The Grand Scheme of Things

We have finally arrived in San Diego. At the very least, this move has been an adventure.

I last left off when we were in Texas. No offense, but I don't care if I ever see that state again. It's HUGE and the western part is BORING. I liked San Antonio though and would like to go back and actually see some of it. Seeing our friends again would be nice too.

Our next stop was Tucson, AZ. A very good friend of ours lives there so we made dinner plans and met up with him, his girlfriend, and their three daughters for dinner. You know someone is a good friend when you haven't seen them for six years but when you finally do, you pick up right where you left off. We went to this place called Chuy's for dinner. Pretty decent food and they make really good, really cheap margaritas. After dinner, we went back to our friends' apartment for some more visiting. I hadn't laughed so hard in a long time. Josh, our friend, said it was his goal to see me laugh/cry which I did several times. Best of all, we woke up without a hangover, lmao.

We made it to San Diego on Thursday. The very first thing we did was drive around Lakeside and Santee which is our old stomping grounds from when we lived here the first time. Very little has changed in Lakeside. They gated our old base housing and there are some new shops and stuff but other than that, it looked exactly the same. Santee has a lot of new shopping but it's mostly the same too. After that, we drove downtown to our hotel.



I booked us into the Sheraton because the room rate was decent and they were pet friendly, not charging any pet deposit. I had no idea it was such a nice hotel. I didn't look at the pictures online, I just read the reviews. I was a bit intimidated walking in. This is the kind of hotel where they take your luggage to the room for you. We had never stayed in such place before. The hotel lobby is on the 12th floor and our room was on the 24th. Our view was pretty great. The youngest parked herself in a chair in front of the window most of the time and watched planes land at the airport. San Diego's airport has a unique approach route with planes landing over the downtown buildings. It's neat to watch them land.

Thursday night, we walked to a place called Brian's 24 for dinner. The Mister chose it out a magazine because there was a picture of fried chicken and waffles. Fried chicken and waffles was one of the things we laughed about with Josh so the Mister had to try it out. He said it was a unique combination but probably not something he'd want again. I had the meatloaf which was yummy. I also had a Ruby Screwed which is like a Screwdriver but with grapefruit juice. It was GOOD.

After dinner, we walked back to the hotel (I love big city living) and left the girls in the room while we went to the Sky Lobby Lounge in our hotel for a few drinks. I had this:

Ciroc Champagne Cosmo
Ciroc Vodka, Grand Marnier, cranberry juice and
fresh lime juice topped with champagne and gar-
nished with an orange twist.

It was so good. The bartender was really nice and made them really good if you know what I mean. This night resulted in a bit of a rough morning on Friday. Perfect for having to go to the housing office for our lease briefing, lol.

So Friday takes us to signing our lease, picking up our keys, and checking out the new digs. Sounds simple enough but it was a process. First we had to go to 32nd St Naval Base for our lease briefing. This consisted of reading this HUGE binder and then going to a conference room with a bunch of other people so that the binder could be read to us. Something unique to signing a lease for military housing that civilians will probably never encounter is the explosive ordinance addendum. We had to sign a paper acknowledging the fact that our housing was built on the site of a former base and finding unexploded ordinance is a possibility. Fun times. After all that, we had to go to our local housing management office to pick up our keys and a folder with a bunch of info for schools, utilities, a coupon for a free pizza, etc., etc. We drive to our house and the keys wouldn't work. By this time, our movers were waiting in the street to unload our stuff. We had to tell them to wait while we drove back to the housing office to get keys that would actually work.

Finally, we get to see the inside of our new house. What do I think? It's base housing. That's pretty much it. It has walls, ceilings, rooms, blah blah. Oh yeah. And it has bugs. FREAKING BUGS!!! The water pressure is non-existent. The kitchen in miniscule. It says it has four bedrooms but it's more like two bedrooms with two oversized closets. But, it has brand new carpet and the living room/dining room is very nice-sized and we're using it for a living room/reading area. The kitchen is an eat-in kitchen so I have no need for an additional dining area plus it's all carpeted and I don't like eating on carpet. The view from the backyard is nice. It opens into a canyon which overlooks the 163 so we're high up and we don't have any neighbors behind us. Other than the bugs, which someone is going to get an earful when I'm done here, I can live with everything else. It's base housing. IT'S BASE HOUSING!! I expected everything else. I can live with it. That's my mantra.

I hate our cable. Time Warner is confusing. We have so many channels (it goes up to 1000+) that I can't find anything. If there's an organizational schema to how the channels are arranged, I can't figure it out. I've had Cox, Charter, Suddenlink, and now Time Warner and Time Warner is by far the weirdest.

The packers broke the flat screen TV we recently purchased for our bedroom. It turns on but we have no red. Red is black and skin tone is green. They took several screws out of the back of it trying to take the base off to pack it. I don't know if that's what broke it or if it was the actual transporting it 2700 miles, but it's broke. We'll file a claim but it could be years before we're reimbursed if they decide to reimburse us at all. We're only about 1/2 way unpacked and that's the only broken/missing thing so far. I guess I should count myself lucky. We know someone who was moving from Japan to the U.S. and they dropped his entire shipment off the side of a transport ship to the bottom of the ocean. So, things could be worse. They managed to get my Grandma's Italian table here with no problem and that's one of the few things we own that's irreplaceable. Other than that, our movers suck butt and I hope they rot.

My car was delivered after much hassle from the company. NEVER use Car Go Autotransport to ship a car. They suck ass. Suck as in S-U-C-K. I won't go into all the details cuz it's really boring, but in the end, they delivered my car sans the antenna. They swear it's in the car but my car is very clean (at least on the inside) and there is no antenna in there. I have to figure out how to get a new one because only one radio station comes in without it.

I have now moved into the, "I'm sick of moving, unpacking, living out of boxes, being so sore I can barely move at the end of the day, being so tired that I fall into bed exhausted but can't sleep because my back hurts so bad, sick of eating out constantly because I can't find enough kitchen stuff to cook with" phase of life. I'm irritable and I want moving, school, and work to go the hell away. AWAY! I've missed several assignments in both my classes so that a good grade is now an unattainable goal. I'm so far behind with work that the light at the end of the tunnel is no longer visible. And I don't think we'll ever be done unpacking. CRY, WHINE, COMPLAIN!!!

To get some perspective, we're back in San Diego after longing to be here for the last six years. The only complaint our old landlord had was that we didn't pooper scoop the backyard. (Go cry to someone else about that because we paid almost $1000 getting YOUR house ready to rent to SOMEBODY else and if dog crap is your only complaint, count yourself damned lucky dude.) All the boxes will eventually go away. Logically, I know this. Base housing isn't choice, but it's in a pretty perfect location, it's free (basically) and we don't pay utilities. As long as they get an exterminator here to kill the bugs, I can be happy here. In the grand scheme of things, life is pretty good.