Long Couple Of Days

I finally made it back into Minnesota today, about 6pm. Here's a run-down of the exciting stories of my life. :-P

I spent my last night in Austin with Elissa. We went to Olive Garden and had a wonderful dinner with wine and yummy bread, and of course -- pasta! We got up in the morning (bright and early at 6:30am) and packed the truck. It was a very tearful goodbye -- it sucked. :-(

It took me about an hour to get from the south side of Austin to the north side. Stupid Austin morning traffic. Once I hit Round Rock, traffic lightened up and it was easier driving.

In north Texas (a bit north of Dallas) I saw a damn funny sign: "Texas School of Horseshoeing. South Campus" There's more than one campus for this? ;-) I giggled for a long while about that one.

I spent nine hours on the road, and made it into Wichita, KS in the early evening. Pixel was a trooper -- she behaved very well. We were both happy to get off the road for the day though. I met up with mom and dad at the Comfort Inn in Wichita. We ordered pizza and just generally hung out.

We woke up about 7am and started out on the road. Of course, if it's not a long-distance trip without having problems. ;-) The truck started acting up about 10 minutes outside of Wichita. 8 hours and 450$ later, the truck now has a new coil and two new sensors (the cam sensor and the crank sensor went out -- the crank sensor would report that the crank wasn't turning over when in fact it was, at about 70 mph, and so the cam sensor would tell the distributor it could fire at idling speed). Bleh! So we headed out of Wichita around 3:30pm and made it as far as Columbus, NE. We pulled into a Super 8 in Columbus around 8pm. Dad and I had an excellent dinner at a local steak house -- I had some really good prime rib. Mom wasn't hungry, so she hung out with Pixel. I was a bit surprised because the cat handled chilling with the mechanics all morning really well.

We got up around 8am and headed out of Columbus and got into Sartell about 6pm. We hit some snow along the way though! How crazy is that -- it was 92 the day I left Austin, and it was snowing in South Dakota and Minnesota a day or so later! Yeesh!

I saw a whole bunch of wildlife on the drive (aside from the cat!): pheasant, turkey, deer and other such fun stuff. Overall, it was a very pretty drive. It was an emotional trip -- I miss Elissa. But (aside from the truck problems), it was a nice trip. It still hasn't hit me that I've moved out of Texas. I'm living out of a suitcase until I get more of my stuff from the movers (later this week), so I sort of feel like I'm on vacation.

The plan for tomorrow is to relax. Mom and dad are going down to the Twin Cities to watch a musical (The Lion King) with my Uncle Paul and his wife (Cathy), so I'm going to have the house to myself. I plan on using my time wisely by sleeping in, followed by a nap, then a little playing with the cat, then another nap, etc. :-D

So that's my life for the last few days. Hopefully things are going well for everyone as well.