Trip Day the 3rd
Productive day today... pre-employment paperwork is 90% complete. We have a PO Box and local bank accounts at a reasonable looking local bank. I just have to take the box address and a void check back to HR to finish the last 10% of paperwork. faeflitt visited the music center today and may have found a teaching position with them. All-in-all, lots done.
Housing, on the other hand, looks like it is going to be a pain. Finding a 2-3 bedroom house with a short-term lease when you have cats at the beginning of the school year translates to not being able to be really picky. We drove by one place today that looked like a possibility and shall see the inside tomorrow. Honestly, since we are only likely to be there a few months, as long as it isn't nasty smelling, in a dangerous part of town (I don't actually think Rolla has a dangerous part of town), or condemned - it will probably be OK. It just needs to be big enough that each cat can carve out their own territory, lest they all disappear in a big ball of fur and feathers. (Major cat fight the day before we left - the changes in the house and the continued disappearance of furniture seem to have convinced Allegra that she doesn't need to be on the bottom anymore... so she and Clareton teamed up and chased Precious into a corner and let her have what for. End result - large tufts of black fur floating through the air and four growling and pissed-off kitties.)
I think I am beginning to get the hang of navigating Rolla - it is a small town, so the roads don't really follow a grid - more like twisty, intertwined circles... but we were able to find rental properties pretty easy today, given a street address and a map. Running from one side of town to the other takes about 10 minutes max. The only movie theater in town (with 4 screens) is right across from one of the numerous baseball fields, which is right next to a skate park, a pond, and the city rec center - which is very modern looking and comes complete with a mini-water park. We have seen two fabric stores that are not Walmart, an embroidery shop, as well as a Staples, several auto-parts stores, a Kroger, and a boat shop. I think we are going to be just fine here.
Supposedly, Wednesday is the day all the new rental listings come out, so tomorrow morning we shall pick up a paper, visit the Nuke Department to say "Hi!" and then hit the road. Hopefully we can squeeze in a tour of the UMR Reactor in the afternoon. Sexy Cherenkov radiation and all that. Possible visit to the local shire's fighter practice in Waynesville tomorrow night.
Final note - when you are putting together your Nigerian scam IM account, at least take the trouble to put some fake information in the profile and avoid putting the word "SCAM" in your ID.
Housing, on the other hand, looks like it is going to be a pain. Finding a 2-3 bedroom house with a short-term lease when you have cats at the beginning of the school year translates to not being able to be really picky. We drove by one place today that looked like a possibility and shall see the inside tomorrow. Honestly, since we are only likely to be there a few months, as long as it isn't nasty smelling, in a dangerous part of town (I don't actually think Rolla has a dangerous part of town), or condemned - it will probably be OK. It just needs to be big enough that each cat can carve out their own territory, lest they all disappear in a big ball of fur and feathers. (Major cat fight the day before we left - the changes in the house and the continued disappearance of furniture seem to have convinced Allegra that she doesn't need to be on the bottom anymore... so she and Clareton teamed up and chased Precious into a corner and let her have what for. End result - large tufts of black fur floating through the air and four growling and pissed-off kitties.)
I think I am beginning to get the hang of navigating Rolla - it is a small town, so the roads don't really follow a grid - more like twisty, intertwined circles... but we were able to find rental properties pretty easy today, given a street address and a map. Running from one side of town to the other takes about 10 minutes max. The only movie theater in town (with 4 screens) is right across from one of the numerous baseball fields, which is right next to a skate park, a pond, and the city rec center - which is very modern looking and comes complete with a mini-water park. We have seen two fabric stores that are not Walmart, an embroidery shop, as well as a Staples, several auto-parts stores, a Kroger, and a boat shop. I think we are going to be just fine here.
Supposedly, Wednesday is the day all the new rental listings come out, so tomorrow morning we shall pick up a paper, visit the Nuke Department to say "Hi!" and then hit the road. Hopefully we can squeeze in a tour of the UMR Reactor in the afternoon. Sexy Cherenkov radiation and all that. Possible visit to the local shire's fighter practice in Waynesville tomorrow night.
Final note - when you are putting together your Nigerian scam IM account, at least take the trouble to put some fake information in the profile and avoid putting the word "SCAM" in your ID.