We knocked off #1 USC tonight 27-21 in our house! True freshman Jaquizz Rogers ran for 186 yards and 2 TDs against the Trojan defense. I knew we should have blown off our chores and driven to Corvallis for the game. This goes a long way to erasing that ugly mess against Penn State earlier in the month.

It’s a good night to be a Beaver!!!!

My first blog post after selling our house in San Diego only took me about five weeks to write.  Are any of you readers still out there?

To recap our moving adventure to date, here’s what you’ve missed (you know, this is kind of like rejoining a television showing after the summer break–you get the “previously on…” intro here).  We closed escrow on our house on August 12th.  While it took 13 months to find a buyer, we were REALLY happy to sell our home to a young couple who really loved it and couldn’t wait to move in.  Between my dad, DH and Kato, they managed to move all of our stuff to Oregon while I had the luxury of driving to Phoenix for my mom’s wedding.  But, paybacks are a bitch, as they say.  They had unloaded everything and I got to sort through all of it when I caught up to them on the Oregon end the following week.  Yikes!  We haven’t bought a new home yet, as we’re taking our time to look around for the right place.  In the meantime, we’re living in a vacant double-wide mobile home on my parent’s property.  The last couple of weeks were spent paring down our belongings to fit into a space that is half the size of our previous house.  Everything else is going into storage either in the barn or in a storage unit in town (yes, in town–we’re now that remote).  Even Dieter has his own storage unit, as he isn’t exactly built for country living and three miles of gravel roads.

The other fun part we’ve been adjusting to is being on the hairy edge of technology availability.  Back in San Diego, we had broadband for internet, cable TV and great cell signal.  Where we’re located now…well, we do get cell signal.  The best spot is on the front porch at four bars.  The minute you walk inside the house–gone.  So, we now have a cell phone signal booster unit on order to help out inside the mobile.  The local cable provider does not come all of the way up the road (not enough residents to make it financially feasible), so we knew we were going to have to go the satellite route for television.  DirecTV was the obvious selection so that we could sign up for NFL Sunday Ticket and avoid Chargers withdrawal.  But what to do about internet?  My parents just switched from dial up to satellite access last year, so that was an option.  My vote was to be more mobile, so we picked up a card from AT&T for the laptop that anyone could use.  Yes, you know the commercial–they have a guy standing in remote places and he keeps finding the internet, right?  That silly series of tubes–you can’t hide from AT&T!  Well, I can tell you that they didn’t film that commerical here!  The card went back to the store the next day and we signed up for internet with Wild Blue.  And as of September 5th we were connected to the outside world again…

The dishes and DH

I never thought living without television and internet during two political conventions and hurricane season would be so trying!  And that’s DH in the background doing his best “Wilson” imitation while putting up trim around the new windows that he and my dad put in a couple of weeks ago.

All in all, it’s been a fun adjustment and we’re glad we’ve finally made it up here.  I’m planning on keeping up to date on the silly little stories of getting adjusted to a new home in a new state.  Granted, I did grow up in this town, but I haven’t lived here in 25 years, so I may as well have been brand new here.

Just to give you an idea of how beautiful it is here, I’m closing with a photo I shot from my parent’s front yard the day after I got into town.  I’ll post more once the air clears around here–we’re still experiencing alot of smoke blowing into the Rogue Valley from forest fires to the northeast of us.

Rainbow to the west

Just thought I’d try to sneak a post in while the house is quiet to let everyone know that we’re nearly done with escrow.  The house closes on Tuesday (12th), and we need to be out by the 15th.  DH and Kato are doing a run to Oregon today to drop off an extra car, and bring back my dad to help drive and a trailer for DH’s Harley.  So, I get to pack the house over today and tomorrow to be ready for the Budget truck we pick up on Tuesday.  The transition out of our home is looking really obvious right now.  All of the walls are clear of the framed stuff, there are boxes in every room of the house, and the garage is a mess.

I did my own run last weekend to Oregon, as I had to drive Dieter up so I could get him into storage.  We’ll all be crashing at my parent’s place while we try to find a place to buy around the Southern Oregon area.  I have to say it’s strange to be going home—when I was 18, I couldn’t wait to leave and now I’m really looking forward to going back!

