The Packing has begun.......

Packing the house……

Ok so it finally seems real, we have begun the packing phase.

Wait! I thought you were still waiting on papers? Have you sold you house?

These are very excellent questions and I shall answer them in turn.
Yes…….No…….

However, the fact that we have yet to receive official paperwork to legalize our move, and the absence of a pending sale of our house does not mean that we are not in the midst of packing. You see, I am married to a J (of the Myers-Briggs Type see this link for more detail or this one for detail on INTJs) and so we need to start early for the move so that we are not rushed at the last minute getting everything completed. Since we do not have control over the speed of the paperwork process or the sale of our house, we must control what we can, and that means packing early.

If you will recall from the previous post (http://gilgrimes.blogspot.com/2008/06/movingdo-it-yourself-or-hire-it-out.html) we have hired the Mayflower company to move our stuff. As a value added benefit, they will give us all the used boxes we need to pack our stuff. So yesterday we headed to the office and loaded up on boxes. Since they had just off-loaded a family we got most of their boxes and all their used wrapping paper. This is saving us a bundle, and it meant that we could begin the packing in earnest. We started with all the glass and crystal since we had so many dish-pack boxes and it allows us to free up the china cabinet so we can get that back to mother prior to our move. It was amazing how easily things went, so very unlike our previous moves, things flowed. It may be that we had plenty of time to pack the room up, or that it was happening early, either way it was nice not to have to rush the packing job.

Having cleaned out the china cabinet we turned out attention to Nancy’s study. We packed 90% of her books and cleared out her desk. We have not decided if we are keeping the desk or not, but we have cleared it out none the less. We also decided to make Nancy’s study the storage area for the packed boxes.

Other news…….
I am not sure if you all are watching the Flikr web site where I am posting photos, but I am posting some of my sketch work as well. I have to utilize a scanner form a friend so it will be intermittent, but I am planning on getting a scanner soon and I should be able to add more. I am trying to include a little information about the sketch so that it makes a bit more sense.

Well that is it for today………Had a couple look at the house………….Hope they want it.

Moving...Do it yourself or hire it out?

DIY Move vs. Mayflower

So we had talked bout packing and moving ourselves to save money on the whole process of the move. It sounds good right? You pack your stuff and then rent a U-haul or similar truck to get you form Point A-B and you drop it off at point B. Well in theory it is grand, but when you include an international border and a distance of 4,075 km (2,532 miles) it becomes a little more difficult.

Basically when I contact the U-Haul folks and ask about driving a vehicle to Canada the all have the same tone and inflection to their voice. They get that flat, lifeless voice that indicates that the question is beyond their ability to answer and so they begin to redirect the customer toward questions that they can answer. So I ask about getting as far as Augusta Maine, and that would be a trip that allowed 7 days to get there, and would cost $1,182 plus fuel. That means you are filling up the ever so fuel efficient U-haul truck (7 mile to the gallon average), and driving it through the mountains of Arkansas and Tennessee, not to mention negotiating any large cities in that beast. The tank is 60 gallons so roughly $240 per fill-up and an estimate of 361 gallons if all goes well (but what the heck let’s round it up to 400 for the ease of the math) which is $1,600. So at this point we are up to $2,782 for a complete do it your-self move (DIY). All of this an the added joy of have to drive every mile yourself, load and unload the packages, and we are still not to Canada, we are only to the border.

That seemed a bit much, especially when Nancy explained in no small detail to me how much she looked forward to driving each and every one of those miles herself in the Suburban while I was driving the U-haul. So, with that in mind, I decided to look into other solutions.

FINDING A MOVER

So, when you are going to move internationally, you have a little more trouble than if you are moving cross-country. I found this out when I was talking to several companies that are geared toward the DIY mover. I contacted the PODs moving system and they were glad to help me out and get me as far as Moncton until they found out it was a personal and not a business move. That was a real shame, because I really liked the idea of having a POD dropped to the house, loading over a few days, and then sealing it for the journey.

My next effort involved looking to companies that shipped/moved people internationally and I found a few via the internet and they were all located in NYC. I asked for quotes form three of them and received a quote from only one. The quote seemed reasonable enough and was based on the measurements of our furniture that we are taking, and an estimate based on the number of boxes needed for out move from Utah to Texas in 2000. I was surprised at how fair the quote seemed, but I was a little concerned that the contract stipulated that I would pay the amount of the quote as the lowest rate, and if the space requirements exceeded the quoted dimensions, the price might go up. I turned to the internet to examine the credentials of the company and found several case reports of negative interactions with this shipping company so I backpedaled form them pretty quickly.

As I pondered my next step it hit me that we live near Ft Hood (the largest US military base) and that they moved people every day all over the globe so there certainly must be a company locally that could help us out. I contacted the household moving department at Ft Hood and they put me in touch with the local Mayflower Company. When I spoke with them, they informed me they had just completed a move for someone who headed to Vancouver and that they had moved people to PEI before and would be glad to come out and give us an estimate. YEAH!!!

So, I sent them the same information that I had given to the other companies and they generated an estimate and then came out to fine tune the estimate. In short it will likely cost us twice as much to have someone carry our stuff to the Island, but they will carry it door to door and load and unload it for us. Additionally they will also provide us with free used boxes so we do not have those costs. IT sounded like a good deal and so we will sign this week.

Now all we have to do is wait on the temporary worker permit and we are home free…….Oh there is that sale of the house thing still left to complete……..

Good God it is Hot in Texas

Heat in Texas

So, it is mid June and today’s temperature was 35 C with a heat index of 39 C (for those of you not schooled in metric measurements, the human body is 37.5C). Today on PEI it was 17 C, and I cannot tell you how envious I am of their current environment. Yeah I know that come December I will be longing for some heat, but having spent the morning outside leveling stalls and sweating several pounds away I am unconcerned about the heat.

So that brings us to the logical question……”How are things going with the move?”

Well, in regards to the move, things are going well. We had all the garage sales and have really gotten to the basics of what we need. We looked into the cost of renting a vehicle to move everything and it turns out that a moving company is competitive with the U-haul. Yes it is more expensive for the moving company, but it would allow Nancy and I to take one car and trade out the driving and that is nice. So we are going to sign with the local Mayflower moving company representative and we will pack ourselves. They will load, transport, and unload us. We still want to pack ourselves so we can continue to sift through things and decide if we really want to take them with us or leave them behind. The Mayflower folks have offered to give (i.e. free) used boxes to us in which we can pack. We still do not have a move day as of the writing of this post. We are moving, and we should be moving no later than August, but we do not have a definite date as of now.

Why the indecisiveness? Well you see we are waiting on the temporary workers permit that allows me to work on PEI. I cannot move until I have that permit and so we wait patiently while the wheels of government spin at the speed they spin. When I do get my paperwork indicating that I have a permit waiting on me at the border, believe me that I will post that information.

We have settled on a house to rent. It will be located on the north side of the island 83 Lewis Road, and we will have photos as soon as we get there. You can see where that will be via the good graces of Google Maps.

More soon.

Sears the Final Chapter

Sears the Final Outcome

So, 4 days after the last post (May 5th), the engine arrived at the house and a quick inspection indicated that there were no surprises (i.e. there was not a pool of oil in the box, and the engine looked very similar to the old engine). So, while we did not have a running mower, the engine was in hand and so it was only just a matter of time before we would have a running mower.

We contacted those fine folks at Sears again and after the usual recounting of the entire story we were able to schedule a date for the repairman to install the engine. So when do you think that fabled guy was going to show up? Well according to Sears it would be sometime between 8 am and 5 pm. In other words someone would have to be sitting around waiting for the repairman to show up. However, we had the upper hand. During the process of trying to straighten things out we had acquired the phone number for the repairman and so we contacted him directly to arrange for an appropriate time that would be suitable for both parties.

He arrived as scheduled and sure enough after a short while we had a functional mower again. During the process he spoke at length with Nancy regarding our experience and it became very clear that this was standard operating procedure for Sears. They often did not know what they were talking about when the customer called, and they freely made up answers when they had none. If the could shift the blame to others they would, and disservice was the sine qua non. They remind me very much of the service that can be found at despair.com

So, the mower is running, I have had a chance to voice my displeasure with their customer service in many different settings, and nothing changes.

Enough of the rants, more on the move next post.