World News... This past week

Okay, so I've gotten rid of my frustration from the other night. I have written a giant e-mail to one of my friends with the summary of "what's new"... I will now attempt to post that information here for everyones consumption.... well, it seems to have worked... some minor formatting, but otherwise, the text is here.......

Athena and I went to Hawaii the first week of Nov. We flew out on the 1st and back on the 7th. We had a pretty good time relaxing more than any other time we'd been to Hawaii. We went on a snorkle/scuba trip on Friday. Athena unfortunately got sea-sick and decided to feed the fish over the side of the boat. The fish were happy... but she wasn't. My scuba went pretty well. The areas we were seeing were full of fish and had some good scenery. The view from snorkling was probably just as good. There were some caves that our group explored... nothing too dangerous though, just 10ft or so of enlosed area before coming to a large "skylight". One afternoon we went hiking up to a view of Waipaio valley... it's one of the valleys that they use in a lot of movies. While up there, I located a geocache and finally dropped off the travelbug that I've been carrying for a while. We flew back Sunday evening into LAX and then drove home. We got back at about 2:00a.

The next day (Monday last week), we started full speed ahead on the move and getting the mortgage for the house... Athena also started her out-processing from Ft Irwin on Monday (8th). She went and got a bunch of immunization shots and started working on all the paperwork. She went by to double check her report date because some people were getting orders to report earlier than was originally discussed. The tasking office told her that she was no longer in the system... computer glitch? he didn't seem to know. We went to the store later that evening and ran into someone that Athena works with. He said, "I hear you got some good news today." We thought he was refering to the "glitch" or whatever. A little later that evening, she checked her e-mail and found that she had several messages telling her that her tasking for Iraq had been revoked. Given the way the Army has been working, it's not something one would believe immediately though. She checked into it over the next couple of days and it seems to be for real that she will not be deployed. So, as of last word, she is going to stay here at Irwin. Obviously, we are pretty far along with the process of buying our house. After some discussion, we've decided that we will continue with the original plan. We will buy the house and I will relocate to Co Springs. Athena will work as hard as possible to get a spot at Ft Carson there in the coming months. If possible, she will move there in June of next year. If she can't get a spot at Carson, we'll have to decide where she will go. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for her to come up to Colorado Springs.

Anyway, as you can imagine, things have been VERY hectic the past week. We locked in on a loan last Wednesday just in time to have a bunch of lenders call us from the Booz Allen "prefered" lenders. They managed to help us go from 4 7/8 w/ 1 pt on a 7/1 ARM to 4.5 w/ 1 pt on the same loan. The point will be paid by the seller and my real estate agent. I'm hoping I can convince Booz to pay 1 pt on the purchase and that will cover the remainder of our costs... I'll show up with $100 and be ready to go ;-)

Athena and I (mostly Athena) are starting to pack up stuff around the house. We need to figure out what items she will need to keep so that she can live comfortably here for the next 6 months or longer. She is working on packing up lots of clothes and has bubble-wrapped most of the fragile items around the house. We'll have all of our stuff that's in storage delivered next monday (22nd) and hopefully we can sort through it over the Thanksgiving weekend. I've been working with Booz Allen trying to get things planned, but so far have been unable to pin down many dates. I'd like to have our move scheduled for the very end of November so that we can get everything headed to Colorado while we close on the house... it probably won't happen that way. I'll likely have to come back after we close and oversee the move, then drive to CO in my car. Since I won't have both cars, I will probably have to buy a truck once I'm there... my S2000 won't do so well on those snow days that happen from time to time :-)

The original plan was to take all our stuff to CO and have both cars... the Accord would probably do fine with snow once I put some new tires on.... which, BTW I will be getting at the end of the week. I decided on the Bridgestone Turanza LS-V. It has good overall ratings for snow and normal driving alike. It is rated as a "Grand Touring - All Season" tire but ranks very highly in snow performance... much higher than what we currently have Michelin Energy MXV4+... and after 60,000 miles I'm sure they would be mostly useless in snow.