I’ll try to sneak one last post in this week before we lose our wonderful broadband internet connection.  Since my parents live outside of even cable’s reach, we haven’t yet decided how we’re going to get online while we’re there.  In the meantime, I upgraded my phone this week to a BlackBerry Curve so I can at least get my e-mails.

Well, off to get the house packed up!

When we listed our home for sale in Southern California on May 21, 2007, we were optimistic we could sell in a couple of month’s time.  We confidently packed a 12′ trailer with our stored belongings and moved Halloween and Christmas decorations to Oregon for storage with family.  The house was staged and ready to move.  Then the subprime mortgage mess hit.

As the months ticked by (as well as those holidays that we no longer had decorations for), we began to wonder if it would ever happen for us.  The number of foreclosures in our immediate neighborhood alone were staggering.  It was becoming harder and harder to maintain the asking price we had targeted as the comps were sliding faster than we could have imagined.  We found ourselves agonizing over each price drop, trying to find that happy place between staying competitive but still managing to get the best deal possible for our home.  After all, we’d been planning this move to Oregon for a couple of years.  We were one of the fortunate few who bought our home 10 years ago at the start of the real estate market boom.  We were in a solid mortgage with a fixed APR.  We truly didn’t need to sell, but wanted to sell.  We did go through the talks about taking it off the market and waiting, but as the economy worstened and the cost of living down here in beautiful SoCal rose, we decided it was just best to stick it out.  Besides, we just didn’t see any hope of a significant recovery to make it worth continuing to pay $4.55/gallon for regular unleaded.

Well, after one year, one month and 18 days of being listed, we finally accepted an offer for our home last night.  Would we have imagined selling for the price we did a year ago?  Absolutely not.  Is it a price we can live with today?  Absolutely yes.  It literally feels like a moral victory to have landed the deal we signed.  Granted, we still have to get through the inspection and appraisal, but we’re feeling much more optimistic about life today.  Now I get to trade my house cleaning for packing.

And how am I feeling today?  I think Kool & the Gang are saying it best…

Oh, man. I meant to do this post last week, but it’s been a bit crazy here.

Some of you may remember that I wanted to do the Lady Eleanor stole (from Scarf Style) last year, but Dieter needed repair work and the yarn jar money was spent on that pressing need.  Then Little Knits ran a great sale on Noro Silk Garden about a month later that I couldn’t pass up.  Problem solved!

Lady Eleanor Stole

Lady Eleanor Stole

Lady Eleanor Stole – flat view

 

Pattern: Lady Eleanor Stole, by Kathleen Power Johnson

Source: Scarf Style, Pam Allen

Yarn: Noro Silk Garden (45% silk, 45% mohair, 10% lambswool) in color 244, total used about 9.5 skeins

Needles used: Addi Turbo circular, US 10.5

Finished size: Approximately 24″ wide by 74″ long

Project start date: March 24, 2008

Project end date: May 21, 2008

Notes: After a lot of surfing of other knitter’s versions of the Lady E on Ravelry, I’d initially set off knitting this project on a US 9 needle.  The US 10.5 seemed to leave a very loose feel to the fabric and many others had switched over to using an 8 or 9.  Why not?  After knitting approximately eight balls, I measured the stole on the floor and decided that it would come out too small (even blocking wouldn’t have gained back the size I wanted).  Also, the fabric felt too stiff to drape the way I envisioned.  Back to the drawing board—I frogged it all and went back to the 10.5 needle.

After all of this entrelac practice, you’d think I could knit it in my sleep!  There are a number of people that felt that learning to knit backward really helped to speed up this process, but I found that I didn’t like it as much.  Even doing it the old-fashioned way, I mananged to re-knit the stole between April 16th and May 11th.

One other change I saw a lot of on Ravelry with this pattern is that people chose to change the fringe to tassles, or just skipped the fringe entirely.  While I didn’t relish the idea of doing the fringe, I felt it was necessary to stick to the pattern on this one, as the diamond shapes in the fringe reflect the entrelac pattern of the stole.  I laid out the stole on the office floor and spent about four hours total tying all of those knots and measuring them to ensure that my rows were even.

All in all, I’m really happy with the stole and now I’m looking forward to using it when the weather turns colder.