Although there's way too much going on in my life to document everything, here are the basics.
Linda's in business for herself now, based in Buena Vista, Colorado. This weekend, we're moving up there. Yes, up. Buena Vista, or Byoonie as many folks around here call it, is in the mountains. 7965 foot elevation. Cañon City and Colorado Springs are both in the 5400-5500 foot range I think, but BV is a bit higher. (We call Buena Vista "BV") I try to tell myself that I'm out of breath because of the altitude and not because I'm horribly out of shape.
I will say that BV is a really cute little town. It's got one traffic light, and one main street. Despite the small population, the town has more good restaurants than Cañon City by a long shot. In Cañon City, your choices are McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, Wendy's, Arby's, Sonic, KFC, Carl's Jr., Dairy Queen, Quizno's, or if you're feeling feisty, the China Garden. In Buena Vista, we've got The Rooster, Evergreen Cafe, and the wonderful Global Cafe, where I can get a Mozzarella, Tomato and Basil panini or butternut squash ravioli. Yum!
I've got a number of contracting jobs lined up, although I haven't had much time yet to work on any of them. I've also got some part time work at an established web design shop in BV. We're canceling the cable TV and the landline phone, but I'm still a bit nervous about getting all the bills paid from month to month.
And I've got to get a new cell phone - although Nextel has great service up and down route 115, where I did my commute to Colorado Springs, but there's absolutely no reception in Buena Vista. I'll have to get a Verizon phone. I hate the extra expense of getting a new phone, and I hate having to ditch my Motorola i580, which I spent a bunch on thinking that I'd keep it for close to a decade, but them's the breaks. I am keeping my Farmington, Connecticut phone number though. Sometimes I feel like it's my only remaining link to home.
I'm really glad that we're visiting Connecticut this Christmas. It'll be great to see my parents and my brothers, and meet up with friends I haven't seen in two years. I've been in Colorado for four years now, and I have yet to make a good friend here. That's probably why it's been so difficult to find guys to help us move. A coworker graciously offered to help, as did Linda's hairstylist's husband. I don't know why they offered, but I'll take any help I can get. Probably very few people remember the story of our move to Brewster, NY, but it was a doozie. We really need at least four guys to move that piano, so I'm hoping to find someone else.
The place in BV that we'll be renting is nice. Kind of small, but very nice. There are apparently mice, although they're not nearly as bad as we had them in Brewster. And the place is mostly heated by a wood-burning stove. It gets much colder up in the mountains than in Cañon City's "banana belt", so we'll have snow much more like what we remember from New England. It's already snowed once in BV this year.
We're still trying hard to rent our house - we dropped the rent so low that we'll be losing a lot every month, but it's what we need to do. Anything's better than paying a mortgage plus a rent. Still, the house Linda designed for us is beautiful, and we'll be really sad to leave.
I feel really sad that we'll be pulling Lia out of her daycare - she's so happy there. It's gonna be really hard to watch her during the day and still get work done, and we simply won't have the time to give her the kind of education she's been getting. Granted, the "education" involves learning animal sounds and gestures for kids' songs, but that's the kind of stimulation one-and-a-half year olds need.
So we'll be packing the rest of this week. Since we're downsizing, we'll have to store or get rid of a lot of stuff. And I may be too busy to write anything here for a while.
That's all I have to say about that.