Hello Gnomies! I’m finally coming up for air after an eventful and chaotic November and December. As my last post indicated, we finally sold our home in Chicago after a full year on the market. We moved from Chicago to our new home (pictured here) in Bixby, OK (near Tulsa) over Thanksgiving week. Once the movers had us packed up and loaded into their tractor-trailer, we spent Tuesday night in our empty town home on the North Side. Early Wednesday morning, my wife, her parents and their killer Chihuahua, Snickers, as well as our two cats (Kona and Smokey), and I all piled into the RV and headed out of Chicago. The drive to Tulsa took around 13 hours.

Despite having an empty house, we managed to scrape together a really great Thanksgiving meal with delicious pre-made meals from a nearby Marie Callender’s.

The moving semi arrived Saturday morning and the crew unloaded in rapid fashion. It was nice to have our regular bed again, after several nights on an air mattress. The moving process went pretty smoothly overall, although it will be a while before we are 100% unpacked (or at least 90% unpacked).

I prioritized things like getting our broadband and TVs set up. I already had our new home pre-wired with Cat-6 cabling for a gigabit Ethernet LAN. Once Cox Cable came out and set up our cable modem, I reconfigured my old Linksys router so we had at least a Wi-Fi signal. I ordered my new equipment from Newegg, which came in a couple of days. This consisted of a D-Link DGS-1024D Gigabit Ethernet Switch and D-Link DGL-4500 Xtreme-N Wireless Gaming Router.

Here you can see a picture of my network equipment “rack” (aka a shoe rack from Target). Also pictured on the rack is my Vonage phone adapter and the Cox Cable Modem. I chose Vonage as it allowed me to keep my old Chicago-based home office number, allowing for my old customers to easily reach me. So far, I’m extremely happy with Vonage. I’m also glad I pre-wired my house with high-end data cabling. Wi-Fi is great and everything, but nothing beats structured wiring for heavy network use!

As I said before, the move itself went quite well. The only snafu related to the move was some minor damage to an antique desk I inherited from my parents. I’m on the hunt to find somebody local that can do the repair work. So we were sailing along, loving our new house, when a monkey wrench was thrown into our lives. I was driving home from a day at my company’s plant in Okmulgee, OK (about 35 miles south of Tulsa), when I got into a pretty bad car accident. I came through without so much as a scratch or bruise, but our poor Toyota was totaled. I was driving east on a 65mph divided highway when a motorist on a cross-street completely spaced out and t-boned me on the driver’s side. She was driving south and had crossed the two westbound lanes of the highway, crossed the center median and then slammed into me, causing me to careen into a ditch and spin around 180 degrees. Fortunately, she was unhurt, as was her dog.

But the accident has been a major headache for me, as our 10 year old RAV-4 (affectionately known as “Bessie”) was our sole vehicle. It was paid for, and was reliable and cheap transportation. Our intent was to eventually get a new car, then keep Bessie as a second occasional use car. But now we have to start from scratch. The timing of the accident, right before Christmas, was unfortunate since the insurance process has been dragging on due to people having time off for the holidays. Hopefully we will get a fair settlement offer and then we can move forward. We’ve all but decided to replace Bessie with a 2009 RAV-4 Limited. We found one we fell in love with at a nearby Toyota dealer, and it’s an awesome vehicle. It uses a “Smart Key” technology, has heated leather seats, Bluetooth hands-free technology and a backup camera. We’ve also decided to call the new RAV-4 “Bertha.”

So there you have it… lots of activity and drama, but we’re thankful that the accident damaged only vehicles and not people.

I wish everybody in Gnomie-land a happy, prosperous and safe 2009.