Enroute

We successfully concluded the Fordham farewell tour this morning with a final hotel stay at the home of our friends Bill and Lona. (Our previous best friends having finally gotten around to evicting us on Tuesday... they also mentioned having their hardwood floors refinished this week but the "eviction" angle creates better narrative drama so I'll tell the story my way...)

Lots of tears shed by lots of people in the past week. I confess that I hadn't thought through that emotional angle when I volunteered for this last spring.

Dropped off our rental car this morning, checked through 200 lbs of luggage and proceeded to wait in the Philadelphia Airport USO. The Philly USO is -- post 9/11 -- close to the palatial standards of Disneyland. I am currently sitting in their TV room with my kids watching Dora the Explorer on a wide screen stadium TV screen. Not sure how I'll break it to them that we have to board our plane in 30 minutes.

This will probably be my last post before we arrive in Germany tomorrow morning at 3 am East Coast Time.

My Key Chain is Nekkid

So I sold my faithful Honda yesterday. I was happy to see it go after a week of increasing neurosis about driving it. By the end, I had developed a complex that I was going to break it or wreck it right before the sale.

This morning, we shipped Piper's car out of the Port of Baltimore. I spent much of my misplaced youth in the Coast Guard hanging out in port facilities. None of that prepared me for the vast asphalt jungle of the Baltimore Marine Terminal. The happpy sights of capitalism were everywhere -- concrete stretched for miles and fleets of cars were parked everwhere. Every kind of wheeled vehicle in every kind of condition. I wish we'd brought Micah. It was little boy power tool heaven.

My key chain now consists of two keys to our house (arguably our rentor's house now) and a key to a bike lock that I'm hoping I remembered to pack. If I forgot, every key on it could be irrelevant. I'll keep carrying it anyway. I couldn't stomach the insecurity that would arise if I didn't have it in my pocket.

Tomorrow I go to work. Thursday, we board a flight at noon, change planes in Atlanta and fly direct to Stuttgart. We land Friday. We start work and school on Monday. Somewhere in between will be copious amounts of sleep.

2 Steps Forward, 1 Step Back

The happy people in Germany have told me that I am cleared to enter the country under the NATO Status of Forces agreement. This is good news since our final hurdle is now removed.

It could not have come at a better time since we're all a little squirrly in the Fordham house. Nearly 4 weeks of nomadic life have taken their toll.

On Monday I'll be selling a car. On Tuesday, we'll ship our other car out of the port of Baltimore. On Thursday, we have reservations to fly to Stuttgart.

Reservations to fly are all that we have.

Reservations for lodging are still lacking. All hotels in Stuttgart appear to be booked solid. We are up against a trade show called Flail that appears to be a fairly big deal. At least the hotel folks that Piper has talked to are aghast that she hasn't heard of it. Following that, the reservation picture remains bleak because of Oktoberfest. Apparently sober Americans aren't allowed to enter the country for several more weeks.

We're hoping that Monday brings better news.

Stuttgart Oh Stuttgart

Piper has asked me to post this link to the town of Stuttgart. Warning: It's really nice. If I didn't know what I wonderful person she was, I'd suspect that she was gloating.

Now that I've added a hyperlink, I can cross another task off my "life's first" list. Next up: learning to text message on my cell phone.


Depressive Musings of my "Half Empty" Alter Ego

Three days to go. Three days to clear out the detritus of 7 years of life encrusted in the walls of this house. I (Andy) have come tantalizingly close to melting down on several occasions when people ask me when we're moving. I'm grateful for canned responses to common questions. Saying, "The movers come to pack our house on Aug 22," avoids nasty adjacent questions like "Where will you live then?"

Major progress on the work visa yesterday. I spent the day in Baltimore dealing with government contracts people to document my job. Scanned it all in. Shipped it off to Germany and showed up bright and early this morning to see the results. No joy. The little elves at the Army's European Command still want more. I'd be writing my resume by now if this weren't a really, really good deal.

I've moved many times but nothing has ever been this complicated. Pets. School applications. House rental. Vehicle shipping. Also the new high tech minutia to coordinate like e-mail, this blog, and internet telephone. I'm feeling old. I can't abide this new fangled nonsense. I want to go sit in the rocker on the front porch and whittle til it all goes away.

Fortunately, my really hot administrative assistant keeps plugging away at this stuff. I don't think she's had a normal nights sleep in a week. When this is done, I think she'll sleep for a week.

Today she finally hit me with her first request for payment and asked for a a new iPod. Hard to say no since every decent husband I know bought his wife one of those in like 2004. Also, it sets the precedent for me to update our digital camera. If only I knew where to have the new one mailed to.

Back to work. Hi ho...

Scheduling Nightmares

Those of you (all 2 of you, probably) who have been following our moving preps know that we were originally supposed to move on August 5th. You may have noticed that we are still in Philadelphia. This begs... um... lots of questions. Foremost among them, though, is what the heck is going on.

A complete description of my woes is not possible without an explanation of German tax law that I'm not inclined to provide. Suffice it to say that my work permit is still being processed. It hasn't helped that my evil overlords didn't submit the necessary paperwork until last month. I'm further hindered by the fact that the whole country of Germany appears to be on vacation this month.

So, the schedule that I do know. Our movers come on August 22nd. Our household goods will be moved to an undisclosed US warehouse until our paperwork is processed. Curiosity makes me wonder where that warehouse will be. Probably in some "gritty-sounding" place like Newark. Who ever goes to Newark anyway? I digress.

In the interim, we will live *somewhere*, I will work *somewhere*, and the kids will go to school *somewhere*. Right now, we are giving priority to determining the *somewhere* where the kids will go to school.

Quitting my part time job.

This week the Coast Guard politely informed me that I would not be promoted. This was not a complete surprise. I had been warned that spending the last 4 years in locked rooms doing intelligence work had not left me as "politically aligned" as some of my peers.

After 20 years of the best Pavlovian conditioning that your tax dollars can buy, I was rather surprised with my apathy. I've spent the last 6 weeks chasing down reserve units in Germany to work at. It's a bit of a relief to cross that task off my list.

How to fill those weekends. I think that I'll now plan to spend them dragging the kids off to tour European castles. Possibly we can do that until they complain at having to see yet another cool, thousand year old building.

There's not enough time to do all the nothing I want.
--Calvin and Hobbes