Curious Souls

It's been awhile since we did a month re-cap so I thought I would hit a couple of highlights from the last two months. States passed through: Fifteen Cars gifted to us: One Number of days said car was in our possession: Six Length of story about that: Long Things wrong with the van: Overheating, slipping transmission, broken back door Number of times broken down on the side of the road: ZERO Monnaies I only have reliable numbers for October. Why? Because I hate Mint. Also, because when I went back to Mvelopes, I had to delete a bunch of transactions because I was so far behind and thus lost the data for September. So, anyway, here's what we spent in October (which included some time in Phoenix, our drive to Colorado and getting set up in our house in Fort Collins). Comments: Food: Ouuuuccchhh. Eating out just kills us. That is all. Auto: Thank goodness we will get a break from this level of gasoline purchasing for awhile! Lodging: We were fortunate to ...

Last night our house tried to kill us. At 1:30am, we were woken by an odd sequence of chirping from our carbon monoxide detector. We stood by an open window while Jon confirmed that the chirping was, indeed, an indication of elevated carbon monoxide levels and I confirmed that carbon monoxide exposure can, indeed, kill us. Slightly alarmed (and highly impressionable), I suddenly noticed a tightness in my chest so we gathered the dogs (we were dogsitting my parents dog, Gracie), scarves, hats and shoes and rushed outside. A call to the Fort Collins non-emergency line resulted in this: Video It was fortunate that the Fort Collins fire department people were so nice because we ended up spending over an hour hanging outside with them while they checked the carbon monoxide levels and talked to the gas company and waited for the gas company to arrive, diagnose our problem and shut off our gas (heating and hot water). The whole process took about two hours and at 3:30am, w...

Several people have asked us how we picked Fort Collins as a place to live so I thought I would share the story with all of you. Or rather, the Matrix. Because that is how we decided. We called it the Prospective City Analysis and this is what it looked like (click to enlarge): Once we were mostly done filling in the Matrix (we had a hard time finding some city data), we sat on it for awhile and "tried out" the front runners in our heads. That would be why we told some of you that we were going to live in Durango...or Prescott...or Seattle...or Manitou Springs (a late entry after the Matrix was completed). But each time, something didn't feel quite right to us so we would move on to the next place on our radar, hoping something would stick.  And Fort Collins did. It didn't wither under the intense scrutiny that I put it under and when we got here to do our final "walk through", it felt right.  And that feeling hasn't gone away. I love that I can ge...

The number "20" has been a bit charmed for us along our journey. Our Bon Voyage party for leaving Phoenix was on February 20. After tricking out the van, we left Loveland, CO on March 20. And today, eight months later, on October 20, we received the news that our rental application was approved for our new home in Fort Collins, CO! We get to move in on Saturday and we're super excited about our new home and our new city!  You should totally come visit us right away. We'll have an extra bed ready. And if quality time with Jon and Ellen is not enough incentive, check out all the stuff we're already in love with... Fort Collins has over 280 miles of designated bike routes in the city. We live only 1.5 miles from downtown . When you come visit, we'll check out some extra bikes from the Bike Library  for you to use. We can take a nice bike ride alongside the Poudre River . When we get thirsty, we can grab a beer straight from the source at New Bel...

Before there was you , there was debt For me And then there was freedom Financial, you see But then there was Canada Duplicate downloads And I got upset about that Bad things it did bode So I went and tried Mint Cause it's free, don't you know? But it wasn't as easy And my spending did grow So I came back to you Just recently and I am so relieved I could really just pee Because this I now know You are truly the best And you're back on my side As I plan my next quest

I have a question for all of you Americans: have you ever seen hot dogs packaged like this? Disclaimer: this photo was actually taken in England on a different trip but we did see and photograph several examples of this exact product on this trip. I was just too lazy to go and find our more recent photos. No! Our hotdogs come in non-recyclable plastic shrinkrap, duh! And despite our reputation of boiling hot dogs (as confessed to us by a very nice Danish hot dog vendor), I suspect most of the hot dogs consumed by Americans are cooked for 45 seconds in the microwave. We are not patient people. This grievous representation of American hot dogs got me thinking about what kinds of things/food that we attribute to other cultures and how many of those are probably wrong or at least misguided and warped. Here is my list. Feel free to add to it and to point out which items fall in the above mentioned wrong/misguided/warped category. FRANCE French onion soup (this one is actually ser...

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