today was ssi day, which usually means standing in line for at least 2 hours before you get to a window for help, then standing at the window for at least a half an hour trying to get things taken care of. surprisingly, today was a very different experience. we got there an hour after they opened, so i expected the usual 3 lines several dozens of people deep. instead there was one line with maybe 10 people in it. not being able to stand much (my knee has been giving me trouble since daughter day), i took a number . . . and was called up within 5 minutes. totally floored me. not only that, the young lady behind the counter took care of the savings account change in less than 10!

i don't think i've ever gotten out of the social security office in less then an hour before. now if only they don't screw up the account change, i'll be very pleased indeed.

from there we went to triple a looking for a large u.s. road map. everything we've managed to find has been smaller than half the size of those old road maps people use to travel across country. i was beginning to think they weren't in print any more. but, no, not only did they still have one in print, but it was free since linnorm has a triple a membership. and they gave us an atlanta map and a georgia tour book about 3" thick for free too!

then we needed more boxes, among other things. out here everyone smashes and wire wraps their boxes and doesn't let anyone have them so we've been buying boxes a little at a time for the trip (figures cali businesses would be anal about letting people take a few boxes). uhaul boxes, believe it or not, are cheaper than wal-mart boxes, and they have a return policy for unused boxes! now that one surprised me. but i did pick up a few from wal-mart (nice, thick, mailing boxes, but smaller than uhaul offers) and several more from uhaul and compared prices. we'll definitely be going to uhaul for now on. i also managed to get another very large roll of duct tape. we're using a lot of that too. i'm sure before this is all said and done i'll be picking up at least one more monster roll.

when i finally got home from all that, i called the car rental place and changed our reservation to try to cut the cost. success! i can actually afford the rental on my credit card without trying to find a way to beg a credit increase! saved about $600 switching from a suv to a minivan (with seats that fold down! yay!) and dropping our travel time about 4 days. saxy and i sat at the kitchen table last night with an old atlas and marked our route to determine how long the trip would actually take us. today i double checked it and marked it on the triple a a map, then called and changed the reservations. we'll still need help on that uhaul, and i'm seriously considering leaving the washer and drier behind to save on uhaul fees (smaller truck), but i don't know if that's as cost effective as leaving 99% of our other furniture behind.

still, things are progressing nicely. we changed our leaving date to july 2 because we want to make sure to be able to access taz's ssi. that puts us out in the middle of nowhere on the 4th.

just imagine! a quiet 4th of july without gunshots and having to drug the dog!