Almost There!

We close on the new place Monday at 10:00AM! Because we sold the lake house so quickly, and this house wasn't totally complete, we've been living in the motorhome, parked in son's driveway.

The builder was nice enough to allow us to move large pieces of furniture into the incomplete house, and we rented a storage site for smaller stuff.

Now that the house is completed, we have spent the last two nights in it, and I'm worried. It's been very restful, but did you ever wake up in the middle of the night and wonder where the heck you were? It's a weird feeling!

The last time I had that feeling was July 9, 1959. That was the day after I joined the Army and spent my first night on a cot, with 60 other guys in the same room! Now that I think about it, that sensation was probably more of a "whatthehe**amIdoinghere" than a "whereamI" thing.

I have internet service at the new house through AT&T's air card. They actually assign a cell phone number to the card. I'm extremely disappointed in the service, however. In my estimation, I'm not getting a very good signal, and websites load at speeds remindful of early dial-up connections!

Several complaints to AT&T tech support (Ha!) have resulted in the same solution: Remove the air card from the computer, remove the simm card from the air card, reinstall the simm card, put the air card back into the computer, reboot! You can tell that the support personnel are reading from a script. When nothing they suggest helps, their favorite excuse is: "we are experiencing some outages in your area."

Neither DSL nor cable is available in our neighborhood. Although we have some 30 or so families in the neighborhood, it is somewhat rural. None of the companies (AT&T, Centurytel, Charter, etc) want to invest in the necessary equipment to bring DSL or cable tv into our area. AT&T tells me they are working to conclude the merger with Bell South. When that is completed they plan to unveil something they call "U-Verse" nation-wide.
I understand that it will be cable tv, telephone, internet and other services over fiber optic. Shouldn't take them more than 15 or 20 years to reach our area!

What may help my connection to the internet is a new computer. I have ordered a custom built desktop machine from a local store that my son recommended. It will have all the latest "bells and whistles," including a DVD reader/writer. I hope that will allow me to include on a disk all photos and documents that I have attached to the Edward Coffey Project.

A couple of days ago we woke to a really heavy snowfall. We had close to 2 inchs in our area; other areas of Louisiana received as much as 8 inches. It didn't last long, but it sure was pretty.

We woke at about 4AM that morning to the sounds of the grandsons yelling! The youngest, Andrew (Drew), thought he was getting "dirty" from the snow falling on him, and went back inside. The older brother, Cole who is closing in on 6 years of life, was building a snowman, writing on the side of the cars and trying to make snow angels. Quite a site!

The last significant snow fall in south Louisiana was in 1989. North Louisiana, and especially those parishes bordering southern Arkansas, get a little dusting more often. Any snow this far south is quite rare, so we enjoyed it for a few hours before it melted.

My wife and I will be traveling to Texas next week to witness the graduation of our oldest grandson from college. Seems that we just witnessed his high school graduation! He has been accepted into the University of Texas law school, and will begin there in January.

That's all, Folks!