Britt's Blog

Oh, wait, you non-Iowans don’t understand swine metaphors.

Never mind.

Our Pod has come back to us, and Jason is finding the process of unloading much less stressful than loading, especially with his handtruck! Hurray for handtruck! He purchased a handtruck of his very own at ShopKo. It even transforms from a handtruck to a giant robot! Er, no, actually, it only transforms from a normal vertical handtruck to kind of a little cart thingie. And back. No giant robot. I made that part up.

Anyway, we are very lucky to have the handtruck, because I am largely useless for unloading things, as I am still feeling a bit under the weather, and with my thesis defense coming up I’m conserving my strength and trying to get well, and only helping with the stuff that absolutely needs two people.

We have put together our bed, and we are looking forward to sleeping on something that doesn’t need to be reinflated each evening (although we can’t complain about the air mattress for comfort.) Aside from a slight problem of seeming to have more stuff than we have space, we’re doing okay. Too bad Beloit is too small to have its own Freecycle list.

When we discovered that it would take several days to get our cable and interent access, we thought it would not be too much of a hardship. In fact, we said, “It will be good for us to go a week without TV or surfing the web!”

“I shall get ever so much work done without any distractions,” said I.

“I shall break my message board addiction,” said Jason.

“We will find internet hotspots in charming cafés and coffee shops to check our email and grow more familiar with our new community,” we cried together as we joined hands and danced in a circle.

Uh, yeah.

Then I got sick. Couldn’t really go out, couldn’t work. It was one of those miserable colds where you basically can’t do anything but lay on the couch and watch TV—except, oops, no couch and no TV.

Turns out that there’s one hotspot in Beloit, as far as we can tell. Good news is it’s right down the block. Bad news is it’s open only limited hours, and closed on Sundays.

And, in general, having neither TV nor internet is teh suck. Entertainment value aside, it is just frustrating when you need information and have no easy way to get it.

After a few days, we were both about to snap. I was lying on the air mattress, coughing and hacking, with nothing to do but worry about the work I wasn’t doing on my thesis. J was climbing the walls and muttering darkly about nerve-stapling the cat after too many hours of SMAC.

But now the Cable Technician has come and made everything all better.

Aaaaaaaah.

Sweet information.

Sorry about the lack of updates, but we arrived in Beloit on Tuesday, and spent Wednesday running around buying stuff for the apartment and failing to find any wireless hotspots. Unfortunately, I’d picked up a nasty cold some where along the line, and I spent Thursday incapacitated in bed as the “work yourself to exhaustion, collapse, get up, and exhaust yourself again” plan of recovering from illness failed spectacularly.

A day of rest seems to have helped a lot, and we found a hotspot at Bagels and More, the place to go for Beloit’s premier bagel experience.

I think today we will be able to get out there and get some more necessities, like a chair. And a lamp. No more sitting on the floor in the dark for us!

First things first: HUGE THANKS to Dan, Scott & Laurie, Howard, and John & JP Hayes for help moving! You guys all rock, and we are so very grateful for your help and good spirits.

The Pod departed this morning.

We got things cleaned up and packed the car, and John and JP carted unspeakable amounts of crap to the Tompkins County Solid Waste Center.

We doped up the cat, and jumped into the car and took off around 3. We then proceeded to impliment our Clever Plan, which was to get to Ohio, and find a pet-friendly hotel to check into for the night. I had already done my research, consulting petswelcome.com to find pet-friendly chains.

The Clever Plan got off to a moderately rocky start when we crossed the border to Ohio, and realized that the list was packed underneath some stuff. (Everything in the car is packed underneath other stuff. It seems topologically impossible, but I assure you, it is true.) So we stopped a the first Ohio rest stop to dig the list out. While visiting the facilities, I found a handy-dandy Ohio Travel Coupon Guide, which, awesomely enough, had hotels listed by interstate. Based on petswelcome’s libelous insinuation that Comfort Inn & Suites was pet-friendly, I pulled out ye olde trusty cell phone and tried the first Comfort Inn, which a) Did not allow pets and b) Was full.

Bastards!

However, in the handy-dandy OTCG (as I like to call it), we found an ad for a Super 8 that said Pets Welcome! Yee haw, we’re in business. We called for a reservation, and we were all set.

Then we approached the exit. Which was, naturally, in the middle of a construction zone. In about the right place, we saw signs for an exit to some highway… but the highway number meant nothing to us, and there was no actual exit number and we thought, surely if this was our exit, there would have to be an exit number on the signage, right? But as we blew past at 70 mph, we saw, that as the temporary exit wound off off in the hazy distance, it did eventually connect up with our exit number.

Frustrating, but a minor problem, right? As we were taught by our driver’s ed instructors in high school, we went on to the next exit so we could turn around and head back and catch the exit from the other direction. But, as we exited the freeway we found…

*drumroll*

A huge ugly accident. Firetrucks, police cars, the K-9 unit, flares, and a small car filled with circus clowns. The whole nine yards.

We asked an officer on the scene for directions, and this is where we get down on our knees and thanked the Powers That Be for placing the Global Positioning System in the sky, because the detour was scary, long, dark, and, of course, unmarked.

But, by the grace of GPS, we found our way back onto the highway and back to the right exit and found our hotel.

Despite having been so plastered that she lay down in the small water bowl we put in her cat carrier and got her tummy all wet, Susan has come down off the drugs, and after hiding in the recliner (trust our cat, Feline Genius, to find the least safe place in the room to hide in) she has finaly begun to slink about. Remember, Susan’s Rule of New Places #1: If your belly is never more than 1.5 inches off the floor, nothing bad can possibly happen to you.

Our Pod was delivered today, and it was one of the coolest demonstrations of 21st century techonology that I have personally witnessed.

The truck backs up. (You’ll have to imagine it going “BEEEEE BEEEE BEEEE BEEEE”)

The hydraulic frame is deployed.

The pod is lifted off the truck bed.

The truck drives off.

The Pod is lowered safely to the ground.

The frame is wheeled away, to be returned to the truck bed.

Heh. Heh-heh. Heh-heh. Hydraulics are cool.