It's never too late to develop an addiction

I believe this is the longest stretch that I've gone without a blog entry.

The title? Referencing caffeine. Up until a year or so ago, Julie and I probably consumed 8 cups of coffee and a case of caffeinated soft drinks a year. Combined. Currently, I'm at a cup of coffee a day during the week, and Julie is at 2 or 3 (we're still not regular soft drink consumers, thankfully). Yesterday, Julie actually had two cups!

Wholly excusable, though.

Yesterday was the day the movers arrived. Honestly, Julie started preparing for the move back in February. Plotting her effort over time for the last six months would look like a hockey stick -- steadily increasing, and then ramping up massively in the last couple of weeks. Over the last four days, she's cycled continuously between "We're in good shape!" and "We're screwed!"

In the end, everything was wrapped up last night. The casualties:

• Our hot tub -- I'd been in favor of leaving it with the house in the first place, as it's four years old, and I wasn't optimistic that it would survive the move without hastening its ultimate demise; Julie didn't think we'd be comfortable shelling out $3-4K right after buying a new house to buy a new hot tub; so, of course, the plan was to move it; I got it all disconnected, but the movers discovered that the staples holding the floor on were rusted off and there was some rotting wood there, so, while the hot tub may last quite a while in its current location, it couldn't be moved without the pump ripping away from the rest of the tub; it's not coming with us
• My mom's sanity -- the kids headed to Dripping Springs on Monday evening and pretty much lived there for the rest of the week; Julie or I headed out here and there to help get them down to bed and such; my dad wound up spending a lot of time at our house with Julie doing move-related stuff; so, my mother was, effectively, a single mother of three for long periods of time; she's estimating it will take six weeks to recover from the experience

A near-casualty was all of the contents of a 5'x5' storage unit that was one of the first things we filled when prepping the house to go on the market. We had trouble locating the key and, ultimately, when we did find the key...it was the wrong one. Julie discovered this 15 minutes after the storage facility's office closed for the night, and she had a trailer and a moving crew with everything from our house waiting on her. Ultimately, the right key turned up, so that part of the day is relegated to near-miss status!

Julie heads to Dallas this morning with the kids for the first leg of their trip. She'll stay for the weekend before continuing on to St. Louis. I'll be here for another couple of weeks before heading up with the dogs.

And now, I'm off to get a cup of coffee.