Liesl decided that it was time to get up very, very early this morning at three thirty!  THREE THIRTY.  Ugh.  So no sleep for us at all.  Maybe four hours at most.

Dominica got right up and started doing our last minute packing – the stuff that could not be done until this morning.  I did not get to go back to sleep but I did get to stay in bed and keep Liesl and Oreo from needing lots of attention until Dominica could get the packing done.  That ended up taking an entire hour so it was really important that Liesl got us up so early or else we would have have been able to beat rush hour traffic at all.  We had originally planned to get up at four thirty but ended up needing every spare minute that we had.

We got onto the road just before five in the morning.  We are fully loaded and ready for our trip north.  The wind today is really crazy.  It was quite hard to drive with the gusting.

The wind ended up being a real problem and through our car top carrier to the back of the roof rack before we were even out of Houston.  We had to pull over a couple of times to check it and readjust it.  We ended up having to drive quite a bit more slowly that we normally would because the wind kept lifting it up and moving it around on us.  After having it on the roof all of the way from New York to Texas now that we are making a short trip just around Texas we are having issues with it!

Once we were past the Houston traffic area and were heading north from the metro area we got a little faster on the roads and discovered that there was no way to keep going with the car top carrier.  We were physically unable to fasten it down enough to keep it from blowing off.  With the gusting side winds it just lifts up and repositions itself constantly and it loosens itself up and away it starts to go.

Dominica ran into a Kroger while it was still dark out and picked up some bailing twine.  That is our last possible plan for keeping the carrier on if things go badly.  We did one last normal repositioning job in the parking lot of the grocery store and then go on our way again.

We crept along but it was clear that the carrier could not stay on on its own.  Once the sun was up we looked for a safe place to pull over and then got out and discovered that it really was loosening and going to come off soon.   So we tightened it back up and tied it down tight with the bailing twine.  We really tied it down in every which direction hoping that there was really no way for it to pull the twine.  Twine does not stretch at all so it should keep it in place pretty well.

We got driving again and to our pleasant surprise the twine worked great and really held the car top carrier down well.  We were able to drive at full highway speeds without any lifting or anything.  What a relief.

It ended up taking us an hour or more longer to get up to Irving than it should have because of  the car top carrier but we eventually arrived at Tuscan Villas and got set up to move in to our new apartment there.  Getting into the apartment did not take very long.  They already had our paperwork and cheque and were all set for us to move in.  Maybe took twenty minutes at most.  This is our first time actually meeting anyone from the apartment building or company.

We parked the BMW out in front of the apartment building and we unloaded the car top carrier which was no small job considering that we have no step ladder or anything of the sort to use to get it unpacked before taking it off of the car.  So I had to pull the whole thing down myself.  Then I schlept all of the contents of the carrier, and the carrier itself, up to the apartment up a few flights of stairs while Dominica stayed down with the car and the “kids”.

We made it just in time for AT&T to call about our Internet access.  They were scheduled to have it hooked up for us today sometime between noon and six this evening so that was the schedule against which we were racing all day.  They ended up being ready at ten till noon while I was still carrying stuff up to the apartment but I managed to call them right back and we had our Internet access turned on, set up and working by around one thirty!  That went incredibly smoothly.

Now that we have an apartment and Internet access we are more or less doing okay.  All we have is an air mattress but that will get us by for now.  Liesl has her Pack n Play.

After the Internet access was hooked up we spent the afternoon getting things unloaded from the car and put away around the apartment.  We have very little so so far it is not hard.

We ran out and did some shopping this evening to stock up on things that we need around the apartment.  We went out to Target and picked up supplies there.  We also discovered Target’s own line of “wine cube” wines and box wines.  The packaging looks intriguing and the cost is right.  In Europe box wine is how it is done because wine lasts better that way so we decided to try out the Target wines for ourselves.

We spent a total of around $500 getting move in supplies tonight.  Ack.  Not the kind of money that I wanted to be spending on our first day in Irving but at least we have what we need to get through including some basic groceries.

We have discovered that we have a ton of great looking food options right in our shared parking lot and adjacent areas.  We wanted to get dinner tonight so we decided to go investigate.  The options right out in front include two sub shops, Thai, Indian, sushi, upscale Mexican and a French Provincial restaurant.  Not bad for walking distance.

