Settling In

 

Every morning, when I get up, I do a balloon check, looking south out of the bedroom window. Most days, we have balloons - there were five this morning. The day I took this photo, a couple of them drifted relatively close to the house, though usually they are far in the distance. I have been up around 7:00 most mornings, which is prime time for balloons; by about 9:00 they are all down.

Our belongings are all here, boxes are all over the house, and we are unpacking room by room. Our bedroom is mostly unpacked, and the kitchen and the dining room. I got the garage organized to the extent that I got the car in. We have hardly started on the living room and the office. The guest bedroom will have to wait for now.

We had our old couch and loveseat from Washington hauled away before we moved. They both were duct-taped on the bottom, and it did not seem worth the money to have them moved. We also left our main television behind, and we disassembled our office furniture and took the pieces to the dump, so we needed a new living room set, a TV, and a computer desk. We already ordered a sectional and recliner, to be delivered Friday, and a desk, to be delivered Thursday, and we are looking at televisions and TV stands.

For now, the main task every day is to choose a room and get it set up. We still get to look forward to the first day that unpacking is not the main order of business.

Some other notes: Arlo and I have found a nice walk that includes a little-used trail down the street, then over to Cabezon Park, which includes a dog park that we have had to ourselves so far, then back home via a different trail that goes by the mailboxes. It takes about an hour. We have to walk during daylight hours, though, which is different from Jubilee - there are no streetlights here.

The sun here is relentless. It has been in the forties each morning, but sunny and clear day after day. The temperature rises quickly to seventy or so by the afternoon. I wear a hat during my walks to keep the sun off of my face, and I think I felt a little sunburn the other day when I forgot to. I cannot remember the last time I got sunburned in Washington.

I already have a bridge partner for Thursdays, and I already played in a tournament in Santa Fe. My partner needed a couple of silver points for her Life Master, and we got those on Saturday. She still needs some gold points though; I might help her with those as well.

So far, we are happy here.

Early Impressions

There were at least 180 balloons visible when I took this picture. I couldn't get them all in a single photo.

Maybe the biggest thing you notice about New Mexico that is not like Washington is the weather. It is definitely warmer here, but also much sunnier, lots of clear days. We have gotten some rain, but unlike that place I still want to think of as "home," it can rain here and then be clear soon after. We have seen a couple of gray days, but only a couple.

The landscapes here look completely different. In Washington, undeveloped areas are usually forests. I am convinced that all of Western Washington would be covered in pine trees if people had not intervened. Not so here. You get long views unobstructed by trees, and the land is covered with scrub. It's not the sand you get in really dry places, but it's very dry - not trees, not fields of grass. You see an occasional line of trees where there is a creek or river.

The trees in my balloon picture have been watered, by the way. Stuff will grow if you water it.

Mexican food is everywhere. I think more than half of the restaurants in Bernalillo are Mexican. What we have tried so far has been very good. They have Taco Bell here too, which seems funny to me, but they are pretty common. Maybe white people have to have something to eat.

We are at about 5,000 feet elevation, although it would be hard to tell if I did not know. I have not noticed any thinness in the air. However, there are hills and mountains all around us. The views here are great.

Speed limits are 75 on the freeways away from Albuquerque. Gas costs under $3 per gallon. People run red lights here - you have to pay attention. Church's Chicken is everywhere (this is a good thing.) Lots of places and streets have Spanish names, similar to California. Arlo has gotten stickers in his feet about five times already.

People from Albuquerque are called Burqueños or Burqueñas, just so you know.

No rattlesnakes, tarantulas, or scorpions so far. It's early days.
 

Motel 6

 

We have been spending lots of money recently, and we cannot move into our new house until Thursday, so we decided to stay somewhere cheap for a few days. Motel 6 in Bernalillo fits the bill.

I have stayed in Motel 6 before, and I really don't mind. If I am travelling by myself, I am happy to stay at one, because they are cheap. You sleep, you take a shower, you leave.

Another thing, this is definitely not the worst motel ever. That was the Best Western in Bishop, California. Jackie and I managed to go to sleep that night to the sound of crickets chirping, crickets that sounded like they were in the room with us, but I assumed were just outside our door. In the middle of the night, I woke up and started hunting them down, and it turned out they were in fact in the room. I killed about eight of them and took them to the manager, who nonchalantly told me they went into the rooms when it was hot. No big deal.

I did not tell Jackie about the one I found in the bed until we were well down the road. So that motel was the worst.

The one we are in now might take second place to the Bishop Best Western. Where to begin? Well, it is on the northern edge of north Bernalillo, which is a suburb north of Albuquerque. North of here is nothing, so we are on the edge of the wilderness. Freeway on one side, train tracks on the other. Beyond the train tracks, miles of scrub, hills in the distance. No one even uses the road in front of the motel. Arlo and I have taken several walks along the road, and we have seen three trucks and one car pass the motel in three days. Anyone who comes this far stops at the Motel 6, because there is nothing else down this road. In fact, there is nothing else on this road in either direction, except the gas station and attached store next door, but that is shuttered and looks like it has been deteriorating for a long time.

OK, that's not so terrible, what else? There is no place in the bathroom to place any bathroom stuff. I balanced my toothbrush and toothpaste on the back of the sink - no room for anything else. On the back of the toilet is a roll of toilet paper and some drinking cups(!) They brought me a shower curtain after we checked in, and I hung it myself. The handle on the shower that controls the water temperature is missing, but there is a plastic piece that goes behind the handle that I was able to turn. They don't serve breakfast. There are no comfortable chairs, just two wooden ones that might remind you of high school. The key entry to the outside door nearest our room does not work. We don't have enough electrical outlets to charge both phones at once. They are remodeling while we stay here, and as a result, the water was turned off for several hours, then rust poured out when it restarted.

The bed is comfortable enough though, and we will be fine for the next three nights. We got the keys to our house today and set up Internet. We have signed our lease, paid our rent, contacted utilities, arranged for a house cleaning, POD delivery, and moving help. Tomorrow, we will visit the water company.

We are getting close, so close.

Downsizing

Over time, you accumulate stuff. Neither of us is a hoarder, and we are mostly unsentimental about throwing things away, but stuff accumulates anyway.

Moving is a chance to take an inventory. We had about 20 screwdrivers. Maybe eight hammers. More than a dozen clamps (thanks Dad.) Somewhere near ten measuring tapes. Three hacksaws. That's just the tools, just some of the tools.

We made about ten trips to the dump. We had a garage sale - very successful, got rid of a bunch of stuff, I can't even remember what off the top of my head. We threw away two La-Z-Boy chairs, gave another to Lucas. Jarrod took two bikes. Our outdoor furniture did not make the cut. We paid to have the piano hauled off. We threw out plates, bowls, Tupperware, glasses, coffee cups.

Honestly, we still have too much. However, we did try to lighten the load. Some guys came and picked up all of the things pictured above, plus the outdoor furniture and indoor furniture pictured below. We would have kept more, including that table in the foreground, but it did not all fit, and we had to make choices in the end.

We got rid of these two items. Kept the dog and that red cup though.

Wanted to keep these chairs, but we ran out of room.