NEOS LOG
August 2013

If July was a month of endings, August was the month of beginnings. We felt like newlyweds, setting up a new household together. Instead of heading into Costa Baja for the hurricane months, we moved into a nice one bedroom apartment on Sunset Blvd in Rocklin.

Max makes the front page...

We signed a 9 month lease at the Broadstone apartments beginning August 1. We had ordered a memory pad mattress from Wal-Mart and it was at our front door when we arrived for our walk through at the apartment at 4pm on Thursday the first. But we needed more than a bed to move out of the Blooms’ and be on our own. We spent Friday morning hitting the thrift stores in the area. The Sacramento Goodwill was a real experience; huge canvas containers on wheels that they would fill with junk and roll into the warehouse. You could dig through them and pull out what you wanted. The seasoned Goodwill shoppers would wait patiently at the door for the new container so they could get first grabs. They wore plastic or leather gloves and all seemed to know each other. What a crack up. Of course, after five minutes, the contents of the containers were thoroughly mixed up, and everything just looked like dumpster material. You paid by the pound and we got out with one cookie sheet. On the other hand, the Goodwill in Rocklin was like a Ross store with items organized and displayed on shelves. We got out for under $100 but had lots of things we needed from dishes and silverware to shower curtain. At Target, we bought towels, sheets, and mattress cover. At Costco, we got cookware, blender and toaster. Finally, a trip to Safeway to fill up the fridge and pantry.
Then we focused on finding some wheels. Ryan had been really generous and had given us his old BMW. But when we tried to get a smog check on it, it failed. We were faced with spending at least $700 to fix it up or to find something else. We looked at Craig’s List, then found autotrader.com. Auto Trader was a much easier way to look at and to compare cars. We made a list of 3 or 4 we were interested in and sent emails. Saturday morning, we had 3 of the 4 lined up to look at. We ended up accepting the first one we found, a Chevy Aveo. It had 61,000 miles, was in good condition and was the size we wanted. We handed over $6500 cash and drove away with our new wheels. We had rendezvoused with the original owner at a shopping center in Roseville so I took the opportunity to do some more shopping while Rog drove him home. I found a small table/chair set for our new patio at Tuesday Morning and bought a few bags of household items at Dollar Tree.
By Sunday, we were ready to be on our own and moved in.

The Blooms came over for a swim and BBQ and celebrated our new home. On Monday the movers arrived at Ryan’s at 11am. They loaded up the furniture that Ryan had been keeping for us; our dining set, a hutch, and 3 chairs (including Rog’s oversized Lazy-Boy). All of the stuff we had hauled up from Mexico on Neos was in Ryan’s side yard and they loaded that up. Then it was off to Michelle’s to pick up the 20+ boxes we had stored in their attic as well as the old Lloyd hutch she had kept in her sewing room for us. By 2:30, everything was in the apartment and we started the job of making our house a home. We had all of the boxes unpacked and almost everything put away before hitting the sack that night. We have a home again.

Before

After

It was an amazing feeling to wake up and walk around and see all of our old familiar things around us. Like getting acquainted with old friends all over again. All we really needed to add was living room furniture. We shopped online and found a set of tables we liked at Overstock.com; a sofa table, an end table, and a coffee table. Then we hit the furniture stores in town. After looking at five stores, we realized that most of the stuff was junk and wouldn’t last more than a couple of years. So we again went online, researching brands and reviews. We ended up ordering a Barcalounger loveseat with power recliners. Finally, we researched the entertainment items; TV and sound system. We hit Fry’s, Best Buy, RC Willey and Costco. We ended up with a 50” Panasonic TV, Samsung BluRay DVD player, Winegard digital antenna and Vizio 5 speaker sound system…all from Costco. It only took me 2 calls to the Vizio support center to get everything working together well.

By this time, the tables had arrived and were easily assembled. But the coffee table had been dropped somewhere along the line and a corner was crushed. I went through about 15 irritating minutes of despair at buying furniture online: annoyed at having to pack it back up and ship it back….I’ll never buy anything online again…. Until I called overstock.com and talked to them. The customer service guy was so nice and accommodating that I was again happy with our decision to get these tables. They sent out another table and said we could keep the original one and not send it back. The new table came within 7 days and we were quite impressed….until we discovered that this one had a crack on one end. We decided to put up with the crack and not bother the company. But after a few days, I decided to let them know that they had better check their stock and see if the entire shipment had been damaged before they sent out another table to a new customer. They responded immediately and apologized, offering to send us a third table. Dang!! This new table arrived in September and this time, we returned the pieces we didn’t need back to overstock.com. I am impressed with this company!!
The TV fits perfectly on the sofa table and we found a floor lamp at World Market to round things out. Rog made some wooden hangers for some Chinese artifacts we have and we hung our paintings and Rog’s karate certificates. I had been stymied on what to do with the artwork we get from Max and Karissa until we found poster frames at Wal-Mart. We bought one for each of them and have them hung on our bedroom wall. As they give us new pictures, we can easily display them.. We also bought a straw basket and filled it with goodies for them to play with when they came over.

Meanwhile, there were other projects. Rog had offered to help Michelle and Eric remove the cultured stone fireplace in their living room. It took about 4 mornings of pounding and chiseling but they no longer have a cultured stone chimney. I think Michelle had just as rough a job with the cleanup.

The next focus was on Karissa’s birthday present. Rog had restored the dollhouse that his father had made for Michelle 30 years ago. Then we bought some furniture for it not realizing that the furniture needed to be cut out, sanded, stained and glued together. So we spent a week assembling in the “workshop”, aka the garage. To round out the gift, we found a family of dolls. So by the time Karissa’s third birthday party rolled around, we had the whole package complete and it was truly a hit. Karissa loves her new dollhouse and plays with it daily.

We were also able to reconnect with some of our friends and family; Terry Hawkinson dropped in for lunch, the Nordstrums came for a BBQ dinner and card game, and Rich and Cathy (Bella Brisa) stopped for dinner on their way down I-80 from a camping trip. We had dinner at the Adamson’s and were able to see Phil’s mom, Wanda, who was spending a few weeks with them. Even got some family time in with a pizza dinner with Micki and Brian, a pop in visit from Bill Lloyd and Ryan hosted a BBQ lunch for the family.

We even had a date with Max. Lowe's was doing a kid's build project. We enjoyed a pizza lunch, then we went to Lowe's where Max got to make Dusty, the cropduster in the Disney movie "Planes". He and Rog did a fine job assembling the wooden plane and then we all enjoyed an ice cream before heading home.

class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> So now we are signed up with Virgin for our new smart phone, AT&T for UVerse internet services, PG&E for gas and electric, Key Energy for trash, water and maintenance…not to mention rent. A bit more complicated than life in Caleta Lobos. But we have acclimated well. Rog is back with his dojo, going to karate three days a week. I have started an exercise regime. We join Max for his walk to school every Wednesday morning, followed by an hour or so of playing with Karissa and chatting with Michelle. We get to take Max to Jiu Jitsu on Tuesday nights. And if we need something, it is a five minute hop to the store. Life is good. We are happy CLODs.