climb in and out of it in a skirt without jumping or hoisting myself up awkwardly!

So then of course, my next step was to give it a kickass name. I thought that after Esmeralda and Blaine, this one needed an unusual name too.

I decided it should be called PERCIVAL! Like after the knight! My sister told me that name was hideous, but I was already super attached to it. (And I did tell her that it's not like I'd ever name a child Percival. I am not cruel. It's definitely a vehicle name in this day and age.)

Do you like unusual names? Any additional advice for driving/surviving in the winter?

You Get a Really Epic/Horrible Story To Make Up For My Absence

You know how life keeps kind of chugging along, and things happen and you think, "It'd be really nice if I blogged about this," but then a week passes and then three and you still want to talk about that thing, but then more things happened between then and now and you want to talk about those things too, and then it just gets so overwhelming that you just abandon ship so you don't have to think about it?

I'm really easily overwhelmed. I've been so overwhelmed for weeks and weeks. But I need to get some of these stories written down so I don't forget them.

Stories like how I threw my sister a bridal shower and how we visited a bunch of new places (Virginia Beach! the Biltmore! Williamsburg!) and how I turned 28 and how our families came to visit on several different occasions over the past few months.

(Oh, and only the most terrifically traumatic story.)

But despite my brief note-taking and photo-snapping, enough time has passed since some of those events occurred that I don't really feel like recapping entire trips. So instead, I think I'll just share a story or two from each over the next few posts.

Starting with this one.

—————

My friend Chelsea and I were driving to book club. It was being hosted up near Roanoke, way up in the mountains (and not really that close to the city at all). We were so, so late because traffic on the main highway had been completely stopped for almost an hour.

So we finally get out of traffic and exit the main highway, and start weaving through the mountains on one of those little two-lane highways. We're coming around a curve and this THING comes running into the street. A black, German-Shepherd-sized thing.

It was a bear.

Now, I had heard that there were bears in this area, but I had never seen a bear in real life before. When I learned that there were bears, I really wanted to see one for myself.

Well, I saw the bear all right.

Right before I ran it over.

I slammed on my brakes, but I wasn't fast enough. It went under one of my truck tires.

Thankfully I saw it get up and run right off the road, limping a bit, in my rearview mirror. Because it's not like you can get out and make sure the bear is okay. It's a freakin' BEAR.

We were horrified. I asked Chelsea if there was any way that I could have possibly seen the bear and avoided hitting it, and she said she didn't think so, that it came out of nowhere. But I still cried when we got to book club after the shock wore off. I hit a baby bear!

Matt says the bear is probably okay. (He once ran over a dog in our neighborhood in Texas, and it lived to continue chasing cars for many years.) I'm hoping he's right.

A month has passed since this happened. My book club has since met again, and it turns out the ladies in that club really love telling people the story of how the vegetarian ran over a bear.

—————

I don't have a good question. Anything I could ask after that story would just be too gruesome. So I guess, if you have a story to make me feel like a less horrible person? That would be great. Or just any story about something that's happened to you lately. I've missed you.

Life List Fail: There Were Cows, But I Wasn't Allowed to Milk Them

"I didn't know learning to be a farm hand was on your list," my friend Chelsea said.

It's not. And it's really silly, but I think it would be pretty cool to get to milk a cow, and so it's on my Life List. I've heard it's not as easy as it looks.

We were at the Virginia Cheese Festival. (How's that for irony.) It was a lot of fun! There were cheese-making demonstrations, and cheese-sampling flights, and three floors worth of vendors with bites of cheese to try. There were some really good cheeses, and some unusual ones (mulberry chevre? habañero mango cheddar?). We tried goat cheese, and sheep's milk cheese, and cow's milk cheese (and when I got home and told this to Matt, he said, "Cow's milk cheese is just CHEESE.")

The cheese flight, which was guided and really informative, with cheeses from Caromont Farm.

And I learned a lot. I learned that goat cheese is called "chevre," which is pronounced "shev," and that cheese washed in cider is really delicious. (That's the cheese on the right, above.) I also learned that the rind of brie is actually white mold, and that kind of grossed me out and confused me because I like brie but other moldy cheese varieties are gross. I don't know my life.

