Farewell Caifornia!

We've had great weekends at the festival, sales were great, it was great to see Bristol friends there, the Schroeder family is amazing, and Finnegan has had a blast playing with all his puppy friends here.

We now look forward to driving cross country to Bristol, but it won't be that easy....

Our schedule looks as such:

Drive to Bristol (May 22-31st)
          -Stop off at my sister's place in Colorado
          -Stop off at my family's in Edwardsville, IL
          -Overshoot Chicago, drop RV off with friends who are parking it for a month
          -Park my kitties at the cat sitter (the amazing Stacy)
          -Move some stuff into the Leon house in Wilmette, where we stay for a few days
          -Get ready for Germany

GERMANY TRIP! (May 31st-June 9th)
         -Fly direct Chicago to Berlin
         -Tour Berlin before going to Vienna
         -Stay in Vienna for a few days, seeing a metal concert (headlining Rammstein, Slayer,   Anthrax, Baby Metal and more!)
         -Visit Augsburg and the Korger family, whom we work for during the Christkindlmarket
         -Fly back reluctantly

Move into Chicago (June 9th-whenever!)
         -Get back from Germany and move into our new apartment we sublet during the run of Bristol
         -Collect all animals and move them in
         -Alleigh starts her class at DePaul
         -I start Ubering and piano gigs to start some week work!


Sounds like a lot huh? Yeah, it's got us pretty stressed out too. But we know we can get it all done :)

There will be plenty of pictures from the next couple weeks for sure. Many many more adventures to come for these road rennies!

Pure Disney MAGIC!!!!!!

Since I’d never been to Disneyland, I didn’t set a lot of hefty goals for what I wanted to do during the visit. I wanted to get an R2D2 Mickey hat and wear it gleefully as I followed veteran season-passholders, around the park like a hungry puppy.

Grayson and Eeyore are sad that the Disney magic had to end for us for this season

As SoCal continues, we are finding more and more fun things to do here in California!

First off, we discovered that California is a bit more livable than we were initially led to believe. We've heard how "expensive" it is in Cali. However, after a while here, we realized that a lot of it has to do with rent, taxes, expenses and all those other things. It's very possible to VISIT California on a budget, living here just takes a lot of patience and willingness to get charged more taxes for random stuff.

It's also great to have family out here. Every Wednesday, Alleigh and I have dinner with my Nana and her boyfriend Bernie. We even bring Finnegan along and he behaves himself (mostly...)

Visiting Nana!

We also went to my Aunt Marcy's new house for a 20-person Passover dinner! It was one of Alleigh's first experiencing with Jewish holidays and the mishegas that goes along with it. There was talking over each other, one upping of stories, cursing, clumsily stumbling our way through the prayers and traditional observations (pausing to explain significance to the goy in our midst) and all the other delightful little slices of family Jewish ceremonies (where most of the attendees are not Jewish...)

At Passover!

Another fun gathering we went to was a annual Beltane party hosted by Danielle of the Washing Well Wenches in SoCal. Set up in their AMAZING log cabin style mansion nestled in the mountains of  Idyllwild, CA, we were treated to killer food, awesome friends and roughly 30 degree weather! I played a bit of music, accompanying Ian of VanaMazi on a solo gig. There was even Whipped Cream Shots dispensed by the talented Kaitlin Chin suspended from silks attached to the ceiling. Knowing so many talented people and getting to celebrate both our talents and the emergence of spring was a ton of fun and we can't wait to do it again sometime :)

Apologies for the shiny flash but hey, I'm in one of the pictures!!

Now we are looking at friends coming to visit, work to be done around the house and a possible upcoming Disney trip! Meanwhile, we continue strong with our gym routine, pet care regimen and planning new, exciting adventures ahead.

Oh! I also made a fun new personal website to act as an online business card or basic profile for booking music gigs (which I decided I am going to do more of). I used Wix.com and didn't add too many frills. I hope to get some good video examples of my playing soon so I can add those to the site.

It's at http://gideon019.wix.com/gmcs

More to come as SoCal adventures continue! 

So here we are in California!

