Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Phew ...

Back again. I am, this morning, multitasking. This means I am having the car handwashed at a facility that provides this wonderful service, and catching up with my blogging and some correspondence. Sooz is at home working on the packing. Oh, and I have to find a replacement light fitting for one that plunged to its death from the chandelier. And pick up some syringes. But that’s it.
Our settlement on the unit has been pushed back a little by the other side. So instead of moving in on the 26th of November, we now look like going on 4th December (the day after I am scheduled to arrive back from a business trip to Bangkok) – that’s if settlement proceeds as planned on 29th November. (Oh the dates …) Sooz has insisted that she’s not changing any dates again (long story!) now until the settlement is done and in the bag. There will still be time then to arrange for the change in phone and electricity and other utilities.
Still, the biggest challenge (Sooz may not agree with this after the dates stuff) is packing things and working out what to purge and what to keep. I have cornered the market on lidded 60L plastic storage bins and have been able to assign a place to most of my things. I am not sure others would appreciate the labeling system eg “Bits and Pieces”, “K Sort 1”, “Filing Dr. 1”. It is now too late to make a list of what’s gone in, but the plastic is transparent so there is hope yet.
We have the Council arriving at 7am on Tuesday to take away “stuff” that is not destined to make the trip with us. We’re not sure how much that is going to cost yet – they are coming to give a quote but they usually give the quote and take the stuff in the same visit – but there will be a fair amount of “stuff”.
But we are traveling well I think. And it really is a wonderful opportunity to get rid of some things that we’ve been storing for years. It’s also a good excuse to renew memories by sorting through all this stuff again. Sooz has suggested, and I think it’s a good idea, that we do this sort of exercise once a year in our new place. Just to keep the hoarders away from our home (and that would be me!).

Monday, November 08, 2004

On the move

Who would have thought entering the housing market would be so time consuming. I guess it's not just the buying (and doing the research into the steps and such) but getting ready to move. This falls into two parts - (1) getting ready to move out of the old place and (2) getting ready to move into the new place - as touched on briefly in my last entry.
It's not the packing I mind so much as the purging - going through things to see what we haven't used for ever, and are not likely to use, and certainly don't want to keep storing in case we do one day need a 7th extension lead. And, of course, it's not made easier knowing that the day after we throw something out, we're going to need it (hence the staging area - where we're not throwing things out straight away! It's messy, but it will work!)
Now that we've started packing boxes, we know the cats know that something is up. Both had started behaving a little differently. The boy cat is now clingy and has taken to sleeping on our bed; the girl cat has taken to spending most of the time under the house, and has started sitting on the washing machine. And we've probably started displaying abnormal behaviour as well!

More buying ..

The cooling off period has finished and we are now packing in earnest, and out buying furniture for our new abode. It's fun, but somewhat tiring - walking around store after store, and making decisions. I don't know how people who are building homes from scratch cope - because they also have decisions about the fittings, the tiles, the door knobs, the door handles, the windows, the colours ... at least most of that is taken care of when you're moving into an established building!