A Moving Experience

Four years ago, I promised myself I wouldn't go through the horror of moving again - not for a long time. I also promised myself if I did move, it would never be to a city like Houston, the armpit of the Texas coast. To prove God has a sense of humor, here we are, unpacking in Houston and setting up housekeeping.
One of our worries was how to get our stupid, elderly cat here. The vet said it would be easier on the cat to take her by car, because sedating her for a plane flight would be hard on her at her advanced age - so we planned to take her on Thursday, in a Pet Taxi™, even though she'd be locked in the darn thing for eight hours, probably yowling and complaining the whole way. So Wednesday the movers hauled all those boxes and things and stuff into the moving van, and pulled away. And something happened that we hadn't expected - Pearl, the stupid cat, had stayed awake the entire day due to the excitement. Now, old cats sleep most of the time, in case you didn't know. So we're sitting there in the furniture-free living room floor, eating something on paper plates, and getting ready to inflate a mattress to sleep on, when it occurred to us: the cat must be exhausted. Why, if we were to go ahead and load up the car with the rest of the stuff we didn't want hauled by the movers (plants, the cat's stuff, some other stuff), and shove the cat into the Pet Taxi™ and just go, well, mercy sakes, the cat would likely sleep all the blessed way. Sure, we'd be tired - really tired - but the cat is what matters, right?
So we packed the car, and made sure the house was in order one last time, and shoved the cat into the car. Pearl was not happy, and made that fact clear to us. But off we went, toward Garden City, with the GPS programmed to take the shortest route possible. How brilliant of us! How considerate of us as pet owners! How...
Stupid. About an hour into the trip, both cars were braking constantly, which woke the cat up and started her yowling again, because every square inch of open land between Midland and Austin was crowded with herds of deer. Big deer, little deer, deer grazing just within the reach of the headlights, deer strolling leisurely across the highway, deer carrying signs that said "Go ahead and shoot me, fool, we both know it's against the law." Forty freaking miles per hour. The trip took us eleven hours! Eleven hours of desperately trying to stay awake while the cat is threatening to call the ASPCA, or PETA, or Johnny "I-passed-the-bar-somehow" Cochran.
And to make it worse, the GPS takes it literally that you want the shortest route, and when we got to the Houston area she took us through the back neighborhood streets to save maybe twelve inches of traveling distance. (note to self: always select quickest, not shortest).
It took several days to find the camera and some paper for the printer, and about a third of my office files, but they finally turned up in a box marked "books." We're still looking for two of our three table lamps.
Now, on the positive side. Since we arrived here, we have eaten the best fish tacos ever! We have hi-def on our cable system, on all the network channels. My internet speed is 4.9 megabits, and the cat is even happy - now that she's here and allowed to sleep peacefully.

You do have to make use of the toll roads here, so we got EZ passes for our cars, so we can blow through the toll stations. I'll still avoid driving outside of my little area, but I'll need that pass if any of my friends fly into Hobby and need to get picked up.

It could happen.

And you have to give a little credit to harB - he's been a great little supervisor, checking off all the boxes with their little green stickers as they come in and get put where they belong. We still haven't found box number 160, though. That one's a mystery.