Tomorrow I will be hoofing it into the office for the first time.  We can see the office from our balcony which is pretty cool.

Today we simply play the waiting game.  Not the best situation for getting a lot of sleep.  Although getting in at two in the morning doesn’t allow for a lot of sleep anyway.  It actually worked out well being my late night out in addition to being a night of getting poor sleep.  I was not likely to have gone to bed and gotten any good sleep anyway.  At least I made productive use of my awake time.

At two thirty this afternoon we finally got some additional information to help clarify the situation both in terms of what was definitely happening as well as what options there were and what was likely happening.  There is a ton of stuff up in the air but at this point we have a pretty likely scenario that is going to play out and we know what our role is going to be in that scenario if it all comes to fruition.

So, this is the likely scenario going forward.  Sometime no sooner than December and most likely in the first half of next year (2010) we will be relocating to Texas instead of New York.  The job options and future potential look to be far better in Texas than they do in New York and the work environment looks to be better there as well before we even take into account any tax and pay advantages or housing cost benefits.

Most likely we are going to be living in Austin, not Irving.  Our plan is to buy a house in Austin after we have rented just long enough to learn our way around and to figure out where in town in makes the most sense for us to be living.  We are not looking to buy in Austin as a short term plan like we did in Geneseo or in Peekskill but this is a long term, strategic plan where we intend to keep this house for a very long time.  This will be the location that we call “home” for the foreseeable future.  We have never bought with that intention previously so we are hopeful that this will pan out.  This in no way implies our intention to live and work solidly in Texas for forever but simply that we are finally in a position to have a “base of operations” from which to reach out and live the rest of our lives.  We need at least a certain amount of space and stuff in our lives to be unmoving instead of having everything that we own traveling with us from house to apartment to house, etc.

We do not know too much else at this point and none of this is official.  The office has not officially posted any job positions which means that there is nothing officially to which I can apply and there is nothing into which I can be accepted.  All of the other key people who need to be doing similar things have not yet committed to anything yet either.  So there is still a lot that can go wrong but mostly it appears that we have a pretty solid path and plan and chances are pretty good that it will pan out exactly as described.

We definitely feel much better now that we have some semblance of a plan and that we know, basically, what is going to happen.  The biggest problem is going to be selling our house here in Peekskill.  We are allowed to rent it as of mid-October and that is one option if we can find some people interested in renting a furnished house.  That would make our lives a whole lot easier.  Ideally we will want to sell it as early as possible but we know that the market is not good now and we probably want to stall on that as long as we can.  Ideally we probably do not want to go to Texas until as late as possible which, could be, late next year or possibly even 2011 at a stretch.  Although now that we know that we are moving we kind of feel like we would like to just move on and get the moving started.  There is something about knowing that you are in a long term location rather than a temporary place.  Now that we know this house is really short term we don’t want to keep putting physical and mental energy into it.  It’s just an apartment to us now.

Overall this should all work out well.  Selling the house is the one challenge.  Other than that everything really works out well.  We had decided a few weeks ago, without having even the remotest clue that the office might decide to relocate me, that we wanted to move to Austin to call that our home base.  Dominica’s parents had already decided that they, some time down the road, were going to move to Austin.  My father had already decided that he would likely be okay with coming down and spending some time in Texas during the worst cold and snow months.  Dominica’s sister is already nearby and we just moved her brother a few weeks ago.   Ramona is already considering Austin for nursing grad school which will likely take about four years and she is not planning to start for another year – so we could overlap in Austin by four years just during her school time and possibly more if she decides to stay in the area.  The Ralstons had already decided that they were going to “move in with us” in Texas to make that their official American home rather than Art’s mother’s house in New York.  Calling Texas home is a major advantage for them in several ways.  And then, it turns out, that Andy and Miranda have been talking about Austin for some time and are very seriously considering it as a place to which to move as the market there is so much better than almost anywhere else for Andy to work!  Talk about serendipity!  Everyone we know is in or moving to Austin – a city to which almost no one that I know has ever been including Dominica or, I think, her parents.  Of course it looks like most everyone from my team at work will move down to Texas as well so we will all have each other too.

