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We have arrived in Philadelphia, safe and sound. Sadly, our furniture isn't here yet, and isn't supposed to come until Wednesday, so we've been camping out in our house with everything we could squeeze into our car, and subsisting on no Internet and dvds played on the computer. Imagine our joy today when we discovered we could have had dsl since Friday if only Verizon had sent us a disc with the software they require to be able to connect to the web. But no matter, we have internet now, and we feel complete again.
Really, this isn't just an internet addiction problem. We discovered very quickly that it's very hard to figure out a new city without ready web access. We have the phone book, but it only covers the city of Philadelphia itself, which means if you want to find say, Costco, which is located in the suburbs, you're out of luck. And you can't do things like find all restaurants within a five mile radius of your address that cost 20 dollars or less with the phone book.
As it turns out, Garrison Keillor's observations about driving with three cats are remarkably relevant to driving long distance with two cats and a toddler - lots of complaining on all fronts. One of the few saving graces of the trip was that due to the extremely late start we got the first day (left town at 6:30), we were able to drive for about four hours with K asleep, which left only two complaining creatures in the car. And since I was listening to the President's address at that point, it seemed quite appropriate. At this point, it's quite a relief that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
longstrider can't take any vacation for his first six months on the job. I think it will take about that long for me to be able to contemplate getting back into the car for a long trip again.
The house is just about as nice as I remembered, and if anything, more spacious. The architects made a few odd choices, and I would definitely have sacrificed some bedroom and dining room space to make the kitchen and bathroom two feet wider, but we're enjoying the prospect of a house that will make it look like we don't have very much stuff instead of far too much. The neighborhood has lots of kids and seems very pleasant. I need to investigate the park that's two miles away, and see if I can scout out some coffee shops that will give us a place to go when we need to get out of the house for a while. The library is in walking distance as well, so I'm hoping there are some good programs for young children. We've already thoroughly investigated the children's room there.
I'm a bit torn between wishing we could have gotten our stuff on Friday so we could spend the long weekend unpacking, and being rather grateful for the forced rest. We haven't had a lot to do the past couple days, so we decided to just rest up for when life starts to get more exciting. It's been nice, although it will also be nice to have more to cook with than one pot and one pan.
Really, this isn't just an internet addiction problem. We discovered very quickly that it's very hard to figure out a new city without ready web access. We have the phone book, but it only covers the city of Philadelphia itself, which means if you want to find say, Costco, which is located in the suburbs, you're out of luck. And you can't do things like find all restaurants within a five mile radius of your address that cost 20 dollars or less with the phone book.
As it turns out, Garrison Keillor's observations about driving with three cats are remarkably relevant to driving long distance with two cats and a toddler - lots of complaining on all fronts. One of the few saving graces of the trip was that due to the extremely late start we got the first day (left town at 6:30), we were able to drive for about four hours with K asleep, which left only two complaining creatures in the car. And since I was listening to the President's address at that point, it seemed quite appropriate. At this point, it's quite a relief that
longstrider can't take any vacation for his first six months on the job. I think it will take about that long for me to be able to contemplate getting back into the car for a long trip again.The house is just about as nice as I remembered, and if anything, more spacious. The architects made a few odd choices, and I would definitely have sacrificed some bedroom and dining room space to make the kitchen and bathroom two feet wider, but we're enjoying the prospect of a house that will make it look like we don't have very much stuff instead of far too much. The neighborhood has lots of kids and seems very pleasant. I need to investigate the park that's two miles away, and see if I can scout out some coffee shops that will give us a place to go when we need to get out of the house for a while. The library is in walking distance as well, so I'm hoping there are some good programs for young children. We've already thoroughly investigated the children's room there.
I'm a bit torn between wishing we could have gotten our stuff on Friday so we could spend the long weekend unpacking, and being rather grateful for the forced rest. We haven't had a lot to do the past couple days, so we decided to just rest up for when life starts to get more exciting. It's been nice, although it will also be nice to have more to cook with than one pot and one pan.