We are Here! After a marathon week of closing, packing, cleaning, moving and cleaning, we are in our home and completely out of the apartment. We have internet access again AND Mark got me a clothesline up over the weekend. Wow! He even got the screen loosely hung up on the back porch. Unfortunately, we forgot that the ever-so-small gaps in the flooring of the deck means that the mosquitos and bugs can come up through there to bug us. We'll have to work on that before full summer gets here. Or get some citronella candles. Or both.

This weekend was race weekend at Talladega. I have heard about race weekend. I have heard some interesting stories about what life is like in Talladega on race weekend. I have even heard that traffic on I-20 gets a little challenging between Anniston and Birmingham over race weekend. Stories just don't give you a real picture of what race weekend is like. I made the mistake of going to the Pell City WalMart on Tuesday evening. Tuesday. The race was not until Saturday! Pell City is a whole 15 miles from the speedway. That seems to be close enough for the craziness. There were 15-20 RVs parked at WalMart on Tuesday, the beer displays were set up in the store, and people were filling up their carts with multiple 24 packs of their favorite brew. On Wednesday Mark and I went together and he got to experience it. We made the mistake of thinking that the check-out line by the tobacco counter would be the fastest line since there were not many people in it. Dumb move! We saw more tattoos than I have ever seen (and I watched part of an episode of Miami Ink one time). Heard more whoopin' and hollerin' than I have heard in a WalMart before. Mark and I talked about going back with camping chairs on Thursday and just sitting and watching the entertainment. But we figured we had enough going on with getting things done at the house. I might venture back to Pell City by Wednesday; I hear it takes a while for things to settle back down to normal. In the meantime, I've got a few loads of laundry to hang out on my new clothesline.