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.

Audacity

Last weekend most likely marked my last chance to get over to HorseLady's farm to do some riding prior to our move to upstate New York. Since I only have one set of photos of me riding, along with a brief video, I asked Trueman to bring along the camera when he came to pick me up, to get a couple of photos.

Little did I know that he would get sucked into watching a Duran Duran concert on TV and wouldn't show up until the sun was starting to go down, resulting in some blurry action shots and not-so-flattering photos of me riding with very bad posture, partially to blame on the fact that I'd been riding for four hours and then some. Eh.

It was fun, though.

I got to the farm just after two and found HorseLady with some of her new riding students. She had recently put an ad in the local base newspaper to find people to come out and learn to ride, in return for doing some barn work. The ad had found response primarily with mothers with younger children, and when I arrived, one mother and her children were leaving, and another mother and her three children (aged four through twelve) had arrived and were learning to groom and tack ponies.

Conveniently for me, Audacity was already tacked up, having been ridden by the mother in the group before me, so I kindly offered to clear the space where she was cross-tied and take her outside, as they needed the room to cross-tie Hatter to tack him up for the littlest girl.

HorseLady warned me that the person who'd ridden Audacity before me had "let her get away" with a lot of bad behavior, such as stopping by or running back to the barn gate, and that I might expect some fussing.

Audacity was on her worst behavior. She kicked out when I asked her to canter, tried repeatedly to get back to the barn, and just all around was acting like a pain in the butt. As a result, we spent a fair amount of time trotting around the ring and practicing transitions trot to canter and back as well as a nice, slow, collected canter.

About an hour into this, Brittney came to the farm and HorseLady sent her out on Easter so we could ride together. That was a lot of fun. We did some walk-trot-canter and some minor jumping. Then the older girl of the family came outside on Melissa and Brittney and I were tasked to watch over her and give her some tips, since it was only her second time on a horse. She did really well. And Audacity stopped being so fussy.

Brittney and I put a line of parking cones into the riding ring so we could do slalom runs, which was a lot of fun for everyone, including the horses!

A little while after that, HorseLady and the rest of the family came out and we rode as a group - first along the fence, so the little ones would not have any trouble with their ponies going back to the barn, and then in the larger grassy area. Brittney and I helped keep an eye on everyone.

After another hour or so of that, which was mostly walking around the ring, HorseLady and the younger kids went inside, and Brittney, myself, the older daughter, and the mom stayed outside. The mom had trouble getting Guia to cooperate with her, so I asked her whether she wanted to trade with me for a little while since she said she'd ridden Audacity previously. She didn't have much more luck getting Audacity to trot than Guia, but I think she likes her better anyway.

A while after that, we all went inside, untacked the ponies and put them away. Brittney, myself, and the older daughter oiled some of the saddles while HorseLady went to ground-drive Hatter, who is doing really well with that. Then the family left and Trueman finally showed up, so I tacked Audacity back up and went back outside for a few photos.

Morale of the story ... if you've been riding for four hours, you don't take good pictures.

And you're gonna be sore the next day. VERY sore.

Gouverneur

Tomorrow, we will be exactly two weeks - fourteen days! - away from our final move-out date here in Virginia, and we will be heading north to New York in the Jeep, U-Haul trailer attached, with two bored dogs and two loudly meowing cats in the back of the Jeep.

Trueman finished out-processing Fort Eustis this morning, and is currently either already at Fort Drum, or still in transit to Fort Drum. He last called me just after crossing the state line between Pennsylvania and New York, which was around seven, so he should be just about ready to get to Fort Drum as I write this. He'd called to tell me that he ate at a little Dutch diner that had been featured in a travel show we watched. I hope he took some photos.

Tomorrow, Trueman is supposed to call the nice fellow who has the property we've put a deposit on, so he can physically tour the property, sign the lease, and get the key. I'm excited to see photos of the property - well, not that I haven't, the future landlord actually sent us a DVD with images of all of the rooms, outside views, the stables on the property, etc. but it'll be the first time that either of us sees the place in person. I'm living vicariously through Trueman ...

