08:23 – As of today, the new house is ours. We have so much to do in Winston-Salem to get ready for the move that we decided not to stay up in Sparta tonight. Instead, we’ll make a flying trip up there for the closing and then head back down here tonight. That way, we can get an early start tomorrow morning on the continuing packing. We’ve already arranged for a locksmith to change the locks this afternoon or first thing tomorrow morning and deliver the keys to us. The movers are coming Friday to haul all our furniture and other heavy/bulky stuff up, so as of Friday afternoon we’ll officially be moved. I told Colin that come Friday he will officially be a Spartan Dog.
The electricity is already in our name, and we’ll stop by the Internet provider to get the fiber broadband turned on as of this afternoon. Barbara has already changed the billing address on our credit cards to our new address, and I’ve changed the ship-to address for Amazon, WalMart, and the other vendors we buy from on-line. We need to stop by Costco to make that change in person. Today or tomorrow, I need to cancel our Internet service here and call Buck Stoves to find out about getting a wood stove installed. There’s already a good sized wood pile up there. It’s rotting, but it’ll do for now. Once we’re moved in, I’ll see about getting a cord or two of fresh wood delivered. Before I do that, I want to get one of those steel tube firewood racks installed to keep the wood up off the ground. And Barbara is going to meet her sister and go off in search of some new furniture to have delivered here this week so the movers can move it up to Sparta on Friday.
Email from Jen overnight. Their simulation over the Thanksgiving weekend went pretty well. Her husband was badly wounded in an attack by rampaging zombies. As a veterinarian, he was their primary medical person, so him being wounded was a problem. They talked about the need for having at least one more person trained in trauma care, and decided that it made sense to have two of their group go through first-level EMT training at the local community college and then train others in the basics. Their well pump also failed, so they had to haul water up to the garage, pre-filter it, and then run it through their Sawyer SP191 Point Zero Two water filter to provide water for most of the long weekend. They also found that maintaining a 24-hour watch was a lot more wearing than they expected it to be, particularly since they were down a person. Overall, though, Jen thought the trial went very well, and said they all think they’re pretty well prepared to deal with just about any emergency.