Troublesome Transition Turned Triumphant Tale

So this week has been an adventure. We left early, shortly after five, on Friday morning after about 4 hours of sleep. My parents met me at the Lund house to pack the last few bits of laundry and the cooler into our two jam-packed cars before heading across town to pick up Courtney and head out on I-80 for Chicago. We did stop briefly at the Sapp Bros. truck stop for a big breakfast and about a gallon of coffee each. By Des Moines we stopped for gas. Funny story, my car decided to lock itself while we were getting gas after Courtney got out and we were locked out of my car until I was able to finagle a wire hanger to unlock the driver's side door. Crisis averted... or so we thought. About ten minutes later, as my parents followed us on the interstate, my mother called to ask about the steam I hadn't noticed flowing from under the right side of the hood of the car. I immediately glanced at the gauges on my dash indicating that my engine was over heating. In my ignorance I only slowed down(I didn't stop), attempting to exit the interstate as quickly as possible. We got to a gas station in Pleasant Hill, East Des Moines, and discovered a "Performance Plus" auto repair across the street. The engine had cooled a bit so I managed to get it to the mechanic there. He indicated in a matter of minutes that the head gasket was done for--the car was totaled. Now I knew it was cracked and the car had obvious problems, but I hadn't really anticipated this so soon. The four of us prayed, rearranged things so we could all fit in the van, and promptly headed back to central Des Moines in search of car dealerships and a new car! Over the course of the next eight hours, we would endure seemingly countless dealerships and salesmen. They weren't all bad, a few were remarkably ridiculous, but I... we were all... getting to the point where we didn't know if we could handle another over-zealous salesmen, dangling his bait in hopes that we might bite. Facing an amazingly expensive year, we had a bit of a tight budget to work with--our options were limited.
I think it was at what must have been our seventh dealership when things began to take a turn for the better. We were helped by a young salesman, Brandon, just out of college at Iowa State. He informed us of a car just dropped off that day, a 1995 Toyota Avalon. It was black, nearly flawless, spacious, tan leather interior, 91K miles. Almost too good to be true. My dad and I took it for a test drive. It handled amazingly. It felt almost like new! It turns out an old lady who had bought it at that very dealership new in 1995, had just traded it in that morning for a new Corolla. The service dept. hadn't even inspected it yet. I was getting excited to say the least. We gave the Service guys an hour to check it over and we came back to find out the damage. Incredibly, nothing super serious was found wrong. A few minor things would need to attended to but we needed to drive it away that day--we were still trying to get to Chicago remember. God be praised, we were able to negotiate a great deal, exactly within our budget!! As I said, eight hours later, I drove away in my new car. The girls had rushed back to empty my old Acura--it had served me well for nearly six years, now with almost 200K miles, it was ready to be done. We quickly transferred the rest of our things into the new car and made it to Winfield (where I'm now living, west of Chicago) by 11:30 or so Friday night. We got everything moved in right away and were able to enjoy the rest of the weekend as I got settled into my new home for the next year!
Today was the first day of orientation. It took me 2-and-1/2 hours to get to campus, about exactly two to get back home. It's a bit daunting but manageable. Things will get better as I get my classes figured out this week and get a routine established. All in all, I'm doing very well. It's great to be living with my aunt, uncle, and two little cousins (3 & 2). Thank you all for your prayers!! This will prove to be a challenging year I'm sure, but I'm so excited to see what I learn and where it takes me!!

p.s. I'll post pictures when I get a chance!

Occupational Endings

My last day of work was Friday. It's amazing the things that you don't expect to miss--the mundane, day-to-day details like the particular things that only I remembered about the regular customers. Bob always gets his ones broken into stacks of 20. Larry always gets balances. Ray always liked my blue and white, striped tie, he liked to ask random math and trivia questions too. Shirley always comes in on Wednesday mornings. Josh, 'lunch guy', always comes through the drive-through, eating his lunch, he calls me weird nick-names (slappy, shooter, etc.). Deb calls in her change orders every morning, first thing, and she never tells me who's calling when I answer the phone, just "hey." Ken is usually the first customer in the drive-through every morning, he only ever has deposits, he doesn't get a balance, and he always gets a dog bone for his dog Fred who's never with him. Anyway, you get the idea. These sort of things are what I'm going to miss. Not to mention the people I worked with. My last day, Larry bought me a cup of coffee, Deb bought my five power ball tickets (i didn't win), and our personal banker bought me a scarf, a pound of coffee, and everyone signed a card that plays the song "hit the road jack" when you open it. I was really touched, nearly emotional. It was weird to say goodbye and walk out the door. Fortunately, i have much to look forward to. I move to "the Windy City" (Chicago) on Friday!