I hope that everything goes without a hitch so that I can be excited about the place we are definitely, absolutely, 100% moving to. Both Trueman and I really like what we've seen of the place and where it's located, and the future landlord has been very nice on the phone and in email conversations. It's pretty much a sure thing, especially since we put a deposit down (yes, with a receipt and all that good stuff), but I'll only really believe it when we have the lease in hand.

Why do we really, really want this place? Because this is it ...


For some reason, Mapquest shows the wrong location with its little star, but then again, Mapquest has been showing the Sheriff deputy's house at the corner when putting in our current address, so I probably should not be surprised. The actual house is the one the arrow points to, and it is a three year old "modern log home", three bedrooms, two car garage. It's a split-level home with the garage and a family room "downstairs" and the rest upstairs. It comes with two acres that will be "ours", and stands on a total of 74 acres of mostly wooded side-of-the-mountain that we will be able to use for hiking, walking the dogs, and (most likely) hunting. The future landlord already pointed out that "the ticks don't get too bad unless you clean deer close to the house!"

The house is located just outside the town of Gouverneur, NY (which I've not been able to spell correctly at first try yet!), about forty minutes from Fort Drum. I realize that's a pretty long commute, but we've been assured by pretty much everyone we know in upstate New York that the main roads are cleared pretty quickly and that living out there will more than make up for having a long commute. I hope they are right.

I've found that Governeur is referred to both a town and a village, which I've found a little confusing. I am gathering that the "village of Gouverneur" is the historic main street area of the town of Gouverneur, but might be mistaken.

Poking around the Internet, I found the following:

Gouverneur is located in St. Lawrence county..
St. Lawrence county is 56% Republican and 43% Democrat.
93% of people living in Gouverneur are white.
Almost 70% of Gouverneur citizens are Catholic.
50 residents of Gouverneur are foreign born.
Only 10% of people in Gouverneur have a Bachelor's Degree or higher.
More than half the people of Gouverneur are currently married.

And anyway, who doesn't love a town with a giant pack of Lifesavers on the village green!


Trueman actually just called, having arrived safe and sound at Fort Drum and checked into the guest lodging (hotel) on base. He said that Fort Drum reminds him of Fort Irwin in its sheer size, and that everything appears to be about 30 cents more expensive than in Virginia, even on base where there's no tax.

Things he's found that he doesn't like so far has been the lack of little glowy things marking the lanes on roads, like we have down here in Virginia where snow plows don't scrape them off, and the fact that most of Pennsylvania and most of New York he's driven through seem to use dead deer by the roadside instead of mile markers.

Response

A man drives down a busy road to a public building he knows of. The building is occupied by people that he considers to be "worth killing" because his religious beliefs tell him that these people are against everything he stands for, and they are dangerous to his faith. As he pulls up to the building on the busy road, two people stand in front of it, being obviously affiliated by the group inside due to the way they are dressed. The man pulls out his gun, killing one and wounding the other, then speeds away.

If this were to happen on Main Street America, would there be outrage?

The answer is, maybe there would be, if the person shot and killed were someone the public is interested in reading about.

Take the late Dr. George Tiller, an abortion doctor shot and killed by a religious fanatic outside of his church. Dr. Tiller is someone people are interested in reading about. He's touched the lives of many (no pun intended), and even most who didn't know him knew what he stood for, believed in, and did, and they're outraged that he was murdered because of it. They are holding candlelight vigils and speaking out.

And the answer is also, maybe not, if the person shot and killed is someone like Army Private William A. Long, a hometown recruiting assistant, who was shot and killed by a religious fanatic outside the Army Navy Career Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, for no reason other than he was a soldier. There are no candlelight vigils posted to YouTube for PVT Long. No people speaking out. Not even a picture of him is found along with any of the news articles.