Rants, raves and randomness . . .

One year ago today … June 23rd …

Well, as I have no photo for the day but several good things happened, you just get words today! LOL

After figuring we’d hear from the property management people the day before and then NOT, we were kind of let down. The first thought, of course was, “Something went wrong with our application and I bet those assholes in VA gave us a bad reference or something!” Well, the truth was, said “assholes in VA” still hadn’t bothered to call the folks in WA back!

So … we were out shopping and checking out the area some more that afternoon and just got fed up with it. I called our former property manager and asked her what the deal was. Her answer? A very snotty “Oh, because we don’t do that here. You need to go through the main office in DC and that could take several days, if they’ll do it at all.” Well, thanks for the call to the folks here to at least let them KNOW. UGH!!!

But then, as if some little angel was floating around us, Mike’s phone rang. It was the base housing office calling. “We’ve got a house for you here on base if you are interested!” WELL OF COURSE WE ARE!!! “We’ve actually got a choice of houses for you. A 1275 square foot 3-bedroom or a 1400 square foot 4-bedroom in the old housing or a 1775 square foot 3-bedroom ‘new construction’ house.”

The waiting list was quoted as being 4 months long when we put in our application a few days before we left VA. Those applications don’t even take effect until you report to your new area … I thought some kind of miracle was happening here. LOL

We asked the lady if she could give us the addresses so that we could do a drive-by and check them out and she obliged. The thing about base housing is that you can drive by and look at the outsides but the only way that you get to look at the inside is after you have agreed to take possession of that house!

The old housing didn’t look bad from the outside but with the square footage she told us, I figured there was NO WAY all of our stuff was going to fit in to something that small. We were coming from having lived in an 1850 square foot house … 1300-1400 square feet was just NOT going to cut it. Then we drove by the “new” house … and I said to Mike “Let’s go tell her we’re going to take that yellow house right there.” ;)

And so we did. We went right back to the housing office and told her that we were taking the new house. The catch? There was still an occupant and they would be moving out that coming Friday … then there was a 3 week turnaround time afterwards for them to do any cleaning and maintenance that needed done. *sigh*

But we agreed to it.

She took our names off the waiting list and sent us to the public-private venture property management office and we signed all of our paperwork naming us the next tenants of this house. We walked out of the office relieved that the house hunting was over then called the property management office we’d originally been working with on *THE HOUSE* and told them to disregard our application (with many apologies!) and then called a friend of Mike’s that he ended up staying with since he had to check in to his new squadron.

We settled in for a last night at the Navy Lodge and repacked the kids’ and my stuff back in the car so that we could pick the cats up from the kennel the next morning and head back south to my parents’ house … for the next three weeks. ;)

One year ago …

Since I, again, didn’t take any photos (or at least don’t have any on the CD saying I had taken them) between June 16th and 21st last year, I guess I get to babble for a few days. LOL

On June 16, 2010, we shelled out $300 to have our windshield replaced. Somewhere along the way in Idaho, some random rock popped up out of nowhere and nicked the windshield about an inch in from the edge and just under halfway up the glass on the passenger side. Well, it started as a little nick … then as we drove along, it grew into a crack … and the crack just kept getting longer. At its longest, it was at least 18 inches long. To say I was having mini-freakouts imagining the windshield blowing out in my face as we were driving down the freeway would be an understatement.

I guess the best thing was that the Auto Glass guy comes to you … you call and set it up (telling them what type of vehicle, etc) and they come to you at the scheduled time with the proper glass and change it right there. So we had it fixed right in my parents’ driveway.

Granted, it was still 300 smackers but … at least there wasn’t sales tax. Silver lining. ;)