We're here - sort of

This is going to be a very brief update, since I am sitting in the center of the food court at the Fort Drum PX, using the pay-for-wireless network connection, with people talking and TVs blaring all around me. It's not exactly an environment that is condusive to doing a lot of blogging!

So, the good news is that we have arrived at our new home twenty miles north of Fort Drum safely and soundly, with the Jeep still intact and running smoothly and the beasties having shed enough fur to build another dog, but otherwise fine.

The house is a whole lot larger than I thought it was, and we will have no trouble finding space to do things such as laying out fabric for sewing, or putting up clothing racks to hang up most of our vintage uniforms. I am hoping to set up a two-run kennel in the downstairs room next to the garage for the pups to be contained safely instead of their crates. I think they'll like that very much.

The property is in the middle of nowhere, quite literally, a few miles north of the town of Gouverneur. Gouverneur is, of course, the town with the giant pack of lifesavers on the village green, and the main "town" near where we live. It's actually not half bad. There are a couple of small stores that carry essentials at very reasonable prices, such as Save-a-Lot grocery, Kinney's (which is the local version of Walgreen's), and various hardware and feed stores. The local hangouts are Jumbo's Diner, the American Legion, and the VFW. We have gone to all of them and gotten the necessary paperwork to join the latter two. I think they will become regular hangouts since they're really the only thing local.

The property is ... gorgeous.

The dogs are loving life - they get to sit on the porch when we sit outside to have our morning coffee. They get to tear around the two acre field behind the house that is "ours", part of the rental. And they get to run around the rest of the property as we walk out in nature ... the property consists of overgrown meadows, some of which will be hay for the horses, and wooded strips separating them. We hiked much of it yesterday and the dogs had a blast.

Just up the hill behind the house is a plateau that overlooks a meadow with a berm of topsoil on the opposite end, where the landlord has given us permission to go out and shoot. We took the shotgun out close to the berm yesterday so I could learn to use it - shotguns are not something I've fired before. The amount of recoil was actually quite surprising. Ouch. Trueman made me go through the different types of loads, smallest (small game loads) to largest (deer slugs) in order. I came out of it alright, but deer slugs definitely don't rank among my favorite things to shoot.

We are hoping to eventually set up a "range" out there, using the berm as the back stop, but we first need to measure the distances and all of that good stuff. It's a decent distance, probably about 100 meters, so we should be able to use that for dialing in scopes and have some fun out there. We may not be able to own fun toys like the AK-47 here, but we most certainly can take out the bolt-actions and have some fun. I see a .308 in my future. Maybe a Springfield '03.

I've enjoyed having horses so close at hand. I usually walk out to the pasture in the morning with peppermint treats in my pocket and call them over. Now that the dogs have seen the horses (and Abby has learned that horses will not! be chased ... because they will chase her back!) they leave them alone and will down-stay nearby while I say my hellos and get a few pats in. I'm hoping to take over some of Horsewoman's (Landlord's sister) chores and start riding before long. But right now, getting settled in is the priority.

Last Saturday, we went to the Air Show on base, which was part of their annual Mountainfest. It was a lot of fun. We'd been worried we wouldn't be able to go onto the airfield and see the show because we had Ronja in the car with us and we didn't know dogs were not allowed at the show until we actually got there. We explained to the MP at the gate that she was not a Service Dog but that she was a registered Therapy Dog and well trained, and they said there was no problem with us having her at the show. That was pretty cool. Ronja enjoyed all the attention, too.

We were able to meet some of the K-9 handlers and their dogs at the show because they were doing a working dog demo. Their demo includes much of the equipment we have when we do our display on the history of working dogs, and their actual bitework demo was very similar, too. It was fun to see and I took a ton of photos, of course! The dog doing the bitework was a three year old Malinois named Susie.

After their demo, I got to meet the kennelmaster and they let us show off some of Ronja's bitework as well. They gave us one of the hard Ray Allen sleeves (we have a softer one at home) and she had a hard time getting a bite at first because of her messed up jaw, but once she got the bite, Trueman could swing her around and everyone was reasonably impressed by her work. We exchanged phone numbers and email with the kennel master as well to keep in touch, since they may want us to bring the history of working dogs display to their next public event or demo.

