Getting ready to go...

Ah North Dakota, what can I say...

Very difficult to find anyone to rent to you when you have a dog, even if that dog is 7 pounds, you work from home, and he is crate trained. So this little cutie was the option really.

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Reaching well into the 90s when we arrived here, we promptly ran and got a window unit to go in the window that opened downstairs, yes, one window will work for an air conditioner downstairs.

Set up my office, not too bad until you realized that all these cords...

Run off that one little electrical socket back there in that corner. Luckily the house runs on fuses, yes fuses, which my son Chad (4th in line child working on his doctors in physics) assures me is much safer than a panel for some reason having to do with once the fuse blows no more electric (and then basically what I heard was blah, blah, blah, like on Charlie Brown).

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Now here's an interesting little tip you might need someday. See the shoestring hanging from the handle? That was because we had an ice dam build up on the roof and basically seal the back door shut and had to use the front door which wouldn't have been too bad except...

No door handle and we had no key to the front door. So I tied the long shoestring to the inside of the door and would pull the door shut as we left to trudge from the front of the house to the back in the snow.

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Well we did pretty well I think.

We dealt with the heat,

the space shortage,

the ice (Anabelle and I took a pretty bad spill in front of her school, landing pretty much face down in front of her school),

with the extreme cold (30 below zero),

the snow,

the infestation of box elder bugs, that lasted for months during the winter,

a broken blood vessel in my eye (the only time I had to take off work in the last 8 months),

the plumbing problem, everything that went down upstairs came up down stairs,

that funny smell? still can't figure that one out,

and the "automatic" garage door that occasionally will take 20 tries to get it closed.

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Things we learned...

You cannot buy snow removal in North Dakota during the winter.

I can still shovel a walk and it not kill me.

Carhartt is all the rage in fashion here during the winter.

Winter here lasts at least 6 months (it was 35 degrees last night).

Something about fuses...

and lastly,

I really prefer warmer climates!