Anyway, so we're sipping chardonnay and tasting cheeses and plotting which ones we're going to come back and buy later, when I heard that there were cows outside among the outdoor (non-cheese) vendors. And I said that we had to go see the cows and see if we could milk one! And Chelsea thought that was weird, but agreed that she'd take a picture if I managed to do it.

Cheese tasting selfie. 

So we went out to see the cows, and there were two little brown cows and one bigger black-and-white cow that was lazy and laying down under the tent in this little metal corral.

I love cows! I did get to pet the two brown ones. Chelsea happened to know the woman who owned the farm, and told her I wanted to learn how to milk a cow.

And the woman told me they had this thing that you could "learn" on, but it was basically just a piece of wood painted to look like a cow, with a rubber udder attached under a tank of fluid. Not exactly the same thing. (I did not attempt to milk the fake cow. I'm pretty sure that was meant for children.)

So I didn't get to milk a cow, but it was still an awesome day.

Do you like festivals? Are you a cheese connoisseur? Would you want to milk a cow?

Lighting Bugs and Screaming Bridge

I have no idea if this is a true story or not. It might have just been something my dad made up when we were kids because he was sick of me and Rachel fighting in the backseat when he was driving.

My dad once told us as we were driving over a bridge in Arlington (Texas), that the bridge we were on was called Screaming Bridge. According to him, legend had it that one dark night, while the bridge over the Trinity River was out, a car full of teenage girls speeding down the road plunged over the edge into the river.

(I just looked it up. Turns out Screaming Bridge is a bit of an urban legend/ghost story in Texas. But you never know. My dad made up all sorts of weird stories when we were kids.)

—————

My grandparents live on a golf course. Right around the time my dad told us about Screaming Bridge, we went to my grandparents' house for some event, and we tried to convince my Paw-Paw to take us for a ride on his golf cart. As dusk was approaching, my Nana told us she'd take us for a ride over the course, which had several bridges over the little fingers of the creek, if I'm remembering it correctly. We told her about Screaming Bridge, and she said there was a Woman Screaming Bridge on the golf course. It was the biggest, narrowest, steepest bridge on the course. Rachel and I screamed as Nana drove over it.

It was dark and creepy under the trees as the sun disappeared, but lightning bugs glowed between them every now and then. I love lightning bugs. They're so pretty to watch. I would never have tried to capture any of them.

—————

Matt was attending a conference at Virginia Tech the other week. He came home around dusk one evening and told me that on his way home, he'd seen a whole bunch of lightning bugs. I said we should go for a walk to see if we could find some. They glowed neon all over our neighborhood. The warmer it gets, the more I see them flitting in the dark. It's beautiful.

Does your city have any local urban legends? Do you like lightning bugs?

There's Nothing to Do Here In The Summer and That's Unacceptable

Remember when Matt and I took our first trip up to Virginia for his interview? It was still technically summertime for the university, and Matt and I noticed a very weird phenomenon: basically everything in this city closes down before 10 p.m. in the summer time.

On that trip, we had gotten back to our hotel room at perhaps 9 or 9:30 p.m., still wired and ready to go do something, and so we decided we should find someplace fun to hang out. Because we are not lame people! We are fun people! (Ha.) So we drove around. For a good half hour or so. And not a single place was still open, except for this burger-hot-dogs-milkshakes-coffee-pastries (??) restaurant called Cookout (which we did not stop at, but Matt is still curious, so I imagine we will go at some point). We were like, how is this town so dead on a weekend night?

And then, because we weren't living here yet, we didn't think about it again.

Admittedly, over the past few months, I haven't been quite so into getting out and seeing new things of my own volition. I'm not entirely sure why. A minor funk, if you will? I've been so bored, and so tired, so I haven't wanted to do much. I didn't feel that "sparkle" that makes me want to do crazy things and tell awesome stories. But I'm getting restless again, and I hope that means the sparkle is on its way back.

So on Friday night, I told Matt we should go do something, and it should not involve eating or staring at screens, because I had done an awful lot of both of those things earlier in the day. And it took us a good half hour to figure out what was even open. It was pouring rain and I wanted to go walking or something, and Matt suggested we go for a walk at the mall, but it turns out the mall was already closed at 9 p.m. He suggested we go get drinks at this Mexican restaurant, but by the time we got there, they were sweeping the floors and the last patrons were leaving.