All in all, things seem to be going well.

We don't yet have Internet at home because our options are somewhat limited - dialup or satellite. Satellite is pretty expensive to get started if you buy the equipment, and it's also somewhat limited in its scope and availability, so we've been holding off on it. We just put out a fair amount of money for a chest freezer and refrigerator, and are looking to get a new mattress since ours was damaged in the move, so spending $400 on a satellite system is kinda not of a priority. We will have dialup in about a week, though.

I will update again when I get a chance - or when we're back online at home.

The Glitch

Remember how I said a while back that, whenever things go nice and smooth, the Universe stops, looks at the situation, goes "Nah!" and throws in a little something extra to make sure things don't go too smoothly and we don't get too complacent? Yeah, it's been another one of those days.

After getting a very smooth start on Sunday, setting aside and packing the things we'll be taking with us in the U-Haul trailer, taking all pictures off the walls, closing nail holes with Spackle, replacing the air filter for the AC unit, painting all of the freshly-dried Spackle with matching paint, and getting some of the cleaning - window frames, window sills, door frames, etc. - done, we were all set for the movers to shop up on Monday, between the hours of 8am and 5pm.

Everything was going smoothly, except for the fact that no movers were to be seen or heard anywhere. By the time 1 o'clock rolled around, and we hadn't heard from them and hadn't seen as much as a moving truck logo pass by the house, I was starting to get a little worried. We ended up contacting the quality control phone number on the big stack of paperwork we had from Household Goods on base.

You know, Household Goods. Where we went on April 14th to schedule our household goods pickup, get an idea on how long it would take to have our items delivered to New York, and get an advance to pay for the U-Haul trailer to haul the items going up with us. That Household Goods office.

Turns out that, after spending an hour and a half in there, going over everything in minute detail, having explained to us whom to call if the movers are rude or there are any issues, how to file a claim if anything is lost or broken, and all that other good stuff, the idiots at that office didn't actually enter any of our information and the work order into the computer system. As a result, logically, the movers were never scheduled, because nobody ever scheduled them.

We went back again to the same office on June 8th, as part of Trueman's outprocessing, and checked with them again at that point. We showed them the paperwork and asked whether there was anything we needed to do, or whether everything was right on track with our move. Everything was fine and we didn't need to do anything, we were assured. Just be at the house on June 22nd, between 8am and 5pm.

Today, when we called them, it was a whole different story, of course. "Why didn't you tell us they never contacted you?" they demanded to know. Well, because we were told they wouldn't contact us and that we didn't need to contact anyone. We were told it was "our fault" that the movers hadn't been scheduled. Really. How exactly do they work that one out? Are we supposed to enter the information into this computerized system ourselves? The system we have no access to? The system that three women in an office on base are trained to use to schedule shipments? The system that is their job?

The woman on the other line actually got offended and rude to Trueman on the phone when he explained that we had done exactly as we'd been told, that we'd gotten our advance for the U-Haul trailer with the paperwork given by them, and that we needed to be out of this house by Wednesday morning because the power, phones, and other utilities were getting shut off and the landlord was going to have the carpets cleaned and a new tenant moving in.

He eventually said "excuse me, ma'am" enough times to interrupt her diatribe on how everything is our fault and got her to give him the phone number to their higher-up office, the one that actually schedules the moves after the information is entered into the magic computer system at the local household goods office on base. That office is somewhere in another state and run by the Air Force, and it's staffed by soldiers, not civilians.

There, Trueman explained the situation to one of the Sergeants working at the office, who spent the rest of the day on the phone to the various carriers that handle pickup and shipping of household goods, and got back to us a fair amount of time after his office up there actually closed, having stayed late to resolve the issue. He had just heard back, at the time, from a local moving company, who informed them that their crew was currently out on another job, but that they would come get our things tonight if they got done early, or, if that turned out to be impossible, tomorrow (with absolute certainty) and would have us packed and ready to leave no later than 1900 hours tomorrow.

