Dave

If you're reading this Steve & I are hopefully up to our ears in our stuff. The movers are due to be here tomorrow (today) and we are super excited & a little nervous about where we are going to put it all. I have recently figured out how to plan posts so I can write a post the night before.

Right now Steve and I are laughing our asses off as we watch the Top Gear's Christmas special when they did some long distance lorry (big truck) driving & bridge building in Burma & Thailand.

If you think the show is all boring, a couple of wealthy guys talk about cars none of us can afford - you're right. But while they do do that, they're also exceptional funny. Its the dry "I'm not actually trying to be funny but I am" which is my favorite. I'd say their Christmas specials are the best - they're about an hour to an hour & a half. They typically are sent to a random country, given no money so they buy old cars and are given a crazy challenge that many modern normal cars couldn't handle.

We watch this show on a channel here called Dave. Seems like an odd name for a TV channel, right? That's what I thought. So I decided to do some research to see who the show is named for. The Brits have lots of famous Daves' - Beckham, Cameron & Bowie. Nope, its none of those.

It's this Dave...

Are you a fan of the Hoff?

Under the Covers

Hello to all my readers... all 2 of you :) I'm sure you've been wondering where Ive been, I know you have both noticed my absence these past few days. Cue a tummy bug.

Yes - for the last 24-48 hours I have been fighting a most annoying and generally yucky tummy bug. Sleeping, drinking Schweppes & big mugs of chicken noodle soup have been my life - not fun. Also not much to talk about. Steve has been strong and supportive in my time of need but of course he woke up this morning with a queasy tummy so he's on the "clear liquids" diet for tonight.

Mind you - our chicken soup doesn't look like this. I wish it did!

On to more exciting things - we have finally received word that our things are going to be delivered.... the day before we leave for a three day weekend. Thank you Mr Murphy (family joke - google Murphy's Law)! On Friday Steve and I are headed on our first international trip since we arrived in the UK. We are going to Belgium for my school's 50th reunion. I'm over the moon since I haven't been back since 2001, my freshmen year of high school. Plus we're renting a car so we'll get to drive which is really exciting - except for the who's driving fight we will be having all week.

Back to our stuff - sometime on Thursday a moving company will be pulling up to our building and unloading our two pallets of stuff! As of right now the goal is to get the house as clean and organized as possible before we add all of our things to it. I've built our 4 new IKEA bookcases so we have places to put stuff. I will clear out our spare room tomorrow of all our our laundry racks so we can put boxes & storage in there while we unpack. I'm so excited to have our pots and plans as well as more clothes (I feel like I've been wearing the same 10 outfits for 7 weeks) & everything else we've simply been doing without for 7+ weeks.

Moving Part 2

Now that everything we we're going to be taking or storing wasn't sold (well almost - we have 2 large loads to take to the local goodwill & a donation of 150 lbs of food to the local food bank) we were ready to pack. Sounds easy enough - everything else is going to one of 4 places - suitcases to fly with us, storage - to sit and wait for us to return, goodwill - there's lots of little stuff left & shipping. Steve found a company which ships personal home items overseas for a reasonable price (read $1200 for 100 sq ft) which is pretty reasonable compared to some other shipping companies.

So 100 sq ft is about the equivalent of 33 medium home depot moving boxes, sounds easy enough right? Fit everything you need for the next any number of years into 33 boxes, and put them on a boat and wait 5 to 8 weeks to get them.... yes I am being super sarcastic.

So in an ideal world the house would be super organized and we would know exactly what to bring and what to leave behind. Unfortunately that's now how this went. It was more like a tornado, stuff everywhere, no origination, no going back and double checking to see if we packed what we really needed and not just stuff we thought we might like to have. It just all went into boxes, until we had way more then 33 boxes. We had golf clubs and shelves and art and computers and more clothes then we could ever where or wash and it all went into boxes. It took 3 days (not full days, but still 3 days) of packing to get it all in boxes. And after the dust settled and everything was in a box we had 2 full pallets.

Pallet 1

Pallet 2

After packing all this stuff in boxes, we loaded it all into a big box truck - that's everything we own fit in a box truck U Haul. If that's not a life altering experience I don't know what is. 

Now we were left with the task of getting the rest of our stuff into 4 large suitcases and 2 carry-ons & 2 personal items for the flight to the UK - let me tell you sir this kinda packing is an art! We even bought a scale. In the end we had one overweight bag (65 lbs for $100) and 3 50 lbs bags. Plus carry-ons weighing about 30 lbs a piece and personal items (backpack and a purse) coming in at about 35 lbs and 20 lbs respectively.