The Family Tree

Last week I attended the National Genealogical Society's (NGS) annual conference in Cincinnati. I was quite excited that it was taking place there as that is where I was born. For once many of the conference topics would be on point for my research. The only other NGS conference I have attended took place in St. Louis many years ago. As a member of the host organization, the St. Louis Genealogical Society, I had volunteered to take care of publicity for the event. Wow - what a job that was! Any way, my sister drove over with me on Tuesday and we both spent the night at my cousin's house. Kathy then drove me to the hotel the next morning, and I checked into one of the conference hotels for three nights. Kathy stayed out at my cousins, but I wanted to be downtown so I could easily get to the meetings. Since they ran from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., I didn't want to have to deal with the long drive each way every day.

The conference was good, and I picked up some new tips and tricks. But for me the best part came on Thursday evening when they kept the library open just for conference attendees. We had the library to ourselves (all 400 of us!) from 6:30 until 11:30 p.m. It was great! I lasted until 11:00 before I headed back to my hotel. That probably wasn't one of my better decisions, since I walked back all by myself. Luckily I did not end up as a statistic in the Friday morning issue of the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Tom + Chee

I was able to have dinner and drinks one evening with my cousin, Gina, and that was quite fun. Then on Thursday for lunch I met one of my third cousins for the first time. We had exchanged emails about our common Metz ancestor years ago. More recently we have been friends on Facebook. But to be able to meet him in person was wonderful. It was as if we had always been friends. We went to a place called Tom + Chee (because all they serve is tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches). The restaurant was featured on the show Man v. Food, and as a fan of the show I was excited to eat there. Since it was Cincinnati, of course I had to get the sandwich with goetta on it. Yum!

Unfortunately early in the morning on Saturday I began to feel really sick. At 8:00 I called my sister and asked her to come and pick me up. So I missed the entire last day of the conference but it could not be helped. I think I got sick from the Chinese food I had eaten Friday night. The worst part was that I did not get to go out to eat with my aunts and cousins Saturday night, which is something I was very much looking forward to doing. But I did feel well enough by Sunday that I was able to drive us back home. Happy Mother's Day to me.

The Empty Nest

Our nest is empty now - well, except for the toys that we are holding onto until the kids get houses of their own. Then we will get rid of those items as well. I spent a couple of weeks taking all of Katie's stuff out of the plastic containers we had put them in when we moved it all to the basement. She does not have room to store the containers in her studio apartment, so it all needed to be put into cardboard boxes so that she can recycle those as she unpacks.

Originally I had thought that I would drive all of her stuff out to Los Angeles. But after pricing renting a truck and then adding on hotel rooms, gas, food, and two plane tickets home, that got pretty expensive. Then I looked at taking my own car and hitching a trailer to the back, but that left me with all of the expenses except the plane tickets. By the time I calculated my time (and that of another person to go with me), the additional hotel rooms and food for the return drive, and the wear and tear on my car, that got pricey as well. Plus having recently made the drive, I am not too excited to hop in the car again for that long of a trip.

So that left us with the option of having someone else handle the move. We decided to hire a national company called The Packaging Store to move her belongings. My neighbor owns the local franchise so I had him come over to give me a price on the move. Ugh! It was about $1,400 more than we were hoping for, so I called some other sources. The bottom line is that it really depends on the weight of the items being moved. One company was quite a bit less expensive, but the reviews online were not that favorable, and they don't have an office here in St. Louis. I have no idea where the driver would come from. Going with The Packaging Store seemed to be the best alternative, and I like the fact that I have someone close to call if there is an issue.

Boxed Items

Furniture

I was able to use a lot of the office boxes we had left from when we sold ORMI. That saved me a bunch on buying cardboard boxes. I had to use some of their boxes for the bigger and/or heavier things, but I cleaned out our supply so that was good all the way around. Larger things like her desk and a couple of pole lamps I left for them to box up. On Tuesday they came and got everything. They took it all back to their warehouse, where they weigh it, put it on pallets, and shrink wrap it. Sometime this upcoming week it will be loaded onto a tractor trailer. The good news is that the actual weight was considerably less than Ray had estimated, so our bill came right in at what we were originally hoping for - yay!

They estimate 10 working days to get the items to her. One of the reasons it is taking a little longer is that we ordered the extra service on the other end where the stuff will all be put on a local delivery truck. First of all we needed a smaller truck there so that they can actually drive to the back of the apartment complex and use the elevator right by her apartment. Second, two men will actually bring all of it into her apartment so she doesn't have to haul it all around herself. They would have unpacked for her as well, but we didn't add that service on.