We did end up going and playing a round of laser tag at the bowling alley. That was still open (and good thing Matt thought of it too, because I didn't know this place existed). And then when we left, there were two cop cars in the parking lot and it looked like they might have been about to arrest someone for drunk driving.

Exciting times in Virginia.

I'm going to have to take some time to think of new things to do, so we don't wind up not having any ideas like this again next time.

What do you like to do for fun on weekend nights? What have you been up to lately?

Virginia List: Our Trip to Charlottesville Went Off With Basically No Hitches

We went to Monticello! Matt took a nice panoramic photo and I photobombed it and ruined it.

For our belated dating anniversary/early wedding anniversary (who knows anymore, we've started calling the months of March through May "anniversary celebration months"), we planned a trip out to Charlottesville, Virginia. The ultimate goal was to see Monticello, the house/plantation/estate that Thomas Jefferson built that also kind of doubles as his presidential museum. We didn't really make any specific plans outside that.

When we were looking for a place to stay, Matt went on AirBNB and found this guest house on the outskirts of Charlottesville that looked really cute, and it was on a little farm! I was really excited to see some goats. They also had chickens and a rooster and a little pond full of tadpoles and fish, and some cute puppies.

Goats named Nutmeg and October!

Isn't this place just the cutest? The dogwood trees had just bloomed. (Those are the white ones.)

Life List: I Don't Know Why I Keep Agreeing to This Stuff

Note: I added a new section to my Life List, of things we want to do and see while we're living in Virginia. Check it out! Anything I should add that's a must-see or do or eat? :)

This weekend, we went hiking. I'd been looking forward to trying to hike McAfee Knob on Catawba Mountain, which is a really popular hiking spot around here, and Matt had a friend from grad school that was going to be in town with a church group, so we decided to meet at the base of the mountain and spend the afternoon walking up it together. I was informed that it was a relatively easy hike, about three miles each way, and I thought that it would be okay since I was fine on the four-mile-round-trip hike up the Cascades last summer.

I had a goal: to finally break 10,000 steps. Because I've been wearing this pedometer for two months and still only maxed out around 6,000 steps on a good day. I figured six miles would put me around 12,000 steps or so, and that seemed good. I was excited to start.

We started walking. It was a beautiful day, if not a little muddy from all the rain we'd gotten the week before, but the trail was well-kept and it was quite nice. I was only moderately out of breath.

And we walked and walked and walked, and I thought that surely we should have reached the top by now. Things were getting steeper, and we'd been hiking for a very long time. And then we saw a sign that said "McAfee Knob - 1.9 miles" — which, by the way, was the first trail marker we'd seen other than the ones for shelters and campsites.

That's about the time I realized that this a) was not an easy-for-novices hike, and b) it was not the advertised three miles. It was about four and a half miles each way, which I know because a) my pedometer was tracking the distance, and b) I broke 11,000 steps on the way to the top. And I was in pain. I am not a great hiker. This was my third-ever time hiking. I started asking the people walking down how much further as we passed them. And they'd say, still a ways to go, or you're so close! At one point, someone said that it was only about four minutes to the top.

—————

Now, I have to interject a quick story from earlier in the week here. About a week ago, I went to the doctor because my allergies were driving me crazy. I wasn't allergic to anything in Texas, but apparently I am allergic to all the plants in Virginia. The doctor told me to take an over-the-counter non-D allergy pill, and told me to call her in two weeks if they weren't working. Well, they worked great and I could breathe fine, but they were keeping me awake at night. So after a week of only getting two hours of sleep per night, I ended up sobbing on Matt about something entirely stupid, and he was like, maybe you shouldn't take those anymore. So the night before this hike was the first decent night of sleep I'd gotten in a week, because I'd chosen to skip the allergy pill.

—————

So we're "four minutes" from the top, and at that point I was breathing hard and my sinuses were driving me nuts, and I was tired and way behind the rest of the group, and I didn't believe we were actually near the top because I had been LIED TO about many things on this trip, so I started crying and I sat down on a rock while the gnats tried to eat my face until Matt said he could literally see the crest from the place he was standing 50 feet away from me.

