Darrell's weblog

Well, it’s been a month since my last update, and it’s been pretty busy for me. Once the whole holiday thing ended, it was time to get to work! Heather and I have decided to forego the stress of packing up all of our stuff and just let the movers do it. It’s a win-win, everything will be insured and we don’t have to worry about finding time or material for packing.

The movers will be at my apartment on January 23rd to pack up everything, and then they will come back on the 24th to load it on a truck and start driving off to Florida. This could make things a touch uncomfortable, because we are still going to be working until the end of Friday, the 26th, and we don’t actually drive out of San Antonio until the morning of the 28th. So basically we’ll spend 4 days and nights on an air mattress in an empty apartment.

Then there is the trip to Florida. Since we are taking Kitty (our cat) with us in the car, we are taking our time and plan to spend nearly three days (two nights) on the road. We will arrive at our new apartment on the afternoon of January 30th, but the movers aren’t scheduled to arrive until at least the 31st, and maybe as late as February 3rd! So we have several more nights of air mattress/empty apartment to look forward to upon arrival.

Speaking of cars, we’re just shiping Heather’s car. It was a hassle, and Heather really didn’t want to drive. Naturally, the window for the pickup/dropoff of the car are even wider, so we may have to drop off Heather’s car with a friend in town to get it loaded and on it’s way/ It could be as late as the 10th of February before it gets delivered! Oof.

At least the cost is a little less than expected. The total cost of packing, shipping and insuring our stuff, plus shipping Heather’s car, comes to $4,193. I had originally expected this to be closer to $7,000, so I’m pretty happy for the lower price. My new company is not reimbursing me for the move, but they are paying me a decent hiring bonus that more than covers all of our moving expenses.

Heather and I have spent the last couple of weeks getting rid of stuff. I didn’t realize that we were such pack rats! We have sold/donated so much stuff, I’ve almost lost track. Well, I know that we’ve taken eleven trash bags worth of stuff (mostly clothes) to be donated, plus we’ve sold a couple of boxes of books to a local Half-Price Books, and I’ve given away and sold quite a few things to coworkers. Ugh! No matter how much we get rid of, it looks like we’ve hardly made a dent! We still have so much stuff! At least it’s more manageable now.

The only thing left to do is all the little administrative things, like stopping/starting services, and packing what we’ll need for the week (or so) that we will be without our stuff.

I’m really just looking forward to getting the move over with and starting my new job. It still doesn’t feel “real” yet, but I’m sure that will come soon enough!