Greetings from Texas

What day is it now?  Oh, yes.  Wednesday.  We arrived on Monday, collected our rental car (red Dodge Dart) at Houston airport and drove to College Station, let ourselves into the house and then dashed off to the supermarket.    Armed with the essentials, we had a quick snack and fell into bed.  By this time our biological clocks were telling us it was 3.0 am. so we were entitled to feel a little jaded!

Up early (jet lag) on Tuesday and started unpacking.  We brought three pieces of luggage - a large suitcase, a hold all and a large roll along thing.  We then had help bringing the stuff we had stored after our previous visit from it's resting place in Peter's office.  It filled two large cars and included two more suitcases full!  How did we manage to accumulate so much!  The joke is that this house has some of the things we didn't have in the last house we rented, so now we have surplus equipment!

And then there's the fridge....

Most of yesterday was spent unpacking the cardboard boxes.  It was like Christmas!  I had no idea what could be inside any of them!   It turns out that I have 20 paperback books to read, not to mention what's on my Kindle.    We have started making a pile....stuff we do not need which can go back to UK when Peter visits in November.

I also had a major task to do in the kitchen.  Going through an already full larder and storing away on high shelves some of the food stuffs (I use the term 'food' lightly here) that have accumulated over various rentals and that we won't be using.   I turfed out the out of date stuff and removed from the refrigerator what was mouldy!    I'm a STASI  food inspector!!!   With some shelf space ready, I unpacked our food boxes.  I've got enough here to last a year, let alone 6 months!

Anyway, the house is now sorted.   We have used the cardboard boxes to create a recycling centre in the garage and I've contacted the city to give us some recycling bags and start picking up from this address.  The only job to do now is to get the printer linked to the wifi, but we can't find the cable we think we used last time.   Very frustrating!

The sitting room...darkened against the sun

My 'office' on the dining room table from where I write the blog!

Kitchen

Last night we lit the BBQ and Peter cooked two mammoth steaks (well, beef actually but mammoth in size!).  Too big to finish!  We had hoped to eat outside but it was too hot and humid (at 7.30pm) and I was bitten, so we retreated to the air conditioned kitchen.  The back yard is laid to grass which is now a dry and dusty scrub.  It will be interesting to see how it revives when we get some rain.   When it cools down we can make use of the table outside.

This afternoon my first mission is to find out where I can do water aerobics...the pool I was using has now closed for the winter!  Amazing when the temperature is still in the 90s, but I expect it's to do with costs.  Second mission is to buy an apron and an oven glove!  I'm a very messy cook!