From Texas To China With Love

I now have wireless internet service through our cell phone company. I agreed with Scott to not get satellite TV.

The internet service isn't fast out here, but it is faster than dial-up. Since we are near a main road, we get great cell phone coverage. If we drive out to some of the more remote bay neighborhoods which are further away from the main road, service goes in and out. I am pretty happy with the service. Especially during our commute from Austin which is about three and half hours. Scott and I have flexible work schedules and we left work early and picked up the dogs to head to the coast. My laptop has a long battery life. I was able to keep cranking out work and communicating via telephone (because I forwarded my work phone to my cell phone). It truly gave new meaning to telecommuting. By the time we got to the bay house, I was finished with my work. Although I was a little car sick and had a headache.

I wonder if service will degrade if gets rainy? Probably so, but I will have to wait until that happens. In the mean time, it is great to be able to get back to regular blogging on the weekends since it is the only time I have to update my page.

By the way, the water out here is crisp. The geese and ducks are migrating. Our area is near a major bird preserve. I always run outside to go watch the birds fly to it in perfect formation.

The flounder are moving up to the inlet bays for the winter. They say they are "running" which I think is a funny term for a fish behavior. So, they are really agressive right now. I caught a two keeper sizes last week.

As a matter of fact, I hear a fishing pole calling my name right now begging to go outside and play.

We finally closed on the purchase of our vacation home on August 31st. It has been a non-stop month of weekend warrior home improvements. It is almost like having a second job because we leave on Friday's at 5pm and come back Sunday evening. Then it is back to work.



This weekend we had a break from the Bay House. Ha!Ha! That was weird to type that sentence. Scott is on his way to a business conference and I have the "city house" to myself, but we leave at the end of this week for a week long vacation at the bay house. YES! There will be a honey-do home improvement list to finish.

The one thing about the Bay House I don't like...well...depends how you look at it. There isn't any internet service or television service we subscribe to. In regards to internet service, the only options out at the house are satellite internet and cellular broadband service. The satellite internet equipment and service is expensive and I heard if I try to access my company's virtual private network it will slow to a crawl. Cell phone broadband is about two times faster than dial-up. We are close to a tower, so I get pretty good cell phone coverage if I stand in a certain spot in the house.

Scott won't let me subscribe to satellite television because he doesn't want me parked in front of the TV. He is about to cave in though when he found out that even with our fancy rabbit ears we only get two channels. One channel we get great and the other one is fuzzy. Ha!Ha! When he is watching "The Channel" he sometimes grabs for the remote to change it and realizes we don't have any TV choices. We bought a DVD player and have been taking our movies out there. Amazing how the movies are not appealling since you probably have seen them a million times. So, he may break down in a month or two and finally get a dish.

Did I mention that when there is a second house involved, that furniture needs to be purchased? We had several hand me downs which I will be painting white over the vacation week. But, Scott and I kept smacking each in the face on our queen size bed in the guest bedroom. We were wanting to save money for a few months and we were trying to hold off on buying the king size mattress. We just couldn't deal with it. Ha! Ha! We finally went to the only furniture stores in the one horse town and bought one of their most expensive King size Sealy Posteurpedics. The first and only night we slept in it, we really didn't get any sleep because this horrible thunderstorm passed over. The lightning was incredible and it illuminated the whole bay. We could see the reflection of the lightning/clouds on the water. Awesome, but so scarry with the crackling and booming sound. Poor Heidi and Scooter was so scared. When the storm first hit, I couldn't find Scooter. Scott found him hiding behind furniture in the guest bedroom. Poor thing. Heidi kept looking at our new bed wanting to get in and snuggle like she does out our city home when there is a storm.

Last week was also the only weekend we had the bay house to ourselves. We have had guest stay with us every weekend since we moved in. Scott and I keep a calendar because we are booked up until the end of November. Ha!Ha! We have been really shocked by people's lack of pitching in. We have home improvements and they don't even help us. Also, they don't even pitch in for food. Scott has been taking the guest to get groceries on their first evening at the house and he has been amazed that he gets $20 or $30 for a $100 worth of groceries. These people are bringing their kids! What did they think? That we are giving them room and board free? How rude! Scott and I have decided to plan our meals in advance and come up with a grocery list for our guest have to bring with them. They are also on their own for entertainment. Scott has been taking people out on his boat fishing which takes away time from his home improvements. Also, these guest aren't even pitching in for gas money for the boat. It cost almost $100 to fill it up. So, Scott and I agreed that if we have chores or home improvements, they take priority over the guest. Our guest can always drive to the public pier or ask our neighbor to use their fishing pier. Also, there are festivals almost every weekend in the surrounding community they can go visit. Furthermore, they can bring DVD's to watch.

I really dislike to be harsh, but we didn't invite them. They sort of invite themselves and we haven't learned to say no. Ha!Ha! We recently had a friend try to re-invite himself by saying "my wife and I have nothing to do over the weekend". Scott replied, "Well, I hope you guys enjoy the silence of a relaxing weekend. It isn't often when you don't have to do yard chores". Ha!Ha!

Well, I will be again offline for another few weeks. Scott and I are pondering the cellphone versus the satellite internet. Apparently, one of the least expensive options is closed right now because the company is launching their own satellite this month. They need time to program it and then at the end of November they will start adding new customers again.