May brought us a plethora of activity.
Work at Outland was continuing, but frankly was slowing down. I had pretty much done everything that Chuck and Buddy were willing to let me do, and I even did some work for Dave D’Aquin, the owner of Vue Technologies (and Buddy’s son-in-law) on some aquarium light prototypes he wanted to manufacture. The only thing outstanding at this juncture was the design of a new ROV thruster for Outland. I had spent an inordinate amount of time researching off the shelf propellers for use in the new thruster, and bought a bunch of them to test in order to get a feel for which would work the best in the application. We rigged up a crude test fixture from a trolling motor and managed to get some rough data on power consumption, thrusts, RPM, etc from 6 different propeller layouts. A power consumption curve was developed and provided to Maxon motors to get an idea of what a motor to drive the propellers would look like.
We started out the month with the house inspection from the new buyers. It came as a surprise as we had been told that it would only be the buyers and their parents. So when a professional inspector showed up, I was a bit taken aback. In any event, he was extremely thorough and only found one minor item to report. The buyer’s agent made a comment that it was the cleanest inspection she had ever seen.
May also brought us to the extremely happy event of Meghan’s graduation from Ole Miss University in Oxford, Mississippi. We drove up to Oxford on the 10th where Meghan insisted on meeting us at the hotel when we arrived in town. Oh oh, we thought. She came up to the room and said, “I have something to tell you”. Those words strike fear into the heart of every parent and we steeled ourselves for the worst. Then she says, “I’ve adopted a puppy!”. Oh, we reply, while not the happiest news in the world, it paled in comparison with what was running through our minds!
The graduation was wonderful, and we are extremely proud of her. It took her a while to get her feet under her academically, but she finished in fine fashion, being on the Dean’s list. Congratulations darling, we love you!
Graduation was followed by a seafood boil that was held at the home of Christian’s (Meghan’s roommate) Grandmother. The house was a goodly way away in Pontotoc, MS and was the country home of Christian’s maternal grandmother. The day’s fare included boiled lobster and shrimp and steamed clams. A wonderful time was had by all, and thank you, Jim and Johanna for welcoming us into your family gathering. It was a wonderful day.
Melanie and I had previously decided, after talking with Ed and Maggie Dyer’s neighbor Tim, to utilize PODs to make our move from Slidell to Suburban, VA. Tim had recently relocated his family from San Diego to New Orleans and utilized PODs to great success. We had had some experience with them as we had used a POD to store everything when we moved back into the house after the rehabilitation was complete. So two PODs were ordered, which were delivered on the 7th of May. If you have never done business with the PODs people, they are a marvel of efficiency and their corporate setup should be the envy of all service organizations. They are efficient, the operators extremely diligent and provide information at all stages of the process. I can HIGHLY recommend them.
Once we returned from Oxford, it was time to really focus on the transition at hand. A decision had been made to separate everything into short vs long term storage. We knew we would be renting someplace to live, so the stuff we needed for that was placed in one POD, while everything else went in another for long term storage. Luckily we hadn’t bought a lot of furniture after the storm so most everything fit. A dear friend of mine, Don Bourgeois, came over at the last moment and took a bunch of the stuff that just wouldn’t fit in the PODs, and we decided to depart with. Hopefully the stuff will get used. I did have to get Buddy Mayfield at Outland to ship a bunch of the tools from the garage on pallets. Just not enough space. I was going to bring the stuff up in my car but didn’t have enough room and it was definitely too heavy. You should have seen the rear tires splayed out!
We had a day to spare at the end, so Melanie, Jourdan, Meghan and I went for our final trip to the French Quarter. It was a truly surreal day, which started out with us being able to park on the street on Decatur Street. This might seem like an odd thing to mention, but I’ve lived all my nearly 50 years in New Orleans and this was the first time I’ve ever been able to park on the street in the French Quarter! Anyway, we had a nice day, which was wrapped up by having dinner with Maggie Dyer at Cannon’s restaurant on St. Charles Ave.
The Act of Sale on the house was scheduled for today and was preceded by a walk through. Because the previous day was a holiday, the last POD remained in the driveway, which was approved by the new owners. The act of sale went through completely uneventfully, unlike when last we went to act of sale in which the seller’s had a major meltdown at the event. Another story for another day.
We left town to spend the night at Melanie’s Dad’s in Baton Rouge. I’m scheduled to leave in the morning to drive my car up to Edgewater, MD and leave it in with my friend Paul who lives there.
Stay tune for Part II of the Dubea transition
chris