Friday, August 18, 2006

We Are Home - God Has Blessed!

I thought you would be interested in how things went and how we came to be home tonight (August 18), when we were not planning on even leaving TN until Sunday morning.
It turns out that everything fell into place for Deb! Granted, we put in some very long days of driving and running errands to get her settled. That included 3 trips to the Chattanooga WalMart within 24 hours for way more money that Jean wanted to credit.

We ran into great difficulty trying to update her cell phone contract and get her a new phone and the local sales office as well as the internet site and the telephone support for the internet site basically gave up on us and told us we couldn't do what we were trying to do. We were to go home and do it from home and then mail her the actived new phone (she would then be without a phone for about a week, wouldn't she?) or unactivated (now anyone could take that and activate to their own account couldn't they?) without offering any options to help us.

We gave up and went on to the next task somewhat discouraged. In the process of fruitless searching for the next item (Staples & Circuit City - just a few stores apart in a HUGE mall), we found a Verizon Wireless retail sales person who, when I offered to simply buy the phone for Deb, said, "No, that's a lot of money. Let me check some things for you." He took the phone #, checked her account and said, "Yes, she qualifies for a free cell phone and I think I can find a code to let me do an 'out of area' upgrade."

He worked on it for 45 minutes and got on the phone to someone higher up in the corporation to get it activated. But he did it! I called and gave him a very positive recommendation as we were ready to leave for another company, though I see that T-Mobile isn't the one to solve all the problems either. So Deb got a new contract and a new phone and is very pleased.

Many other similar events occurred: her TB skin test (done and read), her JCAHO online training (done in the last 2 days after she got settled), finding a great furnished apartment just off campus (very bikable in good weather) with LOTS of comfy seats for her friends to come for Bible-study groups, all the registration "stuff" (we were ALWAYS the next one to be seen - there were NO lines as we were nearly a week early), fixing things (closet door, fluorescent light over sink, outlet cover, frosted globes for ceiling fan to replace the HOT PINK ones in the bedroom) all went so smoothly and fast that we completely finished everything we figured would take 4 days in just 2 days!

So we left yesterday morning at ~8 AM and drove. And drove. And drove. When we got where we usually stop (~750 miles) it was just after 8 PM and I wasn't one lick tired. We decided to get around New York City and stop north of Hartford, CT. Just into CT we stopped at the rest area and met a Maine couple with their 4 children on their way home from Nebraska (wedding, reunion, etc.). They were stopping for the night - in PORTLAND!!! They are from Machaias and couldn't find a vacant, non-smoking room between south CT and Portland, ME. We drove on. And on. And on. Between Hartford, CT and Sturbridge, MA things got a bit dicey so we stopped there and napped for 1 1/2 hours before driving back home getting in at about 5:15 AM. We have unloaded the car, done washing, done finances, napped (of course) and gotten produce from the CSA.

We are thinking that because we got so much done today, we will both go to the walk-on kayak training at LL Bean early AM on Sunday! We did nothing to celebrate our 36th anniversary while we were helping Deb get set up (8/16/1970) so this would be a little something that we thought we might do and at $12 each, it won't break the bank. With Deb in grad school, we don't want to be profligate. We were listening to Michelle Singleterry read on personal finance on the way home.

That's the conclusion of our whirlwind trip to TN this week! (Except to add that our cat was VERY glad to see us and went outside and came back in 3 -4 times in the first hour we were home!)

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