In New Hampshire, finally

My Facebook status currently reads: Fran is in NH, safe and sound, but with sketchy internet connections. This is true. But it doesn't tell nearly all the story.

We left Michelle's folks' house in Northern Michigan on Tuesday morning (8/12). I planned for us to have about a 10 hour drive. Turns out that I mis-estimated the distance, or Google maps failed me. Whatever. We drove for 13 hours, got a bit lost after dark near Ottawa, and landed in our hotel, without dinner, at 9:45 PM.

The next morning, we figured we had about a five hour drive to our new house, so we took it a bit easy. We arose at 8:30 and went to have breakfast at the little restaurant attached to our hotel. After a wonderful French Canadian breakfast, we congratulated ourselves on the good choice and our short drive. We returned to our room, only to discover that Bird (our 8 year old Alaskan Husky, retired sled dog, and loather of the indoors) had BUSTED OUT of our room (causing $120 worth of damage) and was missing.

To cut to the chase, we found her after 2.5 hours. We wandered around. Lovely people in the neighborhood stopped us, asking first "votre chien?" and then describing Bird sightings. We found her on the highway, and figure she traveled about five miles, before we caught up with her. And SHE was supposed to be the easy pet on this trip. Actual departure time from Plantagenet, Ontario: 1 PM

We hit some serious traffic in Montreal, and took about 15 minutes at customs, which got us to our new house at about 6:45 PM. We were exhausted.

The house closed without a hitch on Thursday 8/14. And now we are waiting for our stuff to arrive. The movers first said Monday, but now say Tuesday. They've also been a bit sketchy, so I'm not even willing to bet on that.

The other big issue has been around getting TV and internet. Jim Kelsey used to have a postcard in his office that said, "The end of the world: 4 Miles, Marquette, MI: 5 miles." Milan is apparently 10 miles past Marquette. Or maybe 100. The cable offerings for Milan are puny, and cable/internet is not available. Verizon offers a phone, internet, TV bundle, but not in Milan. So, we've ordered a satellite dish for our TV options - and another satellite for our internet options. Though there was some confusion about the internet on the part of a dude named Brandon from Direct TV - so our internet installation can't be ordered until Monday (he told me I could get it through the phone line from AT&T - NOT).

So, we're here. And we're tired. And we are very relieved to be in our own place. We won't have internet at home for a while (though there is a wireless connection we can poach at church). So, be patient while we work all this out. More will follow.