Alex is home! Add one more to the house. The empty nest is filling back up. He finished up his finals early this week, but still had a project to complete so I came later in the week. I left home Wednesday evening headed for Indy, and stayed (mere hours) in a motel near the airport. It was cheaper to leave the truck in long-term that get a park-sleep-fly (and those PSF hotels sometimes have shuttles that don't run too early or too late) so I just found a cheap place to sleep and caught an early flight to SeaTac. Got there around 9 am local time. Rented a car, and headed to Alex's apartment. We met up with Scott for lunch (Taco Time) and got to work loading up stuff into the car and hauling it to the storage unit. Made a couple trips before Alex needed to get some more work done on the project, so I dropped him off and took his bike (which he never rides) to the same Play it Again Sports where we bought it 2-1/2 years ago. The bike market is more buyer friendly than it was in 2021 during a pandemic, so at first they weren't even going to take the bike but it was in good shape so they decided to offer $40 for it. Which I took. We paid $120 back then so that's probably all I could expect. Anyway, I got checked in to my AirBnB and went back to the apartment, where we met up with Scott again at dinner time and went to Zaucer's. Which Scott really dug. After dinner I left Alex to work on the project some more, but he was so stuck he needed to get a hold of someone to help him out. By Friday he was still stuck. I was up early so I did some urban geocaching, then after he was up we did some more packing, laundry, and cleaning, got the oil in his car changed, gave it a good washing, got all his bedding laundered, then he needed to do some more work so I dropped him off and went to hang at a Starbuck's for a few hours. He finally finished that assignment and got it turned in just before dinnertime. He was going out with friends to IHOP one last time before summer. After he was done with dinner, we packed up the last of his desk stuff, packed it away into storage, dropped the car off at the parking garage, and headed for the airport. It was already around 11 by the time we got there (traffic was really slow) and we had quite an odyssey returning the rental car. We dropped off the rental at a very very deserted rental facility, and were not sure for some time whether the shuttle back to the airport was still running. Eventually we did get one (we were the only ones on it) and made it back to the airport ground transportation location, and the phone at the hotel rang and rang and rang and rang and rang with nobody picking it up. I finally got an answer after letting it ring for around 15 minutes and they said the shuttle would be right there. It was not. It was maybe another half hour before the shuttle made it to us. We finally got back and to bed around 1:00. Luckily, the flight wasn't too early. Also, this has never happened to me before, but the line for security was longer than any line I have ever seen before, and they opened up a new security lane right as I got there! So getting through wasn't too bad. We got to Indy around 6 pm, got the truck and headed home.

News on Nat's car: Boggs says that the bad transmission lines are basically fused to the radiator, and they won't be able to get the lines out without destroying it. So, the price for fixing it is up to around $1500 now, and I told them not to. For now, they said it can stay in their lot, and also gave me a tip that Lewis Salvage would take it for somewhere around $300-400 and they'd pick it up free. So as soon as the title comes in, that's probably where we're going with it. 

Softball was supposed to have the season opener on Tuesday, but it rained all day so it was called off. We've been assured we will make up the game with a doubleheader during the season, stand by. 

Quite the adventure on Thursday this week. I rented a U-haul car trailer and Natalie and I went to Ohio again, for what should be the last time, to bring back her car. All I knew about the car was that the transmission lines leaked so it had no fluid in it, I didn't know if it would run or anything. The dolly-type car trailer that the U-haul place has was rented out, so I went with the trailer which wasn't too more, but that meant I really had to hope that the car would run or else it was going to be awfully hard getting it onto the trailer. Anyway, I got the trailer at around lunch time after working in the morning, and Nat, Churro and I headed east. We got there with no problems, I put in the battery (I'd had it charged up at Auto Zone, which they do for free) and crossed my fingers, and when Nat turned the key it started right up. Loading it onto the trailer was scary...I legit thought that Nat was going to drive it clear off the front of the trailer...but as I held up my arms and yelled "Stooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooopppppp" she did. One of the guys she had been living with helped us get it on, and it was really a good thing it started because when we were trying to just push it up the last bit of the ramp it was obvious that if we had to push it up, there was no way it was going to happen. But once we had the car loaded and tied down, it towed behind the truck with no problems. We got it unloaded in Warsaw at Boggs Automotive (they were expecting us) who very nicely said we could leave the car on their lot until they could get it into the shop to diagnose and hopefully fix the problem. Car unloaded, trailer returned, and Nat is moved out of there for good.

The following day we went to the BMV to get her vehicle titled. She bought it nearly 2 years ago, but it has never been titled in her name, registered, insured, or any of all that car stuff. She also doesn't have a license. She wasn't ready to take the test again but we did get the application for the title processed and sent in, which means that we can sell it. By the weekend I had heard from Boggs that the transmission lines were shot and needed to be replaced before they would be able to tell if the transmission itself had problems. That is going to be about $515 so I told them go ahead, probably against my better judgement...

