Congratulations, Mr. President!

Woo-hoo! I didn't even have to stay up past midnight to see our President re-elected to a second term! Good work, American voters! President and First Lady Obama, congratulations -- so glad you get to stay in the White House for another four years!

The House Search

When we were in St Louis, we drove by our old house on Liermann Ave. It was looking about as we left it, although with new basement windows, I think. The house wasn't perfect, but we enjoyed it.

Today, I started looking at houses in our new home. It was a bit of a reality check. I visited five houses and only one was a realistic option for us. I will be continuing to look.

Unfortunately, I'm also having to continue to look for a temporary living situation as well. We had hoped to extend in our current hotel for another few nights as it has a kitchen, but when we asked, we found that they already have booked it. So we're moving to bed number 15 tomorrow, but I booked it through Sunday because I'm having so much trouble finding a longer-term temporary house.

Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Bed #14

Ok. So I am tucked in bed and it is very comfy. It is also the 14th different bed I've slept in since October 18th. There's something slightly wrong with this picture. We were supposed to be in a medium-term rental (like 30 days) last Tuesday.

However. I am grateful that I have a bed to sleep in, with electricity, heat, and running water. We passed through so many communities without power on our way from my parents' house back to the Delaware Water Gap. A week after the worst of the storm and there are still huge trees being held up by nothing but the power lines. There are major intersections that still don't have power for the traffic lights. It is unbelievable.

More St Louis

We went to the St Louis Zoo while we were hanging out in the old 'hood. I left to drop bags at our hosts' house and Michael and Darcy continued on to the Insectarium and other joys. I missed going to see the penguins, which made me sad, but they had a great time. Darcy loved identifying the butterflies and getting up close and personal with them.

In case you are reading this and have never been to St Louis, let me share one of my favorite things about the city: many things are (or at least were) free. I once stood behind a family of four paying for their afternoon at the Museum of Natural History in New York and their bill was $84!! There are an awful lot of families in New York who could virtually never afford to take their kids to the museum at that price.

But when we lived in St Louis (and I believe at least some of this is still true), the Art Museum, the History Museum, the children's Science Museum, and the Zoo were all free. When the most-amazing Van Gogh exhibit came to the art museum, you had to pay to see that. Unless you went on the free day each week, which I did. Twice. The Missouri Botanic Garden wasn't free, but for St Louis residents, it was only three bucks.

When I first lived in St Louis, the zoo, the art museum, and the history museum were all within (long) walking distance of my apartment. On nice days, when I had to get away from my books for a short time, I'd sometimes walk over to one of these fine institutions and wander around for 15-20 minutes and walk home. It was awesome. If I'd had to pay to get in, I'd never have done that, but it gave me a great destination for a break without feeling like I had to get my money's worth and stay the whole afternoon.

We did pay when we went to the zoo on this visit because there are extras that aren't free: the zoo train, the carousel, the petting zoo, etc. For ten dollars each, we got a pass into all those extras for the day. 

In other words: Go St Louis!!







(I could also get a ticket to a Cardinals game for under 10 bucks. I'm guessing that's not possible in the new stadium.)

Ok. Guilt Works.

So I had said that I was doing daily blogging in October and NOT in November, but now two of my fellow bloggers (see my blog roll on the right side of the screen) appear to have taken the leap for NaBloPoMo. And I feel that it's partly my fault. I obviously did not blog yesterday (and I missed a couple/few days in October, too), but I'll try to keep blogging daily through November. 

It is after 11, I just helped paint a ceiling while my laundry dried (isn't that what you do when you're doing laundry at 10 o'clock on a Friday?), and I'm feeling very, very sleepy. So here are a few pictures to get you through until tomorrow:

(Oh. And for those keeping track, we are now at my parents' house for the weekend, we do not have temporary housing for our return to Pike County on Sunday, and we have not looked at a single house for our permanent residence either. It looks like the Dingmans Ferry Post Office pegged us right: We are transients!)

On our drive east from St Louis, we stopped to see our friend Jim and Karla and their boys, L and BabyL. We were terrible about getting a picture of the whole family and photos are loading very, very slowly, so these are my offerings for tonight. WashU folks will recognize Jim showing Darcy how to shoot a bow and arrow, with BabyL's legs just visible on the right of the photo. BabyL very nicely fell asleep in my arms while we were outside. In the bottom photo, L was throwing leaves at Michael while Darcy was playing with Paddington. Yes, Paddington and Nutmeg, dogs formerly of St Louis, are alive and well in Indiana. 

It was too short a visit, but much better than no visit at all. We had never met either of their boys and now we have! Hopefully, there will not be time for two more children to be born before we see them again!

Sandy's Results, According To The Glores

Whew. Sandy has officially welcomed us to Pennsylvania, or perhaps exactly the opposite. We have been hunkered down in a very wet Pittsburgh while Sandy tried her best to destroy the lower part of Manhattan island. We had a great day, with 4.5 hours of fun at the Children's Museum (awesome art options!) and dinner with my cousins. The rain was light, the winds mostly non-existent.

But then we started trying to figure out what we do next. We haven't been able to get in touch with anyone at the new park, but know that the park itself is closed at least until Thursday. The vacation rental house we were planning to stay in for the next ten days doesn't have power and doesn't expect to have to have power restored for 7-10 days. Ooops. There are 19 road closures in our new county, including the main road in sections. Not so good either.

Our decision? We're going to move closer to our new home, but not quite there. Officials are asking people to stay off the roads except for emergency travel, for one thing. And for another, we're assuming that no hotel will take new guests if they don't have power and that any hotel in the immediate area that does have power is probably full of storm refugees.

So we're going as far as Scranton tomorrow. They have power, there are only minor road closures, and we found a hotel with a lot of vacancies. Also with a true one bedroom suite with a door between the bedroom and the rest of the suite just in case we end up staying there for several days while power is restored to everything closer to where we'll be living.

Ah, Sandy, you really know how to make people feel welcome in their new home! We could have done without this particular welcome mat.

Life Is Exhausting

I had this misconception that driving across the country instead of flying would minimize our experience of jet lag. But our driving schedule (and socializing schedule, to be honest) has meant that we haven't been able to take advantage of the gradual time change and keep Darcy's bedtime at a normal hour. And so, having crossed into Eastern Daylight Time earlier today, it was a struggle to get her to sleep by 10:15. Hopefully, we can start to fix this problem in Pittsburgh. It now looks like we may be there three nights, as all park employees are being told to ride out the storm at home rather than at work. We'll get updates about power outages, downed trees, and flooding and make that decision on Tuesday morning, I think.

And that's my extremely exciting blog post for the day. We had a great time in St Louis. Saw many, but not all of the folks we'd hoped to catch up with and some, but not all of the places we wanted to show Darcy. Pictures tomorrow unless somehow Pittsburgh is without power!