So, the house is still a mess because there's piles and boxes and bags everywhere. But at least now we have movers scheduled to come, tomorrow, to get our things, so we will be able to load up our U-Haul trailer and head north ourselves. It will delay us some in getting all the cleaning done - at least we have a head start on that - and it's certainly highly aggravating, but that's where things stand now. As you can imagine, I am hoping for things to go well tomorrow, although it's a lot harder to be optimistic after today's fiasco than it was yesterday ...

New York, New York

Our moving date has been set for June 24th, which is the actual date we will be leaving the state of Virginia for the state of New York, one small U-Haul trailer, two dogs, two cats, and ourselves in tow. Hopefully, all fingers and toes crossed, our household goods will follow us to our new home not long thereafter and we'll get all settled in for the next three years.

I expect to be without Internet access for awhile. Down here, our access gets turned off on June 23rd, which is when we will turn in the equipment. Up there, it will get turned on ... eventually. Since we don't have the option of cable up there, Verizon High Speed Internet will probably be our one and only choice, which means we can set up our Internet as soon as they ship us the modem.

I will be able to get online on base, and I've been told there are a number of free wi-fi places in the area as well, so I'm assuming I won't be completely internet-less. That's something. Whether I can survive with Verizon's idea of "high speed" Internet versus my idea of high speed Internet is another question altogether. We've been spoiled, having cable for so long.

Anyway.

When Trueman traveled up to Fort Drum last week, he took the small camera and got a couple of nice pictures of the property, so you can all see a small glimpse of the things to come. Unfortunately, he neglected to get a photo of the actual house because "you've already seen what it looks like on the disk they mailed us", so I won't get to show you the actual house until we get up there and I can take one... (See what happens when you ask a man to get photos of the house so you can show them on your blog?!)

Main Street

Life Savers on the village green

Why is that there, you ask? Well, according to the town history, the giant roll of Life Savers was erected in honor of Edward John Noble.

E. J. Noble, who was born in the town of Gouverneur, purchased the Life Savers company in 1913, when it was failing miserably because the flavors of the candy could not be preserved in the cardboard packaging it was sold in. Candy that doesn't taste well tends not to sell well, either. E. J. Noble invented an "easy-to-open foil wrapper", which preserved flavor, thus saving the company.

Besides the monument erected in his honor, the town of Gouverneur also named the local hospital after him.

The view from (of? with?) the porch.

The view behind the house, aka "I am so not mowing that!"

The Landlord's horses, catty corner from the house.

Our new Landlord owns two horses, a buckskin gelding (the one in front) and a paint mare (the one in back). Since I'm using code names for everyone I am talking about in my blog, let's give the horsies some code names as well. The buckskin is called Ty and the paint Snickers, for the purposes of my blogging.

A Horse, of course

A friend of mine, who belongs to one of the World War II forums I belong to, recently sent me a link to a Russian reenactment site that has a very nice collection of German World War II photo albums that have been scanned picture by picture and are now available online.

Since I love looking at vintage photos, and since photo analysis is a huge part of putting together a good impression for reenactment (the three-letter-agencies ought to hire some of us reenactment types for imagery analyst positions!), I went to have a look.

Not only are there hundreds of photos, but there are close to a hundred photos of cavalry soldiers and their horses, doing everything from riding around the schooling ring, to playing horseback games, to doing some very, very impressive jumping. But the photo below just kind of stood out as weird. It's a horse. Inside a house. I'd love to know the story behind this one!

Peter Pan

Oh, did I mention I met Peter Pan this weekend?


Yup ... at the Blackbeard Pirate Festival in Hampton.

I also met Hary-Scary-German, whom I did not recognize at first because he was dressed as a historically accurate pirate, and not as a historically accurate Luftwaffe ground crew member. File that one under, "you might be a reenactor if ..." There are many people in reenactment I've never seen in their normal clothing or in clothing from a different time period. And when I do, I usually don't recognize them.

Hary-Scary-German was disappointed to find I'd gotten married to Trueman - married in general, really - since he's had an interest in me way back when.