Since the festival here is one of the most expensive to work in the country (the festival has said that it is allowing absolutely no camping this year no matter what), we have worked a lot to try and find some affordable living accomodations.

Fortunately, faire friends come through! Hanna put us in touch with a lovely family living in Riverside, CA, about an hour's drive from the  festival. The married couple along with one sister and their SIX BOYS graciously have allowed us to park in their driveway on their 2.5 acre ranch house. We ran an extension cord to an outlet, hooked up our hoses to a spigot on the outside and BAM! Condotron is ready to deploy!

All set up in Riverside, CA!

We even bought a few extra sewer hoses to connect to each other and can reach the septic tank on the property, meaning that water disposal is not only possible, but terribly convenient! I can't tell you how happy we are to have found such a great setup, surely the Rennie Deities are looking out for us.

In addition to their many kids, they also have 11 dogs, 13 cats, goats, chickens and pigs! Needless to say, Finnegan is having the time of his life here. He loves all of the boys and they love him. He even is having a great time meeting the other animals. He chases around the pens of the goats and pigs; he even bumps heads with the goats and sniffs noses with the pigs, what a brave boy!

 Days have settled down a bit now that we are leveled out (thanks to a lot of scrapwood) and the RV is cleaned up. The property is about a 15-20 min drive from everything, including the gym! Once again, lucky us.

We have a fairly regular schedule here at home. We exercise Finn as much as we can,  go to the gym, cook at home and most days around 5pm, I go inside to play Halo with the boys. My randomly assigned profile name the very first time was Pickles and it's kind of stuck. I now have my own profile under Pickles and enjoy getting regularly pwned by children a fraction of my age.

The trip isn't without its bumps however! Within a couple days of us arriving, my phone developed a crack from the INSIDE of the screen and ceased to function and my computer's logic board failed. Both were repaired, although I'm still waiting on the computer  to return.

In the meantime, we are enjoying our California setup and are using the extra time to ourselves to continue to work on the Rennie-vation of Condotron. More updates on that in a future post.

The Rennie-vation is coming along nicely!

Pictures will be added to this post as soon as my computer gets fixed. In the meantime, time to soak in a bit of this California beauty and play with the animals (and maybe some Halo too....)

My goodness, did this faire go by quickly!

This happens a lot really, festivals go from “just beginning” to “almost over” in a blink of an eye. Suddenly, this creates the need for getting everything done that you have been putting off or saying “Yeah! Let’s do that soon.”

News flash, soon is always soon until it becomes now.

As such, the two of us have been making a concerted effort to get a lot of experiences in and accomplish our goals of really enjoying the places we are fortunate enough to visit in our line of work.

Sometimes, the action comes to you! We were present for a lovely wedding ceremony between two friends at the Monday Morning Bazaar on site. A couple hundred friends gathered and there was a brief ceremony which was succinct, touching and moving. The best of luck to the new couple as they begin their new life together!

We then proceeded to tackle the 2-week span of seemingly nonstop birthday celebrations. There were almost a dozen different birthdays all within this span (including mine and several good friends as well) and so we found some opportunities to find new experiences through those! To celebrate our friend Kendra’s bday, we went to the Phoenix Zoo. Having never been to this zoo before, I really appreciated how the whole place felt like a nature walk with exotic animals rather than the typical display-to-display presentation of most zoos.

This guy, right?

For my own birthday, we began the Rennie-vation project to revamp the interior of Condotron. Almost a dozen friends showed up at different times to lend a hand or just hang out. We disassembled all of the cabinetry (incredibly tedious and time-consuming), painted all of the surrounding wood, spray painted the hardware to a new silver sheen, and then reassembled everything back together. It took a lot longer than planned but we now have the fire lit under us and want to get more done as soon as we buy more paint! It was a great start to the project and I’m so grateful to have so many friends willing to come and help out.

Looking good and more to come! Happy birthday to me!

And so the excursions and experiences continued on. I took Finn to the Cosmo Dog Park in Gilbert, AZ. This super spacious park had a very large water feature that dogs could swim in. It even had a little pier. Finn didn’t really know what to do with the water. He loves wading out there but actually diving in is not his particular cup of tea yet. Maybe with a bit of training and practice, he can become more of an aqua-dog! Regardless, we had a great time, he made tons of friends and we are looking forward to going back to the park soon.