So I dragged myself up the last fifty feet, and then sat in the shade and refused to talk to Matt.

These people look happy.

After I was done crying, and done wishing I could pitch myself off the cliff instead of walking down, and done debating whether I should eat my banana or throw it at Matt, we wandered around the top of the rock face for a bit. The views were spectacular; I could see why it was so popular. If only I had been prepared for how long and difficult it actually was!

We took an "easier" route on the way down, aka the fire-escape route, but it was still a long way back to the parking lot. By the time we got to the truck, I had gotten to 23,000 steps, but my legs and knees and ankles and the arches of my feet were in so much pain that I wasn't even excited to have broken my record so spectacularly.

And I told Matt — again — that I never want to go hiking again. I think I've given it a legitimate chance, but I think hiking just isn't for me. There are plenty of other kinds of exercise I enjoy, and I'd rather spend my time on those. (I mean, I love walking! How can hiking be so terrible?!)

Do you enjoy hiking? Have you found yourself utterly unprepared for anything lately?

"Allie Appreciates Every Flurry"

If I were still in elementary school, still getting hand-written report cards with notes from my teacher, that's what this semester's note would say. That I am ridiculously appreciative of every snowflake.

It was a little embarrassing, when one of my co-workers said it to the guy that's the president of our parent company at lunch the other day. But I don't know how to not be completely filled with glee at the merest hint of soft, fluffy snowflakes falling outside the window.

People are like, haven't you ever seen snow before? Didn't it ever snow in Texas?

And I say yes, there was that time in 1991 when it snowed over a foot in North Texas. There was that time when we took our engagement photos when it snowed.

But do I have memories of building snowmen or catching big flakes on my tongue or shoveling the driveway as a kid? No. Because it snowed like four times ever, and then we moved to College Station and it snowed never. More often, it just sleeted and we called it snow, and everything in Texas shut down. The snow was never fluffy, but it made a nice crunch when you stomped around in it. Snow-people were basically impossible, unless they were really small. It was never deep enough for angels, though it did pack decently well for snowballs if your goal was to hurt your opponent.

Oh, we tried. We tried all those things, because that's what you do when it "snows." But it was so rare that every snow day was filled with joy, with calm, with relaxation. With wet cotton gloves and red cheeks and static cling. With warmth and wood fires and hot chocolate and blankets and books.

It snows here, pretty often. We haven't had any big, deep snows since Thanksgiving, but we get snow flurries and a few hours of what look like blizzards — to me — here and there, and a little bit of pileup on our cars or in our yard, and my grin is so wide. I go for walks as it drifts downward and I smile and I throw my arms up and I thank God that beauty like this exists.

Thank you for each perfect snowflake.

Driving home from work, I pass by a field of black cows every day. And this particular day, the snow was swirling across the road, and I was smiling, and I looked to my right to say hi to the cows as I passed. The cows were just standing there, eating, as little piles of crystal formed across their backs, bright against their dark hides. And I laughed, because the cows were covered in snow and didn't even mind!

The snow blows past the office windows and I say "it's snowing!" and I crane my neck to see better. I look out the front windows to our cars and say "it's starting to pile up!"

My co-workers look at this, at me, like it's nothing to be excited about. Most of the north and northeast feels the same I suspect.

But I hope that I continue to appreciate each unique flurry. Because each one is beautiful, and worth getting excited over.

People In Virginia Don't Know How Salsa Works

On Friday, Matt's office had a Thanksgiving potluck meal. It was like the Pilgrims, every man bringing the food of their ancestors to the dinner table. Therefore, Matt made that awesome college salsa and brought tortilla scoops to share.

(I was not actually there for this story, which should tell you HOW HORRIFIED I was, and therefore I had to write this down immediately.)

Matt got home from work at the end of the day, and he still had one and a half of the two tupperwares full of salsa, which was weird.  I was surprised there was so much left.

Matt explained, "I don't think they knew what to do with it. One person called it a 'salad.' Some people put a spoonful or two on their plates, but…"

WHAT. HOW DO PEOPLE HERE NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH SALSA. Homemade salsa! Salsa made with love and beans and corn and cilantro and jalapeños! Salsa that doesn't come from a Pace jar!

Salad. Pshhhh. It's not leafy! It doesn't have mayonnaise or mustard in it! It's not like any salad — green, potato, waldorf or macaroni — I've ever had.

