We have a house!

Well, we finally found "the" house after looking at about 2 dozen. The one where I felt at home and relaxed! The seller accepted our offer, so we are almost there. I thought I'd give you a tour.

Here's Fairview road, which is the newest developed section of Simpsonville, SC. It has direct access to I385! I was amazed by the variety of restaurants and stores: Lowe's, Home Depot, Super Bi-L0, Target, WalMart, Publix, Ingles, Kohls, most of the restaurants (including O'Charleys) and fast food that you've ever heard of, and everything else you'd ever need...all within walking distance of the neighborhood. This place is going to cost us a lot of money...because we'll be shopping all day.

As convenient as all of this is, if you look behind you, you'll see the farm country with pastures and beautiful roads.
This is going to be great motorcycle country!


Here, we're turning into the subdivision, called Martins Grove.

We finally arrive at 405 Tripmont Ct, a lovely Cul-de-sac, far away from the entrance roads.


It was the only property I visited that had a good lawn. The drought here really devestated the yards...I was pleasantly surprised to see how well the grass was taken care of. The landscaping is very nicely done, too.

Here, you can see the main space, looking from the back towards the front door.

The kitchen is very clean. The stove stays, but we will be furnishing a new fridge, washer, dryer, microwave.

Here's a great bonus room. This is where we're going to put the piano, and maybe also make it a study.

Master bedroom.

Second bedroom


Third bedroom

A workshop! I finally have a place to work on stuff!

Now for the best part...look at that yard! This is just awesome....and rare.


A view from the back. Sam is just going to love running around in this!


Here's a bird's eye view.


We will close on both homes around April 15th. I'll still be on my own for a little while, but I'll have my hands full trying to find ways to fill up this space. I'll give ya'll directions so you can come down and stay with us! See you soon!

Count your blessings!

I never want to hear a complaint again about driving in central Illinois. Every day, I find a new way to get turned around here, but each time, I learn something new! I just thought I'd illustrate for ya'll the difference of navigating back home versus navigating here. It used to be so simple. If you wanted to go North, you looked for a road that went North. That works pretty well back there:


But here is the reality, made more complicated by the fact that the ground is constantly going up and down and most of the streets swap names at the intersections (Example: East North turns into Old Spartanburg, and Bushy Creek, and they all continue in different directions). The intersections bear no street names, either. While beautiful, you really need to know where you're going...because guessing will do jack squat.


Here's a time-lapse video of our expressways, which are the easiest and fastest way to get around. Drive safely everyone!

Perfect conclusion to the weekend.

Well, it's Sunday morning! I need to find a church. Shouldn't be too difficult, since they're everywhere down here. I know of one downtown.

Here we go!

Here it is, Buncombe Street United Methodist Church.

The contemporary service is very nice.

Looks very different from this side...

It's going to be a beautiful day...let's go for walk!

Note to self...FREE WIFI!

Lots of joggers and dog-walkers today.

Made it!

That is just beautiful!

Let's go to the other side...

Now we're a little closer.

Let's find a place to sit. Here's a good spot!

This is very relaxing. Something's still missing, though.

Ahhhhh now it's a perfect day!

House Shopping: Day 1

Well, it was my first day of house hunting.

First, I met Roger, and we talked about the houses that I want to see.

It's been funny to see people's expressions when I ask them for a picture. They're puzzled, until I explain that it is for my blog. While Roger made appointments for the showing, I went out to grab lunch. I went o Haywood Road, which has a lot of restaurants and shopping.

(even CiCi's Pizza!)

I ended up at Chic-Filet for an actual chicken sandwich and waffle fries.

Yummmmmm

We are looking in the Greer area today. Here's one of the houses we looked at.

It was really nice on the inside, but that's about all I'll say.

Nice kitchen!

Here's another we looked at. It was a real bargain, but it has been on the market too many days. Let's move on.

I really really like this neighborhood.

This is the only house I saw today that really spoke to me.

It was nicely decorated on the inside.

Now, where would we put that dang piano?

Kitchen is a little smaller than desired, but it'd work.

A nice screened in deck with a gorgeous mountain view.

I had my trusty GPS with me, so I could see where we were driving. It helped a lot!

Finally home. I went out for a run and fried up some pizza. (Man, I need a microwave!) For the rest of the night, I'm going to watch some documentaries and get some sleep. Tomorrow, I am goinig to go to church in the morning (Buncombe Street UMC...downtown) and then go house shopping in the Simpsonville area. Goodnight!

TGIF

It's Friday already! The day was interesting...split between CAT Newberry and FujiFilm. First, Curt and I drove back down to Newberry. The drive is still long and boring, but whatever. We worked hard to get caught up on Roy's work. We discovered to our horror that Roy was not checking his Peregrine tickets, and after calling his users to check up on their requests, we found that he had ignored the 2nd level calls going back past November. I got a few taken care of, but there are many more left. Curt worked on changing the backup tapes on the file server while I attacked the tickets.

Here's my desk for the next week or two. Ahhhh brings back memories.

It seems like only last week I was doing this job.

It was time to go over to FujiFilm in Greenwood. We stopped for lunch first. Here you can see the "chicken" sandwich. Yum....emulcified chicken byproducts.

Have ya'll heard of this place?

This is the only time I've seen one since I've been down here.

This picture was taken in the town of, I kid you not, Ninety Six.

Here we are at the FujiFilm plant in Greenwood, SC, where ATS provides 1st and 2nd level help desk support.

This is Rusty, one of the deskside support techs.

He had his annual review today.

Poor guy....

What every help desk should have for protection.


As we drove through Laurens and surrounding areas, I was surprised to see corn fields, wheat fields, cow and horse pastures.
It felt very much like farmland back home.

That's as much excitement as I could handle for the day. I got back into my car, and got myself lost. Once I figured out where I was, I went home and watched the History channel. I had to get some sleep so I could go home shopping!