Moving

Well it looks like we're gonna get to live on the ranch!  Jody told us last night that Kent was talking about letting us rent the cabin on the ranch, and the prospect of being able to go out and shoot at stuff whenever he wanted made Jesse very happy.  Apartment living is not his style at all. 

So this morning we got up, ate some apple jacks, dropped off the trailer, and drove down to the shop, with the intention of unloading all our stuff so we could put Jody's stuff in it and use it to move his family this weekend.  But Kent said he was going to drive out to the ranch later, so we shouldn't unload our stuff until he could take us out and let us look at the house.  So instead of unpacking, we got to sort receipts, tape them in chronological order onto pieces of paper, and then type up an expense report.  I can handle the basics of excel, and I felt fairly proficient as I was typing it all up...until we realized that we had forgotten to include mileage for driving to and from the airport during our last trip down here.  So then Jody came and helped me start a second page, and get the totals to combine on the second, etc.  I felt like I could handle it from there, so Jody went back to work and Jesse disappeared into the vast maze of the shop, and I spent the next 20 minutes or so realizing how little I know about excel.  Basically, when you move things down, the cells left behind do not keep their formatting, and it is a pain in the butt to get it back to looking like the rest of everything. 

But I digress.  Once I was finished with the expense report, we drove out to the ranch with Kent to see the house.  He told us that every first and every second or third week of September he has a group of guys who all come in and stay there to hunt doves on the ranch.  The only stipulations to living there would be vacating the premises for those two weeks, and not competing with the season hunters for game animals.  But he said that we could come stay with him, and Annie said the same thing, and Dave has two extra bedrooms, and Nicole has offered to let us stay with her if we need to, as well.  So I think we basically have that covered.  And as far as hunting goes, Charlie has a ranch, and Kent is talking about turning another 240 acres or so that he has (or his niece has, or something) into the Bold Ideas hunting ranch, so Jesse would be fine that way too. 

We had seen the house from the outside before, but had never been in it.  Even now we just got a brief walk-through, and it was full of dove hunters, so we didn't get a good look, and we didn't get any pictures.  It's not beautiful, and it's not modern, but it's cute AND functional, and even has air conditioning!  The kitchen is painted a strange sort of teal color, but it gives the place character, and Kent said we could do whatever we wanted with it.  There is a loft upstairs that has 4 sets of bunk beds and two twin beds (from what I remember) as well as the smaller bedroom downstairs.  There's apparently a storm cellar in the laundry room type thing off of the kitchen, but Kent said we would probably be better off getting in the car and driving away from the storm, rather than try to actually use it.  It has a washer and dryer, so we would probably just store ours somewhere and use the ones that he already has set up.  There isn't much else to say about it...He's never rented it before, and he's not worried about leases or cleaning deposits or anything.  When we asked him what he wanted for rent he said a couple hundred dollars plus utilities.  So I guess we will work that out eventually.  I am looking forward to having a place out of town, and we will be able to stay as long as we need to, which is good, and cheap rent will make it much easier to save up to buy our own house.  Or our own Jeep, which I have a feeling will be our first big purchase here... 

When we got back from looking at the house we went with Dave and Annie and John Isberg (the shooter they had in Canby who drove down this week with Dave's truck and camper) to finish packing up Dave's stuff and move him (again) to the place he has a little ways outside of town.  It turned into an all-day ordeal.  After getting everything loaded, we met Ryan for lunch, went out to the house, unloaded, back to the shop, bought everything under the sun at Wal-Mart in the way of cleaning supplies, and long story short, I spent most of the afternoon inside his refrigerator while Annie put the boys to work washing windows and then scrubbed and vacuumed most of the rest of the house.  Someone actually has a picture of me inside the freezer.  I'll have to share it, if I ever find it.  At 6:00 I finally finished with the refrigerator and mopped the kitchen, and we all found out that it is Matt's birthday today.  Even his brother, hard at work putting a TV stand together incorrectly, didn't know.  So we called it a day and went to La Familia's for dinner.  And that's the end of my story thus far.  Tomorrow we get to move Jody and his family, and on Sunday it will be our turn!  And then Monday I have a meeting with Jlyn. 

Now it's really the end.