My hubby went to New England last weekend to visit his mother. They have had an unusual amount of snow this winter. This is a picture of his mother’s house that he took while he was visiting with her. I’m sure glad we don’t live up there anymore!
We need another garage! (or two or three!)
by Mary AnneWhen we first looked at this house that we just recently moved into, I thought that the little storage shed in the back yard and the two car garage would be adequate to store our cars and yard machines. Little did I know that my hubby had planned to bring about eight times more yard equipment than anyone could possibly ever really need!
But, my hubby loves BIG garden equipment, and lots of it. And the two car garage that I thought would house my car now has his motorcycle and his “show truck” in it, so there is no room for either of our two cars or our ”work” truck. So, we need another garage. No, we need several more garages!
Tom-Tom GPS Unit
by Mary AnneAbout 18 months ago we bought a Tom-Tom GPS Unit. I bought it for my hubby, to help him get around the area when we moved here.
This unit’s built-in maps are obsolete for this area. There are roads that have been here for over eleven years that are not in the system. In addition, there are lots of roads that have been closed and turned into new subdivisions with different roads. So there are a lot of times that Tom-Tom tells us to turn onto a road that is now just lawn and trees and houses. Sometimes Tom-Tom tells us to go the wrong way down one-way streets, and sometimes it just plain and simple gives us completely wrong directions.
This makes using the Tom-Tom a challenge. We are very disappointed in the product. We have considered buying the new maps disk for Tom-Tom, but am afraid that those maps won’t really be any better than the ones it already has! So, when I go someplace that I’m not SURE where I am going, I also prepare for the trip by bringing maps, and printing directions from MapQuest (which is not always right, either!)
Still have not finished moving all of our stuff
by Mary AnneWe are still in the process of moving all of our household and garage contents from New England to Virginia. Money has been tight, so we have moving “on a shoestring.” We have been doing this slowly by ourselves. Most of our belongings that are still in New England are being housed in my hubby’s mother’s garage. The rest are in the garage of the house that we still own, but are renting out. We have been doing most of our moving by doing all of our packing ourselves, and renting one-way trucks and cars.
While we were still living in New England, we would rent a one-way truck, load it up, drive it down to Virginia, unload it, go pick up a one-way rental car, return the one-way truck, then drive the one-way rental car back to New England. This was a lot of work, and put a lot of stress on all of us. We were very tired and irritable a lot, for long stretches of time. And to top it off, anything that broke was not covered by any kind of insurance or guarantee!
If we had been able to afford to hire a moving company, I would have done some Internet research at to help me do some comparison shopping on moving companies.
At the time we started our move, I tried to find one of those self-service moving companies to use, but there just weren’t any doing business anywhere near where we lived in New England.
GPS units in general
by Mary AnneYesterday morning my hubby & I were watching the news (I think it was the Today Show) and they did a field test of three different GPS systems, I think one was Magellan, one was Garmin, and one was Tom Tom. They gave a different one to three different reporters in Boston and had them all go from the same origination point to the same destination point, all programming their GPS units to go the fastest route. None of them took the same route! They all went different ways! And each unit told the reporters to go the wrong way down one way streets! So, I think there is a lot of room for improvement on the GPS units!