So the bottom line is… it sure looks like we are moving to Texas and doing so quite soon.  I will have a more definite answer on that in about two weeks and the final answer is likely to come in about eight.  But until then we are operating under the assumption that we are moving to Texas.  And very likely, we think, doing so as part of the vanguard to go prepare the site for others as we know Texas more and are more mobile than most everyone else.  So we are guessing that as early as December or January we are very likely to be down there in some capacity.

I am really going to miss the constant presence of Manhattan being just outside the window when we move away from here. Even if we don’t get to spend all that much time actually in the city it is just so amazing having it sitting right there. I love all of the twinkling lights and the passing cars on the bridges leading in and out of the city. I have always liked cities at night. So many people yet so quiet and still. I need to get some pictures of Manhattan at night from our view here before we leave. It is rather unlikely that I will ever have a view quite like this again. This is very much a once in a lifetime kind of opportunity, I’m sure. Nevertheless, we have had it for a year and a half and it will be over two years when we actually leave and I have worked from home a lot during that time and my work area has always had this view so very few people anywhere have had the chance to take advantage of such a view as much as I have.

We turned down our lease renewal. The apartment building offered a deal to those who would renew in March. Personally I think that it was a foolish move asking us to renew so far in advance. We didn’t have enough time to really think about or make any plans to stay or go. So, since we couldn’t guarantee that we needed to stay we effectively guaranteed that we weren’t. Had they extended the offer to a point where we were really able to make a commitment then we might easily have decided that staying in Newark for one more year was going to make sense. But, now we know that the financials just aren’t going to make sense for us next year and this apartment isn’t really an option. The handy thing for us is that now we have seven months to make plans for moving knowing exactly when we are moving. I have never had so much warning on a move before. Our last day in Newark, or at least at Eleven80, is October 31st. Now we just need to figure out exactly to where we are moving come November.

Oreo was very, very happy to be home today. He was so exhausted. Dominica tells me that he played a lot more than usual at daycare yesterday because Lana, the little puppy that he loves to play with, was in playing with another dog and Oreo just couldn’t resist and he played all day. He was all worked up and being crazy last night when he got home. Today he is making up for it. Just sleeping and sleeping. Even on his walk when he saw other dogs he could do no more than take a quick sniff to acknowledge their existence and drag himself along until he was able to do his business and then get back home to go to bed.

At one point late this morning our silly dog was sitting on the loveseat in the living room and was itching the middle of his back with his head turned all the way around. He was in the sunlight and apparently quite comfortable as he just fell asleep right in the middle of itching himself. It was the craziest thing to see. I look over and there he is all passed out in what appeared to be the most uncomfortable position imaginable. He was so sleepy that I was able to take several pictures of him and walk about without him stirring at all.

Dominica came home and we watched the final two episodes of the 2006 season of Doctor Who.  These were some seriously good but sad episodes.  We are definitely looking forward to the next season as well as to checking out Torchwood the Doctor Who spinoff series.  (For those in the know, “Torchwood” used to be a code name for “Doctor Who” used at the study.  You will notice that the letters from Doctor Who can be used to form the word Torchwood.)

After dinner and the show it was time for bed.  We “popped in” some What I Like About You that we watched while we cleaned in the bedroom.  Dominica assembled her new shoe rack and got it put into the closet which cleared up a ton of space and now the closet doors can close.  It also freed up some plastic bins that I need to organize other stuff around the house that has been sitting around waiting for a box into which to go.

I stayed up for a while after Dominica went to bed and did some web site work and Handbrake conversions.  Nothing heavy just some light stuff that needed my attention and that I wanted to get out of the way.  By a quarter after eleven, Oreo was getting quite insistent that I come to bed.  He doesn’t like it when one of us goes to bed early and one stays up.  It makes him nervous or something.

Dad is finally doing a rebuild of his Windows XP workstation today.  It has been been rebuilt in many years – even possibly never although that seems to be a stretch.  I generally recommend complete rebuilds every six to eighteen months with once a year being a pretty happy medium.  I rebuild my Linux box every six months but that is because I want to use the very latest OpenSUSE release.  My Windows machine probably sees a fresh install every nine months or so.  Being in the habit of constantly rebuilding means that you are always keeping things cleaned and you are always prepared to start fresh at any moment.

This coming weekend is going to be busy with homework.  Dominica is almost caught up in her class but still has a little bit that she needs to do plus the steady stream of new work.  This is one of my busy homework weekends just in general.  I am not behind at all but that doesn’t make it any easier.