Friday evening Beth and I went to a play at the Wagon Wheel Theater. First time in a while to be there for us. They were putting on "Funeral for a Gangster," which is a sort of audience participation murder mystery. The play is the setup for the murder, in which the victim is the gangster's widow. Then there is a break while the audience receives a sheet of clues and puzzles to decode, in order to solve a riddle about the murder. You also have to figure out who did it and who killed the gangster. Beth and I worked with a lady who was there alone, and we got all the puzzles solved and correctly guessed who sold out the gangster but not who killed him or who killed the widow. Although, I don't think the audience had enough clues to figure out that last one without guessing. Anyway, it was a fun time.  

FCC Softball is back! The season is starting in a couple weeks, and I took the unusual step this year of arranging a practice before the opener. I reserved the ZB softball field for yesterday and got both teams together for some time to shake the rust off. We're having two teams again this year, and honestly we're probably not that far away from having enough for 3. Dave's team is in the B division this year (back to divisions, which is good) and my team is in the C division. The low expectations team, that's us...

Eclipse day was Monday! The celestial event of the year, the thing you've been waiting for since 2017. I wasn't sure whether or not we were going to do anything in particular for the eclipse until Monday morning. But Monday it warmed up, the rain of the weekend cleared off, the clouds disappeared (mostly), and I decided that this could be a literally once in a lifetime event so we were going. The path of totality came so close to us, we just had to. The bad thing was that once I decided we should go see it, I couldn't find eclipse glasses anywhere in town. I checked at Walgreen's, CVS, Kroger, several gas stations, Meijer, Dollar General, Wal-Mart....nothing. Not long ago the town was awash in them. Now, they were all gone. So I made a pinhole projector out of a box and some foil (which worked, very nicely) and called it good. Just after noon Beth and Nat and I headed out in the direction of Marion. We thought maybe we could get all the way to Muncie and see it with Missy, but we wanted to avoid major roads. SR-15 was pretty clear all the way to Marion, slow through Wabash but otherwise moving fine. We got to Marion, well within totality, and Beth wanted a coffee so we went to Starbucks. The patio there was clear too, and we had a good view of the southern sky, so we decided that was a good place to watch an eclipse. By the time we got there it was already starting but we had an hour or so until totality. There was a guy sitting on the patio who had his glasses on, and I asked if I could borrow them for a moment and he just gave us 3 pair. He had bought a package of 20 of them on Amazon for about $5 so he planned to give them away to anyone who needed them. So that was awesome! He had driven to Marion from Wisconsin that morning, and just found the place more or less at random. He just drove on the interstates until traffic got bad, then switched to state roads until he got to the path of totality, and found a place to watch. Anyway, we watched the show from the patio as it got darker and darker, then all the street lights and the patio lights came on, and I watched the last little sliver of the crescent sun disappear through the glasses, and when I took them off and saw the total eclipse, I literally stood there saying "wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww." What an incredible sight. Unfortunately no photo I've seen of it, including the ones I took, look anything like what I actually saw. After a few moments of not being able to get a good picture, I gave up and just watched it. Totality only lasted a couple minutes, and it was amazing how fast it went back to being blinding as soon as the moon moved off just a little. I'm so glad we went to see it, the real show of an eclipse is in totality. I had thought, well, Warsaw will have like 95% totality so that'll be a pretty good view...nope.... it is all or nothing. If you're not in totality, there's not much to see. Missy only had to walk outside the dorm to see everything, too bad Alex was so far away from it.

The rest of the week was very normal. Eye doctor and dentist appointments. On Friday, Natalie and I went back to Ohio with the truck to get the rest of her things. We got the dresser, the roll-top desk, and many boxes and clothes and stuff, and the car battery. We were able to get everything into the truck and get the cover over it, but it didn't rain so we were good anyway. Only the car left to get, which we'll do next week. It doesn't run, so looks like I'm getting a trailer. Oh, and on Saturday we took the dog to a clinic at Petsmart to get shots.

So, Natalie is back. On Monday afternoon, I went to Ohio to pick up Natalie and as many of her things as we could fit into the truck. I decided not to get a U-Haul truck just yet, which was just as well because some of the larger things like the dresser were not emptied, and I found that the sofa and loveseat we brought her a while back are ruined, and they are not coming back to my house. We loaded up as many clothes and boxes as we could fit and told them we would come back for the rest when we could. Then unloading her stuff at home. This is not an April fools' gag, we moved her and her dog back into the house. So this week was basically about getting used to this. We've already gotten a gate to put up at the stairwell to keep the dog downstairs.

The van went back to Ab & Tom's this week because the steering column still feels like it's, well, not "loose," but bumpy. I can feel and hear sounds like something is bumping around down there. They checked it out and found that the steering rack is worn, so the movements aren't as smooth as they should be, but it's not really causing problems so in the end I decided not to get it fixed at this time. 

Saturday, as I'd promised Beth we would do when the bonuses came in as they did last month, we went shopping for a new sofa at an Ashley store in Fort Wayne. And we found one. Both of us liked it and we both thought it wouldn't be something that we just hated soon after we got it home. And it wasn't super cheap this time either, so we're hoping it doesn't just fall apart. We got the protection plan for it too so here's hoping it lasts and we still like it after a while. It should be delivered (we paid for that too) in about a month.