Getting out of Atlanta

We had hoped to leave Atlanta on Jan 21, just after Christiane got back from visiting her family in France. We were not ready to close on the sale of my share of New South Associates (which took place on Jan 30), so we decided to use the time to find a real estate management company to help up us rent out our apartments.

On Monday Jan 23, we hired one and decided at the same time to move out of our 2 bdrm apartment upstairs in the main house and into our 1 bdrm apartment above the garage before we left for Mexico. We had originally planned to put off moving apartments until May when we got back from exploring Mexico. We spent the next two weeks packing up, cleaning up, and painting the apartment to get it ready for renting and moving into the smaller apartment. The day after we finished, we packed up the car with 3 months of stuff for Mexico and left Atlanta. Whew!

We first headed to Springfield, IL, to visit my brother Jack. His house is in better shape than it has been in 100 years. After the fire last year, they had to redo the plumbing and the wiring. All the bathrooms are new, the kitchen is new, everything in the house had been painted, and all the curtains and trim, etc. were new and looked great, and they were working on finishing up the back porch/deck when we arrived. We got to Springfield on Friday, Feb 3, and visited the new Lincoln museum which is worth the visit if you ever get to the St. Louis area. On Sunday, Jack and Judy had a Super Bowl party at Jack's store with half a dozen big screen and projector TVs. Too bad he does not have some computer games.

We left Springfield this morning (Feb 6), and reached Oklahoma City tonight. Hope to make Laredo tomorrow, where I will look for some Paisano stickers for the car to help us with the policia. The story is that the Mexican government is trying to attract Mexican citizens to come back and spend their U.S. money, and the Paisano stickers are meant to keep the policia from hassling them before they can spend their dollars. Every little bit helps.