181 Uuhhhhhh...

This is our house tonight as we were leaving it.

Dark.

The LT and I were heading out of the house to a Hail & Farewell tonight at which he was being... farewelled...(?) He left his job as XO of HHC at the 507th  several weeks ago, so he was invited to this dinner at which the battalion commander was also being ...farewelled...(? there has got to be a better way to say that!) On our way out the door, I went to start the dryer and everything surged and died. The smell of burning plastic filled the air and we went in to panic mode. What had just happened!?

It seemed as though the power was back, yet the dryer wouldn't come on, the a/c groaned and sputtered off, the computer wouldn't turn on (gasp!)... it was trouble. 

Since the girls were going to a friend's for the evening anyway, I took them there so they would have a cool place to play. When I returned to the house, a maintenance man was there already. He said there was power coming from the outlets, but something was wrong (duh?). He said that we would probably have to move to a different house (!?). 

At that point, there wasn't much we could do while he tried to call people and figure out what to do with us. We had already paid for our meal, so we decided to go to the dinner and gave the guy our number to call us if anything got figured out. Of course it was 6:00 on a Friday night, so people were readily available...(seriously, no one has invented a sarcasm font yet?)

The dinner was lovely, although the whole time I was worried about coming home to a house burnt to the ground. The battalion commander had some great things to say about the LT. There were several other LTs leaving and he said things like "Thanks for your hard work, good luck with your next endeavor." But for my LT, he talked about how smart he is, what a great golfer he is (the BC took him to a charity event a few months ago and they had a great time), that had been promoted to the "A-Team" working in the CG's office and that he is doing such great things he's only in the army as charity work. Pretty great praise from a Lieutenant Colonel. He also coined him with one of the coolest coins I've seen!

But I digress...

We got a call towards the end of the evening stating that the housing office would be putting us up in a hotel, and to call and speak to the woman who had booked it. 

On the way home, the LT called the woman to find that they had booked us at a Holiday Inn. I checked the reviews and most of them were pretty negative. He called to see if they could put us somewhere else, and asked if they were even pet friendly and she didn't know. We went home, got the girls, packed a few things, and the LT went ahead to check out the hotel while I took Bean's clothes to a friend's house so I could actually dry them (mind you, it's 10:00 at this point).

Once he got to the hotel, they told him that the reservation had been cancelled. Great. The LT tried to call the woman from housing, but he couldn't get hold of her...

So he found the only other pet friendly hotel that we were willing to stay at and booked a room there. We finally got the girls in bed by 11:00.

And now we try to sleep and see what tomorrow brings!