So, to drown my frustration and horror, I ate half a tupperware of salsa, scooped up onto delicious salty chips. AND THAT'S HOW IT'S DONE.

Oh, That's Just Me Making Your Trip to Target Awkward

Because I am the social one (between me 'n Matt, that is), the second I got to town I set about to finding fun things for us to do so that we might make friends and not be sad lonely hermits. Matt was perfectly happy with his level of hermit-atude before I got here, but I am sad when I don't know people, so out we went.

And it was during one of these outings (to get Viet-Thai food!) that it started to get pretty chilly in the evening. I was wearing a three-quarter-sleeve tee shirt and a furry vest, and I was FREEZING as we walked a few doors down to get dessert. That's when I was informed that, in addition to winter clothes and varying thicknesses of coats, I'd need to invest in some thermal underwear.

Whaaaat. This winter thing is crazy, ya'll.

So I went down to Target the other day to look for long johns. (That's what my mom always called thermals, and when I was a kid she wore them all year round, in Texas, because she's weird. Hi Mom!) It took me an awfully long time to find them, and when I did, there were so many options I didn't have any clue where to start. I was crouching there in the aisle looking helplessly at package after package of Cuddl Duds (that's the brand name Target carried) that came in like seven patterns and four colors, and crew-neck and scoop-neck and henley, and some of them are silky and some of them are waffle-y (as in, waffle-square-quilted, not actually pants made of waffles, which would be weird, but also delicious).

And there's this woman in the same aisle as I'm in, and she's facing the opposite shelf. I glance over at her, probably with this awkward, red face, and she catches my eye. So I say:

I have a question for you.

And she was like, for me?

And I said yes, I just moved here from Texas, and I have been informed that I'm going to need thermal underwear for winter, and I don't know what I'm doing. Is it better to have the silky kind or the waffle-y kind?

She said the silky kind feels nicer and is better for not bunching up under your clothes.

And I said thank you, and I picked up two pairs of the silky thermal pants, and one soft, silky top.

Yeah, uh huh, I'm suuuuure that a snow day is the perfect time to go galavanting in long underwear and cute vests.

(Is that going to be enough? Are thermals like regular underwear in which you need enough pairs to wear a different pair every single day between laundry days?! Or can you wear them multiple times between washes, like jeans?)

Tell me about what you wear in winter to keep warm! And if you live somewhere warm, tell me about how beautiful and hot it is outside so I can live vicariously through you, because I am so not ready for this.

It's Like Nutella, But For Fall

Just for the record? Apple butter is delicious.

Apparently that's a big deal up here. I've seen signs for street markets selling apple butter along the highway, and I commented to Matt as we passed one of the signs that I had never tried apple butter before.

Last weekend, we went to explore a new church, and the pastor talked for quite a while about how the church family had made dozens and dozens of jars of apple butter that weekend. And then after the service they fed us apple cake and sent us home with a pint of apple butter, which we ate slathered on graham crackers.

I've only been in this state a little while, but boy do people know the way to my heart. Bonus points to that church.

Have you tried apple butter? If so, what's your favorite way to eat it? If not, what new food have you tried lately that you've enjoyed?

I Don't Believe We're In Texas Anymore, Toto

In Texas, it's hotter'n hell ten months out of the year. Ceiling fans are basically mandatory for any room in any building, commercial or residential.

It wasn't entirely surprising that none of the rooms in our new place have fans — I've heard that a general lack of fans is common in the northern and eastern parts of the U.S. — but what did surprise me is how much I'd miss those seldom-considered ceiling fixtures.  I like having moving air, especially when I'm sleeping, so in Texas we often had our bedroom fan spinning all year long. It was weird on that first night in Virginia, to kick the covers off in the middle of the night and not immediately get cold again.

My mother-in-law commented on this too, as my in-laws stayed the night with us after helping me move all my crap across the country. My first thought was to turn up the air conditioning; hers was to open windows. (Obviously she'd lived in the northeast before.) And that was like, revolutionary to me. Open the windows?! Say whaaaat.

(All you people who live in the north are rolling your eyes and laughing at my ignorance/silliness. But seriously, this can't be a year-round thing, can it? What do you do when it's too warm inside in the middle of winter? I can't imagine you open the windows when it's snowing.)

