Category: personal

if all goes as planned (which it rarely does) the terrell family will be completely packed by the time you read this entry (including our cable modem which is why i am setting this post up to go up automatically). we would not have been able to pack up and get everything ready if it had not been for the help of some wonderful people. you all went way past the extra mile and made the whole thing actually a little fun. so let me publicly say “thanks” to a few people. thank you … andre, william, beth, kirby, blaine, catherine, charlie, coleman, eric, julie, laura, lauren, and sam. you are the greatest!

andre, william, beth, and kirby are part of the reason we are going to miss our neighborhood so much. gettysburg drive is simply a wonderful neighborhood. i hope the new owners of 5928 soon realize that that best part about the house they just bought are the people who live around it (except possibly the vampire who lives next door – he’s okay, it’s just that you can never talk with him for more than 45 seconds).

i just finished reading the book that jessica lawrence and many of you made for me. apparently jessica got the crazy idea that i may have helped a few of you and decided that it would be nice to convince as many of you as possible to write letters to me and then publish them in a book. it is among the nicest gifts i have ever received. it will be cherished for all of my life. pam is presently bawling her eyes out beside me as she reads it. i may have teared up a few times but it was obviously because i had some dust in my eyes.

i just can’t believe i have pulled the wool over all of your eyes. because the words you all said are far too kind. i figure one of these days all of you are going to wake up and realize what a feeble attempt of a human being i am.

even though we know that we are supposed to go to wisconsin and we are very excited about going to stevens point, you still make it hard to leave baton rouge. all of you are what we will miss most about baton rouge. we like the cajun food, we enjoy all the l.s.u. spirit, we marveled at the green beauty of the state, and have eaten up the history of the region. yet none of that is what we will really miss. you are what we will miss the most.

the bad news for the day (a day in which we were packing all our earthly belongings into a uhaul truck) was that the people buying our house apparently have not tried to buy insurance until today (or maybe yesterday). the problem with this is that the insurance industry refuses to issue new policies whenever there is a storm in the gulf. this means that we will not be able to close on our house tomorrow (friday) as we were supposed to. the good news here is that the seems to be a slight window in between the time were erin is in the gulf region and before dean enters the gulf. if this holds up there is a very good chance that we will be able to close on our house in baton rouge on monday morning by proxy and then close on our house in wisconsin monday afternoon. it’s a clim hope but that is what we are praying for. otherwise, we have to unload our stuff into a self-storage place and then move it to the house once we are able to close on it later in the week.

if you have any strong weather connections (or insurance connections for that matter) with GOD and wouldn’t mind pulling a little extra prayer to convince the BIG MAN that it would be really nice if the terrells could close on monday morning, that would be very cool. we would be eternally thankful.

of course, no matter what happens GOD is still GOD and things will be manageable.

i hope all of my baton rouge friends are okay after the storm that hit the southern metro region. one of our neighbors had a third of one of their oak trees fall on their house. everyone was okay and the house doesn’t appear to be badly damaged so that’s good.

all it basically did to us was kill our electricity for an hour or so. the only real problem with this was that we had some friends coming over for supper. the power kicked off a little before the arrived and wasn’t supposed to turn back on for a couple of hours. we ended up grabbing all the prepared food and just cooking the rest over at their house. it was a little odd to invite people over and then once they arrived having to invite ourselves over to their house. still it was an enjoyable evening with two fun people.

btw, i hate the process of moving.

for those of you who are interested i thought i would let you know that we made an offer on a house in stevens point, wisconsin. you can view it here. now we have to wait and see if the owners except the offer, make a counter offer, or simply laugh their rear ends off. of course, we also have to sell our house.

sunday was the worst experience i have ever had flying (and i’ve had at least a few bad experiences flying). we were flying back from wisconsin to baton rouge and left milwaukee early sunday morning. we arrived in houston at 8:30 a.m. on our continental plane and waited for our 10:30 a.m. flight home to baton rouge. here’s what happened:

• 10:30 flight – our 10:30 flight was canceled due to storms over the gulf coast – this is understandable – we were put on stand by for a 12:10 p.m. flight and guaranteed spots on a 2:15 p.m. flight if the 12:10 p.m. stand by didn’t workout
• 12:10 p.m. flight – we are waiting in line for our stand by flight and miracle of miracles they call our names to get on the plane. we hope on the plane and grab our seats. after sitting down in our chairs for 10 minutes the flight attendant came over and told us the pilot had determined that the airplane was to heavy and we would have to exit the plane (apparently i need to lose a little weight). the good news is that the ticket agent says that our 2:15 p.m. tickets are set and we have actual spots on the airplane.
• 2:15 p.m. flight – we are in line to get onto the plane when i hear a ticket agent say “she has seat 4c also.” i tell him i also have seat 4c and that’s when we realize that they have triple booked pam and my seats. turns out that we don’t get to get on the plane. the good news is that we end up getting $300 ticket vouchers for continental’s mistake. we are rescheduled for a 7:30 p.m. flight.
• 7:30 p.m. flight – our flight is canceled due to weather that no one seems to be experiencing on the gulf coast but continental swears is happening. we are reschedules for a 10:52 p.m. flight. we decided to see about renting a car to drive back to baton rouge. we spend the next hour trying to arrange a one way rental car. after all the effort we are able to discover that it will costs us almost $300 to rent the car and we will only beat our 10:52 p.m. flight by about 40 minutes. we decide 40 minutes is not worth $300 to us. we go back to wait for our plane.
• 10:52 p.m. flight – the ticket agent announces that even though our flight attendant arrived at the airport since 8:55 p.m. she is now no where to be found. it takes them an hour to find a flight attendant and we can finally take off.
• 1:30 a.m. – we arrive in baton rouge only to discover that continental has lost our luggage.

we arrived 13 hours later than we were supposed to. i know others have faced much worse in an airport but this was the worst i have ever experienced.

i think the lesson that we all should learn from my experience is that continental sucks.

if anyone would like to buy i house we are excepting offers. 😉

it’s arnold’s birthday and i for one desire to wish him a happy one.