The Glade 4.0

So... after months and months of unemployment after being laid off back in May, I finally got a new job. First full time job as a salaried employee with benefits of my own and all that. First respectable income. First time fully supporting myself for every penny, despite a relatively massive amount of student loans to pay off. This is pretty sweet and is a big change in and of itself. I apparently do not do things by halves, however...

The master plan:

1) Get an apartment (over the phone) in the Monroeville area. I will be a Pittsburgh-based Glader for the foreseeable future. This step has to happen no matter what, but master plan requires it to happen probably by Thursday.

2) Move into apartment on Friday or Saturday.

3) Fly from Pittsburgh to Boise. Idaho. Extra tricky as no ticket yet, pending confirmation of having an actual place to live.

4) Go with girlfriend to Oregon by car. Spend a day or two at her home.

5) Probably spend some time in Boise with girlfriend's friends.

6) Drive from Boise back to Pittsburgh... Interstate 80 and I already are good friends. Now I will see so much more of it. Unfortunately, that mostly consists of Wyoming, Nebraska, and Iowa... fully across all three of em. In a row.

7) Don't break down catastrophically.

8) Move girlfriend into apartment.

9) Begin work sometime around 8/26.

10) Begin life in a new town, living with girlfriend for the first time, working a new job (making kinda cool stuff, at that).

Man this is quite a terrifying list... :p Looking at it makes it tough to ignore the scope of it and only focus on the next step in front of me!

Nice work!

Iowa is an eye blink after the hell that is Nebraska. Still, good luck man. I hope everything works out for you.

_________________
Raell Kromwell

Funny - my best man in my wedding moved from Pittsburgh to Boise.

_________________
The Dude abides.

Right on, man, congrats, and good luck.

_________________
This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

Congrats! Hope everything goes smoothly and works for the best.

Congrats and good luck Noggel! Hang on for the roller coaster of life! It's all great!

_________________
"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

Have fun with it.

Sounds great. Best of luck to ya!

_________________
This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Apartment is 99% set, moving in on Saturday.

Plane ticket is booked, flying on Monday.

A lot remains to be done, but the key parts of the master plan are mostly in place now. For someone that hasn't been farther west than Cleveland until this past May's trip to Portland (I never did post any pictures from that trip... got some neat ones) this has been quite a year.

Onward.

Note: Pay attention when a leasing office tells you that you have to pay via money order or cashier's checks only. They're... not easy to come by when all you have is a credit card and personal checks. My neanderthal self will be getting a debit card when I set up my new bank account.

I would think the limited payment method would have stuck out when the fellow told me this on the phone, but apparently not.

Car broke, too, but I'm pretty sure it's nothing all that major. I made it here at least, and though I may be mistaken, AAA may have me covered. New car (or, well, new used) is #1 on the buying list at this point. Trying to find a good balance between 4WD/AWD and maintainability. It doesn't have to look pretty or have all sorts of options... if it gives me very little trouble and many miles I will be pleased no matter what. But this is a concern for months in the future. :p

Now onward to bed so I can wake up at 3:30 AM for the flight! Fingers crossed that I'm not a car-breaking jinx, cause 2350 miles is way more than the 235 I just drove.

No...debit card...how...can't...function...

#brainbroken

#rebooting

Good luck!

Made it back across country at 3:30 AM Sunday morning. Got everything straightened out with work and am due to show up at 8:30 tomorrow morning. Girlfriend is all moved in and it is awesome. And yes, I have a debit card on the way now with my new bank. :p

Got some sweet pictures of the country. Haven't got the ones from my girlfriend's phone, but I intend to put together some sort of online album of some sort. Maybe even a short YouTube video or two, but that remains undecided at this time. But as far as a short recap goes for impressions of states at a glance:

Oregon and Idaho are both on fire. Shoshone Falls was a pretty sweet spontaneous detour.

Utah has cool mountains and some scary traffic.

Wyoming has some amazing countryside, and I'm now 3 for 3 on crossing the Rockies at night. Slept in Cheyenne.

Screw Nebraska.

Iowa is apparently haunted. Leafless trees in September and fog that stops at the state line.

We detoured from original plan and went through all of Missouri. Stayed the night in Hannibal, with everything Mark Twain. Everything everything. Missed the tour to go into a cave that served as inspiration for his stories and didn't want to wait around for the next one.

Illinois was boring but short.

Indiana was just like Illinois, but we stopped at Purdue to visit an online friend for a few hours. Indianapolis was cool too, even just in passing.

Ohio was all at night and boring, though Columbus was bigger than expected.

Pennsylvania was short! Driving through downtown Pittsburgh at 3 AM was kinda surreal though. Buildings lit up all fancy but only 3 other cars on the highway.

Then blissful, blissful sleep for just about ever.

Good times, Nog. I too just signed a new lease and will be moving into the first place with my wife this week. Exciting ****! Packing in four days should be fun.

Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. We just did the packing thing. We have yet to do the unpacking thing. #dies

But, uh, good luck to you, though!

Edit: Well, technically work paid for packing and moving...but that creates its own set of problems. At least when you pack your own stuff, you have an idea of where it was put...and you can label the damn boxes correctly. Grrr.

I thought this was generally a problem that Southern California had.


And now I know you're lying.


Farskeee, you wouldn't have this problem if you could stay in one place longer than 16 months... Just sayin'.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades