Before I start chronicling the work after the road trip, I want to indulge in a few more pieces of reflection.

First, I don't think I wrote about our white water trip in Jackson, Wyoming. While we were floating down the river, in between rapids, I had time to survey the landscape. We saw a bunch of American bald eagles along the river and several osprey. On one occassion, I was looking at one perched high above the river on a cliff. I then saw this bird fall off the cliff, headfirst, and plummet down towards the water. I had at first thought the bird has been shot by some gun happy NRA member since it appeared to just be falling with no grace or guidance. It hit the water and was completely under for a goot 30-40 seconds. I had thought that was that, until it came back out of the water with a fish flopping in its talons. It was the kind of thing they show you on the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet and slow down for you so you can see all the action. I was able to see it all first hand, no slo-mo needed. My jaw dropped and sadly no one else saw the dive. The guide did see the osprey return to the nest though and pointed out it was feeding its babies. Man was that an amazing experience.

Also, I posted the Las Vegas pictures.
I forgot to link to them, so here is the link for all you kids out there.

Here are the apartment pictures too.

I would never recommend renting an apartment without seeing it first. I think our's will be okay in the end, but there was a lot of things that we did not anticipate having to handle that needed looking after when we arrived. The previous tenants were complete slobs. California law apparently does not require a fresh coat of paint on the walls either. So we decided since we had a few days until the movers came, we could paint.

Preparation is the key to getting the job done.
Here are the items you will need:

• 2" blue masking tape (it's much better than the white)
  
• newspaper or 12" kraft paper rolls
  
• plastic tarps
  
• roller pans
  
• rollers
  
• brushes
  
• sandpaper
  
• paint
  
• Trisodium Phosphate (a cleaner)
  
• 2 buckets
  
• tile sponge
  
• rags
  
• rubber gloves
  
• spackle
  
• spackle knife
  
• radio and your favorite music/radio station
  

Here are the steps we did that seemed to work well.

1. mask along the floor where the wall meets the ground
   
2. tape a strip of kraft paper to the mask
   
3. once all walls are done, drop and secure the tarp
   
4. spackle noticeable holes in the wall
   
5. mix up a moderate strength TSP solution
   
6. wash walls and rinse with clean water
   
7. finish masking windows and ceiling
   
8. using brush, paint along your masking points and the corners
   
9. using roller, cover the rest of the walls working in sections about 3' square
   
10. let it dry
    
11. repeat for second coat
    

The hardest rooms were the bathroom and the kitchen because of all the knooks and cranies that the room presented. They are not necessarily hard to paint, it was just very difficult to get to the spot to apply the paint (e.g. behind the stove).

Once the masking and washing is completed, everything else is relatively simple. Luckily we had some extra hands to help in the painting and as fast as we could mask, they were ready to apply the paint.

Home Depot was very good to us in terms of helping determine the amount of paint, reasonably pricing the supplies and having everything we needed. Behr was the top rated paint by Consumer Reports, so we picked them as our choice.

Still don't have our material possessions. Got some mail which was exciting. I had been wanting some mail for a while and got a whole bundle of stuff that had been held. What is is about getting personal items that makes you feel good? Birthday is only 11 days away. Am more excited about seeing Mom and Dad than anything else related to my day. Gotta go outside and take in some fresh air now.