Away & At Camp

I'm eating pineapple quarters. They are delicious. If you have access to them I highly recommend you purchase them in bulk.

I'm at camp, spring training in West Virginia. Wesleyan College. We were here last year. It's the same. I got here last night around 6, watched some rehearsal, moved into my room, wrote some, taught some today. I don't know many of the kids yet. They seem nice & fine & good. Same ol' ya know.
The sleeping situation leaves little to be desired. Yes I have my own room and a bed and pillows etc, it's just hot as hell. And there's a railroad that runs literally outside the window of the dorms we're in whose trains insist on blaring their horns at 1 am, 4 am & 7 am. I woke up terrified and deafened numerous times. Today I bought a high power fan and am closing my window. We'll see if that remedies the awful sleeping situation any.
It is late. I'll be heading to bed now. Lots to do tomorrow. Lots to write, teach, rewrite, reteach, just do in general. I don't mean to come off negative (if I am). I do enjoy being here, some good times with some great friends. I think... no, I know I don't like being away from Fran (this is the first time we've been away from each other since we were married). Yeah, that's a big downer. But for right now, this is my job, and I'll enjoy it while I'm here. But I cannot wait for the summer to be through. On to bigger and better things, ya know. Just time for a change is all....

Today I am alone...

SO this is my 1st official full day being alone as a married woman... and to be quite honest....I didn't like it one bit! My husband, Travis, has been called away to fulfill his contractual duties with a great organization (YEA/Cadets) and will be gone for the next 7 days (I say called away...however, we have both known about this for quite sometime). We have been side-by-side everyday for the past several months and I am sad that he is gone (even though we knew about it doesn't mean we were prepared for it). It must be something about being married now, I don't know what it is...but I seem to miss him more now than ever before.

This is what I did today:
9:30 - Woke up
9:50 - Breakfast, a bowl of smacks to be exact
10:00 - Shower
10:15 - Get dressed, I won't go into details but I couldn't figure out what to wear and I was running out of time...BECAUSE I woke up later than usual.....
10:35 - I left 5 minutes late because of that...
10:55 - Stop by Billy's house to pick up some paper work
11:15 - Arrived at work
12:04 - Run back to Billy's house to return the same paperwork I picked up earlier
2:00 - Lunch, I don't eat a the normal noon because I eat breakfast at 10:00!
6:00 - Leave for the day
6:20 - Met Billy and his girlfriend at the local pizza shop
6:45 - Started showing property to Billy and his girlfriend
9:15 - Got home....
9:20 - Chowed down on some BLT (I had a moment of silence for my T since he can only have a BL)

So...I ended up being quite busy which is good because it made the day go by faster! NOW all I have to do is to figure out a way to make all my days jam packed! And before I know it, my sweet lovey dovey will be back home to stay!
OR I could trick myself into thinking that today is yesterday and that will make tomorrow or two days from the day I think is yesterday come quicker....i think...not to sure on that theory or even if that makes any sense (I will try it out and report back)

time for me to wrap things up

love you all

goodnight

lbe

A Summary

Good morning. Non-eventful morning. Laura is in the shower, you see she works weekends so she can take days off during the week. We find going out in public midweek quite enjoyable while driving downtown for a sandwich or a shop on a weekend guarantees massive southern crowds, pointlessly long lines & five hours in reckless traffic. Abhorrent. So we stay in weekends as much as we can. I guess you call Tuesday & Wednesday our "weekend". We like it. Oh shhh she just came in.

So, let's see, this morning I can give some further detail into our goings on as of late. I told you we got married, and pretty much since then our cozy little world has been turned on its head. We moved out of our lovenest in Canton. Packed the place up, which was a chore, and squeezed it all, or most of it, into a pod.
Love those pods. We drove some leftovers, including our three cats, up to my parents house in NJ. Fifteen hours with very unhappy cats and about 40 boxes of CDs & records, all in the Krupp's (her parents) big blue van. Brilliant. It actually turned out to be a great trip. My birthday, a day in Lancaster's Green Dragon market & surrounded countryside, my Dad's birthday. I had to teach one day but that wasn't so bad. I had Fran* with me.

My job takes me out of town for days at a time which as a single guy was amazing, but as a married man, it's awful. I do leave next Wednesday for my first little stint in West Virginia (woohoo!) for about nine days. Then June brings me to Buffalo for a couple days and then on the road the last week into the 4th of July. But she's supposed to come meet me somewhere in New England for the holiday so that'll make it a great time. July is a little up the air still right now but I'm pretty sure I'll be going back to Buffalo, on the road for about a week through the southwest, home & then back to Houston for a week there. Yes!

But for now! We are back in Georgia, for the summer anyhow, staying with the Krupps. Her parents just recently bought a house in a new development over in Acworth, and quickly finished off a little corner of the basement for us to live in. Leaving the loft was pretty hard but in the interest of saving for a house, not paying rent or bills is gonna be extremely helpful at this point. Our motto this summer: Scrimp & Save. Not a bad one, but one neither of us has ever had. Not that we're big spenders, but we are spenders nonetheless. We dine. We shop. We don't scrimp. We splurge in fact. And we've got a pod full of junk to show for it.

So here we are, newlyweds, our belongings, our near and dear scattered across the eastern seaboard, a summer of coming and going, work and sacrifice (maybe a little rest and relaxation here and there). All so we can have a little (dream) home for ourselves. That is the goal.

* on certain occasions I will refer to my wife Laura as "Fran", as that was what everyone called her when we met. I actually believed it to be her real name for a quite a while.

hello...

yes, hello... ...indeed...

...off to a good start I suppose

On a whim, we, or I, decided it would be interesting to start a "blog". Nothing glorious or earth-shattering, rebellious nor political, not detrimental and definitely not philanthropic.

Just Us.

Us is Travis & Laura Estler.

Quick history:

• full names: Robert Travis Estler & Laura Beth Estler
• we are eight years apart in age, Travis is just 29, Laura turns 21 in June
• the two of us met in Georgia, where we currently & temporarily reside
• spent quality time together (aka "dated") for a period of time, the exact amount is currently up for debate
• we own three cats, Abner, Dents & Yayoi, of which I am sure we'll write a great deal about here
• we used to live in the most amazing loft in the state of Georgia, seriously
• we love music (not like normal people say they love music)
• we got engaged September 25th, 2006
• subsequently got married on April 1st, 2007 (told you it wasn't a joke)
• we took a lot of photos along the way

So that is Us.

Hopefully this blog business will do nothing but further enhance our already spectacular relationship & barely two month old marriage, as well as give our friends & family, & possibly complete strangers, better insight into our days, nights & ultimately, our lives.

Our lives, in which I believe we are about to enter a very exciting & challenging stage of, including multiple moves thru various states, work-related separation, starting new jobs, leaving old comforts, travelling to the corners of the country, the abandonment & eventual reunion of our beloved & aforementioned pet felines, and possibly trying to piece together that honeymoon that we kinda took, but kinda didn't. More on that later.

So you read. We'll write.