•10:21 PM
LANA:

We are here! DH flew to Portland on March 13th, and had pretty much been squatting in our apartment until the boys and my mom and I arrived by van 5 days later with provisions. Thankfully, a friend who lives nearby dropped by with some sleeping bags and pillows so he wouldn't have to curl up with a pile of socks and his coat for a blanket at night.

We are still living pretty scrappy here since our moving truck has yet to make an appearance. But it hardly matters.

Driving over from Washington into Oregon and pulling up to the first gas station to have my tank filled for me (it's illegal to pump your own gas here), I seriously almost cried happy tears. 20 miles outside of Portland, seeing mossy boulders and pine-studded cliffs bursting with waterfalls next to the highway and raindrops sprinkling down even in sunshine, I did. To say the natural beauty here is breathtaking is an understatement. There are forest corridors that are dark even in daytime, tree trunks wrapped with vines, and twisted branches completely fuzzy green with moss, pink and white cherry and apple blossoms between the roads - and this is all within the city and suburbs! In MARCH!! It's gorgeous and clean and fresh pretty much everywhere, and boy do these people like to landscape! I am thrilled that this is finally our home! As evidenced by the number of exclamation points in this paragraph!!!

As for DH's work, it's a pretty brutal schedule. He pulled a 17-hour day just before last weekend, and most days average about 15 hours. He leaves our apartment at about 2:45am and gets home around 7pm on a normal day, but every day is slightly different and he doesn't know until the end of the work day what to expect for the next day's schedule. A praise, though - he's actually been making more money per hour than he was told at the interview - with double overtime, which he hits by the 3rd day of the work week. Some of the guys doing this job work only 6 months out of the year. They take their much-needed breaks between projects to take real vacations and rest up for the next.

And yes, the elusive titles of the projects are finally known! He has been working on two sets - the first is the TV series 'Leverage', and the second is a pilot episode for a new NBC series called 'Grimm' that will air this winter if all goes well. He says that it's funny to see people coming to eat in costume - for Grimm there are a lot of policemen and CSI personnel with fake guns and handcuffs, and last Friday he fed a zombie. After the pilot, he'll work on a movie called 'Gone', which we know nothing else about at this point.

All in all, we're messy, we're tired, we've spent a heck of a lot of money getting here and need to spend a whole lot more to get settled again (need to buy second car again and replace all our furniture), but at this point, it's all just details. By the skin of our teeth and the grace of God, we made it home, and we've got nothing but time to sort it all out.
|
This entry was posted on 10:21 PM and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 comments:

On March 22, 2011 at 10:31 PM , Unknown said...

Wooohoo! What an awesome update! I'm thrilled for you and your fam. Can't wait to tell Benji and Livy that DH prepared food for a zombie. I'll bet they'll ask me if DH knows how to cook brains.

 
On March 23, 2011 at 1:57 PM , The Erickson Family said...

SO happy that you're here! Can't wait to get to know your family!