Dear God....My little puppy brain can't process this much amazing...

Other experiences managed to find their way in. We walked in the St. Paddy’s Day parade they had on site (a fun gathering of Rennies who walked the paths of the festival celebrating the day) and threw potatoes like confetti as we went by.

The festival St. Paddy's Day Parade!

We even went to Tucson to visit the University there, my alma mater. The campus was lovely as always, we even got lunch with my high school and college friend Mike. Alleigh found the Alpha Phi house on campus and Finn enjoyed being walked extensively. Meeting up with our old Chicago roommate and friend was the icing on the cake. It’s really fun to meet up with friends from other states in other states. Yet another perk of our traveling lifestyle!

Campus still looks gorgeous!

Spent 3 years in this dorm! Great times and memories

Phi-Bear!

All in all, we are looking at about 1 week left here in Arizona, 2 days of which are festival days. In the time remaining, there’s a million things to do and also very little at the same time. Since everyone is running around getting ready to go, a lot of social gatherings are postponed or canceled and everything seems to carry the air of urgency.

We can’t wait to begin the next leg of the adventure with our Los Angeles journey. Meanwhile, we are going to soak up every last bit of Arizona we can in the days remaining. There is something to be said about that sense of urgency and departure; it really makes you not want to waste time and make every experience count. I think it heightens our appreciation and gratitude for everything, thus leading to a more fun experience everywhere we go! Carpe diem and such!

Many more roads to go!

Everything the light touches....is ours!!

We make the most of our limited kitchen space!

As for the RV itself, there are a few maintenance duties we have to be diligent about. I try to run the engine at least once a week and we are always cleaning. Be it vacuuming, doing dishes, cleaning cat boxes and so forth, there is constantly something in need of tidying up. That’s one of the inherent responsibilities of living in an RV; since it is a smaller living area, it gets messier much more easily. On the flip side, that means that cleaning it up is no huge task either!

Finn loves his new house!

Prior to arriving in Arizona, one of the activities we were most excited about was all the fabulous hiking ventures that awaited us. We're hoping to go on overnight camping excursions with Finnegan while we're out west, but need to ensure he can handle it before attempting such a trip.

Today, we embarked on our first hike of the season and Finnegan's first hike ever: Silly Mountain!

The name sums it up perfectly--the mountain is very silly. The hike was child's play, lasting barely 30 minutes before we reached the top.  The brevity of the trip played to Finnegan's favor, especially since he wouldn't drink any water prior to the hike and exhausted himself easily in the desert heat. The group of us (myself, Grayson, and our buddies Kendra & Alexis) giggled the whole time at our eager pup's need to rush ahead one moment, then running back to mommy and dramatically wallowing in his self-inflicted panting sprees. He'd snap out of his self-pity the moment we gave him water or right as he saw something interesting down the path he hasn't investigated yet. Finn perked up when we reached the top of the mountain too, just sitting with a stupid grin and enjoying the view.

The way up the mountain I kept him on a leash. Partly out of respect to the park's suggestion, and largely from my fear of him frolicking off the path and getting stabbed by the cholla. I mean, overall he's been great at avoiding cactus... it's just this one particular bush of jumping cholla near our campground that he seems to get in trouble with every time he passes it (once in the paw, then in the leg, next his lip and nose, oy vey!)

 Anyway, on the way down the mountain we let him off leash because we were worried he'd tug and accidentally pull us down the mountain. There was also just the sense of trust that Finnegan would stay near us (as he always does) and on this off-leash period not only was he perfectly-behaved, but he didn't get stuck on any cholla (or anything else, huzzah!)

One thing I haven't mentioned on here yet is that we can no longer crate him because (despite our constant and MANY efforts) we can't stop him from breaking out of his crate. I swear he has thumbs.... next we're gonna try to utilize reusable zip ties to encapsulate the crate doors. Since we can't crate him at night these days, we're looking forward to our exhausted puppy sleeping through the night now after his exercise today.