So that's been a weird thing. Every time it gets kind of warm, I open a (screened) window or the (screened) sliding glass door. Elliott is having a field day.

Plus! It's legitimately fall here. In Texas, all the trees will be green one day, and the next day they're all bald. There's no pretty colors or crisp air, and most of the time it gets warm again after all the leaves fall.

But while Elliott was looking out the open back door with her whiskers pressed up against the screen, she jumped as leaves came streaming onto our patio, and looked over at me like she had no idea what was happening.

We'll get used to it, though. :)

Scenic overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Gorgeous, gorgeous place to see the fall colors! Pics don't do it justice.

Already scarf weather! Finally getting to put my enormous collection to use.

What's a Hokie?

Here's an interesting factoid I learned. At church, of all places.

Because we're a small congregation, we had been asking for prayers about our job search for months. Matt just informed our church family that he had gotten his new job, and that we were moving.

And apparently, one of our friends, who is a professor at A&M, thought it was hilarious that he was going to be a Hokie. (That's Virginia Tech's mascot.) And gleefully chose to inform him what a Hokie actually is.

And Matt decided to tell me right in the middle of the sermon. Our pastor just started a series on the Seven Deadly Sins, and this week we were talking about Sloth.

Matt pulled the bulletin I was doodling on over to his lap, and wrote:

"[FRIEND] told me that a Hokie is a castrated turkey."

It took all I had to not snort during the middle of Sloth.

I'm sorry … but WHAT? A turkey is like, the worst mascot ever. Why on earth would anyone choose a team mascot to be a turkey with no, erm, Butterballs?

Virginia Tech's official stance is that a Hokie has nothing to do with turkeys. Urban Dictionary says Virginia Tech's stance is an elaborate hoax and/or conspiracy theory to cover up the existence of a Loch Ness Monster-style turkey that lives in the mountains. But Texas A&M is an agricultural school, so it's possible our professor friend is also correct — at least as far as what a castrated turkey is officially called — even if VT disagrees with it.

Whatever it is, it makes me laugh. :)

What is your favorite team mascot, for awesomeness reasons or humorous ones?

The Next Big Adventure

When I was writing my Coffee Date post last week, there was something that I really wanted to include. But at the last minute I started feeling uncomfortable about it, so I yoinked it out and saved it for later. And it was this:

You know how we've been in that weird "we're moving!" limbo for months, but with no idea when or where? Well, we still don't know when. But we're starting to talk as if we know where. And even though we don't have a contract in hand yet, we're starting to make plans for the future. And meeting with realtors about selling our house. And starting to pack things. It's kind of freaking me out.

When I wrote that, we didn't officially have an offer in hand. We had a verbal agreement, and that did not seem like enough for me. I've been let down a few too many times during Matt's job search, and I was not about to let everyone get all excited for us, only to have it fall through the cracks.

But literally the next day, Matt texted me that he had been offered the position. And that the paperwork would be coming through by the end of the day. (Though, more than a week later, we still didn't have a written offer, and poor Matt was basically going off the rails with waiting.)

So now that we have told our families, our friends, the rest of the universe via Facebook, I don't mind sharing that our next big adventure will be …

Moving to Virginia!

When we made our trip to Blacksburg, Matt was indeed presenting at a seminar at Virginia Tech. But the seminar was part of a job interview. Did I forget that little detail? Oops. :)

There's a lot to do before we actually make the 19-hour drive to the New River Valley. We have to put our house on the market, and hopefully whatever realtor we use will be awesome enough to sell it quick. We have to either pack up or weed out everything we own, and so far we've managed to pack up … like, half the guest room? Eek. We have to get the truck title switched over to my name, or else I won't be able to get it inspected without driving cross-country every year (not happening, bro).

We're really excited for this next step in our lives, and to see some new places. I've never been to most of the East Coast states, and now we'll be close to D.C.! And North Carolina! And Tennessee! And Kentucky! And I've heard there is snow in Virginia sometimes! And actual seasons!

Now to just get through the transition period … forgive me if my posting continues to be ridiculously sporadic for a while. But I'm collecting stories, and I'll be sure to share them with you later. :)