In today's video, we travel up to Southeastern Washington...
And the Tri Cities of Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco...
Where my wife and I will be moving about two months from now.
We take a look at the progress of construction of our dream house.
It's 99% complete inside...
And now some work on landscaping the yards has begun.
And I share some surprising news about my upcoming surgery...
Which has forced me to retire from my "real job" even earlier than I expected.
Our trip to Washington began at our regional airport in San Luis Obispo, California...
And we headed to Seattle, which was quite a bit greener than Southern California is
this time of year!
But Seattle was just a layover to switch to a much smaller plane...
To get us to what's going to be our new hometown: Pasco, Washington.
A great little town along the Columbia River in southeastern Washington.
Now, when people hear me say that we're going to move to Washington...
A lot of times they'll say something about whether I'm ready for all the rain.
But they're thinking of places like Seattle, in Western Washington...
Where they do get a tremendous amount of rainfall.
But that's not where we're moving.
We're moving to the east side of Washington, which is actually desert land.
The average annual rainfall in our new hometown of Pasco is just seven inches a year.
But there's no shortage of water, thanks to the Columbia River...
Which, by volume of water carried, is the 4th largest river in the United States.
Incredibly, about 90 million gallons of water flows through Pasco every minute!
So yes, we get a lot of water in Pasco...
It just doesn't fall from the sky.
Here's a shot that does a really good job of showing how close our house is to the Columbia
River.
This is the new subdivision we're moving in to.
When it's fully built out, there will be 37 new homes in this phase of the development.
Right now, I think 13 are either under construction or completed.
7 more are sold, but haven't started construction yet.
And I'm bringing the drone in for a closer look at ours...
There it is.
Home sweet home!
At least, it will be, starting this September.
It's a single-level, 2700 square foot, 5-bedroom home...
Although we'll only use 2 of the rooms as bedrooms, and 3 of them will be used for other
things.
The property is a half-acre lot, and that was a huge selling point for us because...
We like to spend a lot of time outdoors in our back yard.
And this house has a really big yard, and we had a lot of cement poured to create that
big patio...
Where we will have chairs, and loungers, a daybed, and a table for eating many of our
meals.
And you can see in this aerial video that a unique, distinguishing feature of this back
yard...
Is that 4-foot wide cement path that does a loop around the back yard.
All that area inside the loop will be lawn...
And around the outside of the loop will be lots of trees.
And every now and then, there will be model trains running on that loop!
Now, there's going to be a completely different video...
That will give you a full tour of the inside of the house.
That will be the next video I post to my YouTube channel after this one.
So, what you're seeing here is just a little preview of some of the interior footage you'll
see in my next video.
This visit we made to Washington in June, where I shot all this video you're seeing
today...
It's our last visit before our move, which won't be until September.
By the time we move in, the landscaping will be completed in the front yard.
And the lawn in the back yard should be looking pretty good...
As it already does at our neighbor's house.
Quite a long time ago...
We set the closing date for the sale, and our move-in date...
For the first week of September.
That was because I thought that I wouldn't be retired until the end of August.
But breaking news!
Much to my surprise, my retirement started a little earlier than I expected...
After I ended up with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in both of my hands.
My first clue was when three fingers in my right hand went numb.
We did some testing and found out I have severe carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand...
And a moderate case in my left hand.
Well, I can't really pack up and move all my belongings with two bad hands.
So, a few days from now, I'll be having surgery on the right hand.
And sometime after our move, I'll almost certainly have surgery on the left hand.
So even though my retirement doesn't actually technically start until September 1st...
I've effectively retired already.
The paperwork shows it as a medical leave until after I recover from the surgery...
Then I'll use some remaining vacation time to get me to my official retirement date of
September 1st.
So, since I won't ever have to go back to my "real job" at the nuclear power plant again...
I went in to work one last time on June 10th to clean out my office...
And when I was all done, and just about to head down the road for the final time...
I posed for this little selfie in front of my work van...
With the two containment domes of the power plant in the background.
I'm going to have that Carpal Tunnel surgery on my right hand a few days from now.
I really don't know how long it will be after the surgery before I'll be able to use my
right hand.
Specifically, I don't know how long it will be until I can operate the mouse on my computer...
Which I need to be able to do if I'm going to do any video editing.
So, I don't really know how long it's going to be before I'm able to edit together that
next video...
Which will be a full tour of the inside of our new house.
It might be a week from now...
It might be four or six weeks from now.
If you don't see a new video from me for a while,
You'll know it's because of my hands...
And not being able to do video editing.
I'll get back to YouTube as soon as I can...
But I've really got to get my right hand working again...
If I'm going to pack up everything from our California house...
And move it all up to our new house in Washington state.
That's what's going on with me.
I'm Jim Zim.
I will talk to you again here on YouTube...
After the old right hand is working a little better.