We can now reclaim a good portion of our basement, not to mention Katie's room on the third floor. I don't think it has really sunk in yet that she won't be living here anymore. She has been gone so much lately with all of her studies abroad that it kind of just feels like she is away at school right now. But she has already mentioned that it feels weird that the third floor is no longer "her" bedroom. I guess it will take me a little longer to get to that point. While our place here is an empty nest, in a short while she will get all the items to begin feathering hers.

That's a Wrap!

I am back home from my adventures in Los Angeles. I spent the final few days with Katie picking out a couch and bar stools, setting up a bank account, lining up insurance, and shopping for the necessary items she will need to get by until her stuff can be shipped to her. She was also busy making contacts and lining up interviews. In a lot of ways it does not seem real that she is staying out there permanently. She has traveled so much during the past year that it felt to me like a temporary stop on the road we call life. The song "Wide Open Spaces" came on my iPod while I was with her, and I thought the lyrics were so poignant of my feelings.

Who doesn't know what I'm talking about
Who's never left home, who's never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone

Many precede and many will follow
A young girl's dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn't yet guessed
She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes 

I decided to book a flight to head home on Sunday. I went back and forth as I had heard the weather forecast in St. Louis. But I had only reserved my hotel room through Saturday night. I probably could have added another day, but quite frankly after 11 days I was ready to head home to Jim and my own bed. My flight was scheduled to leave at 12:25, so Katie dropped me off at the airport about 10:20. I checked my bag and printed out my boarding pass. My first clue to potential problems should have been that I wasn't charged for the bag. I attributed that to the fact that I booked my flight so late and paid an obscene price for it. The second clue was my boarding time, but I didn't even notice that. I just looked at the boarding pass long enough to ensure that it was Flight 818 to St. Louis. My bad!

About an hour went by before I checked my boarding pass again, and then I freaked out when it said that boarding was to begin at 3:40, with the flight departing at 4:10. Holy crap! I ran to check one of the boards, and sure enough the flight was delayed. After speaking with an American representative I found that due to bad weather in St. Louis on Saturday, many flights had been cancelled and it was balling everything up on Sunday. Bad weather on Sunday added to the problems, especially since the Midwest, Dallas and Chicago were all experiencing delays. Darn it! I should have gone with my gut and booked for Monday.

So I hung out at the airport all day, and mid-afternoon my flight disappeared from the board altogether. The American rep assured me it was because they had no room on the board and bumped our flight to add a different one on. Liar, liar, pants on fire. When I asked later, I was told that the gate had changed. When I went to the new gate, there was no mention of Flight 818 on the screen at the gate. I had to check with other passengers to make sure I was in the right place. Finally they 'fessed up that there was a mechanical problem with our plane, but they thought it could be fixed. The woman next to me said they were told the exact same story on Saturday. She was supposed to fly to St. Louis at 8:15 Saturday morning. They fed the passengers b.s. about delays, then a maintenance problem, then the fact that they thought they had a different plane to put them on, until finally at 9:00 Saturday night they told them they weren't going anywhere and put them on the Sunday 12:25 flight. So when the gate attendant said our plane could not be repaired but they thought they could get another plane for us, we did not hold out a lot of hope.

We finally began our taxi down the runway at around 7:00. We got a free snack on the plane, but only if you were smart enough to ask for it. They weren't offering, that's for sure. We arrived in St. Louis at 12:40 a.m. Poor Jim had to stay up to come and get me, and he had been on a challenging motorcycle trip all weekend. Next time I will listen to my gut.

A Place to Call Home

We signed a lease on an apartment today. Woo, hoo! We went back to take a second look at the loft apartment. While it has some things that were not as nice as the first complex we looked at, the amount of space in the unit, the location of the apartment in the back of the complex, and the view simply outweigh the negatives. As it still needs to be cleaned up we went ahead and committed to it so that management will put a priority on getting it ready for occupancy. Katie can move in on Saturday. It seems funny to say "move in" when really all she has out here is one suitcase of clothes and a couple of bags of miscellaneous items. Should make the process pretty painless! Here is a picture of the interior before they had finished the cleaning process.

We did need to go pick out a bed because with the loft set up she can actually finally have a real bed. In the past at home as well as in Chicago she has used a trundle bed. That is one less big item we will need to ship from St. Louis. The bed will be delivered on Saturday afternoon. We also had to make arrangements for a refrigerator since the apartment did not come with one. I have to say that is the one thing that really didn't sit well with me. What kind of apartment doesn't provide a refrigerator? And what do you do with it when you move out? We decided to rent one for the time being, but it won't be delivered until Monday. The power will be turned on Friday, so that is helpful. The last item is to get the Internet set up with AT&T, which we should be able to handle tomorrow. We are feeling pretty good about where we're at right now.