Our Journey to Illinois

And what a journey it was.
Last Tuesday was Casey's birthday, and the date of his dissertation defense. He passed with flying colors; he's officially Dr. Casey Hetrick! :) I'm so proud! Once that was over, the Hetrick family flew back to Topeka, and we went out with the Williams' group for drinks.
Early Wednesday morning, we woke up to wait for a company to come prepare our washer and dryer for packing. I think he showed up around 7:30 am. The movers were supposed to come around 8, but they didn't show up until around 1:00 pm. They packed all of our stuff up by about 6:45 pm. I didn't get to go out for drinks with the Amiridis group that night, but Jenny was kind enough to come hang out at our place while the movers were packing so I wasn't home alone with 3 guys I didn't know. It was nice to get to hang out with her and chat for a bit. :) I was so exhausted by the time the movers left, I vegged out the rest of the night.
Thursday, the movers came and started loading everything into the truck around 8:00 am. Another company also came to get my car. It was strange seeing it get towed away, not knowing when I'll see it again. They said they will deliver it anywhere from 2-11 days. Interesting time line, don't you think? :) The movers were finished loading the truck around noon (I think) and we headed to the Engineering building to say goodbyes. We went out Thursday evening to The Flying Saucer so we could say goodbye to friends. Charley Brown came with us, which proved to be pretty interesting... he got a lot of attention, and settled down a bit after the first hour. I think he enjoyed the girls in short skirts as much at the other boys seemed to. ;)
I think things started getting a bit crazy on Thursday evening. Gas prices jumped up to almost $4/gallon (and over that in some areas) thanks to Hurricane Ike. We also couldn't find a hotel that was dog-friendly, so we ended up spending the night at Jenny's place. It was super nice of her to let us crash there. If it weren't for the 3 dogs running around and Charley waking up every 2-3 hours during the night, I think we would have gotten a decent night's sleep. Jenny's roommate woke up super early to get ready for work, and her dog jumped on Casey and woke him up. Casey and I were both pretty grumpy that morning because we had to get everything ready to get on the road, and nothing seemed to go right. We had a few errands to run that morning, but they all ended up taking longer than expected. We got on the road (finally) around 1:00 pm. As we were driving down the highway, the tarp covering our luggage started to fly around, so we had to pull into a parking lot on one of the exits to fix it. We start driving again, and everything seems fine, until we stop for gas in Asheville. That's when we realized that Casey's wallet was missing. We figured out that he must have dropped it in the parking lot when we stopped to fix the tarp. We got a hold of Kevin, who agreed to go to the parking lot and look for the wallet, but without any luck. We decided to call and cancel credit cards, etc., while we were on the road. It also meant that Casey was driving without a license; his truck is difficult for me to drive for various reasons (I pretty much need a booster seat and 3-inch heels), so we were kind of stuck breaking the law. Everything was going okay until we were about an hour outside of Chicago- that's when it started raining ridiculously hard. It continued to rain very hard all the way to the hotel. It rained so hard, we weren't able to get our luggage out of the truck. We arrived here around 3:30 am on Saturday, and woke up about 3 hours later to try and get the luggage off the truck so we could shower and get fresh clothes. We lucked out because we'd spent extra time in Columbia wrapping boxes in the industrial strength leaf bags just in case they got wet... luckily only one bag had any water issues, and they were minor. That morning we slept in a bit, and then went to the post office to set up our PO box. Apparently the guy working there didn't know what was going on, so he told us to come back on Monday. We explored the area a bit that day, even though it was raining a LOT... apparently the remnants of Hurricane Ike were coming through the Midwest. There was flooding all over the place, and we had to turn around a few times to get where we needed to go. The highlight of our day was probably when we went to the area near our new place. I LOVE the area- there are tons of stores right down the street from us, including a Kohl's within a matter of blocks from our house! That's dangerous. :) Casey received an e-mail on Saturday from a man who owns a restaurant in the shopping center we stopped at to fix the tarp- he found Casey's wallet and is mailing it to us sometime this week! THANK YOU LORD! I am so glad there are honest people in the world!!!
Sunday we ended up going to Best Buy and getting a GPS (Garmin Nuvi 260w) which I LOVE! We also went to the grocery store and went clothes shopping for him for work. (We used the GPS to find Old Navy and Dominick's, the grocery store). We ended up eating at home last night- Casey made rotini pasta with turkey sausage, which was mighty tasty.
Today, Casey woke up around 6:45 am to get ready for his first day at work. I could tell he was a bit nervous, but I'm sure he did just fine. I look forward to hearing all about it when he gets home in the next hour or so. :) I slept quite a bit this morning and a little this afternoon... I think all of the chaos over the past few days is catching up with me. I've also tried to entertain the dog, but he's so anxious that I can't seem to find much that will keep his interest for an extended period of time. This is when I wish I had a car. I got a phone call about it earlier; apparently it won't be here until Thursday or Friday now, which sucks! I took a taxi to the post office this afternoon so I could set up our PO box. I'm still having issues trying to change our address, since we aren't allowed to use a business as our temporary address. I tried typing in our PO Box today, and that wouldn't work, either. Not really sure what to do, since we won't move into the new house until October 1st. Hmmm...
Anyway, that's my update for the past few days... it's been a bit crazy. Thankfully, things are going better now. I think I'm going to be a bit restless by the end of the week, so let's hope that my car gets here sooner than expected. I want to take the dog out and explore town a little bit (and use the GPS!!!). I'm sure I'll write a lot more this week since I'll have a lot of free time. :-P

Thanks for reading, and forgive the wordiness... the last few days have been quite a huge change from normal life. Hopefully the following entries will be a bit less random and a bit more interesting. :)

-Ash