...jiggidy jig

that is "home again, home again jiggidy jig". Did anyone else's mom say that when you got home?
Anyways, in case that wasn't enough of a hint - WE'RE HOME!!
I cheered when we crossed the Georgia state line. My sinuses are acting up and its so dang humid out... but those are both signs that I'm home sweet home.
The trip was an absolute blast, don't get me wrong for a second. But moving every 1 to 2 days and driving thousands and thousands of miles can get a little tiring. I wouldn't trade our month away from Atlanta for anything, but its nice to be back among friends, apartment, and church. We arrived at 5:52pm on Monday night after 27 days and 8,615.2 miles. And get this, as we rolled into the parking spot, my car's total mileage read 39,999. I backed up and tried pulling into the spot again, but it wouldn't roll over to 40k. Amazing timing, though. Another spot of good timing - we planned to listen to the entire bible while driving on this trip, but we didn't actually calculate how feasible that was. We didn't have a schedule or plan - we just listened when we could. Well, we finished everything up to Revelation (the last book) the day we drove to DC and listened to Revelation today on our drive to Georgia. Perfect. =]
Anyways, since getting home we've both been very very busy. From the moment we pulled in we were running around like crazy because we had to get the stuff out of the car before the rain quit threatening and started pouring. Holly interviewed for a great job today and starts her temporary job next week. I'm starting my job on Monday and painting my new house this weekend. I got a new cell phone since Grand Tetons NP never found mine. And today I received a much-unexpected treat. My computer!
See, what happened was*, the moose and I weren't the only ones who saw the magic from inside my computer fly. And that wasn't the only magic amidst that day. Remember that river I forded to escape the moose? Well that river had a bridge not far away and that bridge had - you guessed it - trolls. Well, technically, I'm informed by the note accompanying my package, they're not trolls at all but have been mislabeled for a long while now and are too apathetic to run a campaign of the magnitude required to change that. So, at this point you're thinking I'm flagrantly lying, right? I mean, who's ever seen a troll under a bridge like those old stories and drawings describe. Well that's just the trick. The stories are junk, the pictures are frauds. All cleverly controlled by the 'troll' population to keep their existence too ridiculous to be believed. You see, 'trolls' are actually much much smaller than commonly believed. Which means two things: 1 - you've never seen them because they're so small and 2 - they can fit inside my laptop. I've got proof! I'm typing this on my laptop right now and there's no way that would be possible without their diligent work and tiny fingers (and good technical education). The note included with the computer described their sorrow over my destroyed laptop and their next two weeks of gathering the parts and every spec of escaped magic. They toiled, they struggled, they read up on logic boards. And viola, they booted her up, found my mailing address, and sent it back. Now I know the question on all of your minds. Why would they bother? Well, the note requested one small favor in return for their labor - to help enlighten the world as to their name and tear down the long-lived misnomer of 'troll'? No, they just wanted to keep one of my memory sticks because they thought it was cool. So I'm down to 1 GB of memory but an otherwise working laptop. You can see the marks from the antlers if you come over sometime. For now, I'm off to finish posting photos. I'll be adding to this blog in the following days, but they will be backdated to the days we're missing, so this post will likely retain the appearance of "most recent". Don't be confused and read away! We had a lot of fun that you haven't read about yet.
Until then!
Ellen

* for all those who believed my last story of the moose attacking me and my computer, it should be noted that all flagrant lying of the story-making-up nature begins with "what happened was..."