Category Archives: Moving

Back to Work -A Comparison

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Work
Building Where I Work

Well it has been close to 2 weeks now since I’ve been back to work.  I surprisingly picked right up where I had left off 2 months before.  Not much, if anything had changed.  It was kind of unexpected but at the same time not surprising.

In this building I work in a similarly drab cubicle. I think that is one of the descriptions of a cube dweller.  A lot of your life takes place in a well….a cube.  The cubes are almost exactly the same with very little variation as with the inhabitants of the cubicles…. And the roads leading to and fro.

As you can probably guess by the way the building looks, we don’t do art.  Nope, just data.  Lots of computers.  It isn’t too terribly exciting, but it is complicated and sometimes challenging. And almost always the same.

Having some time off has given me a lot of perspective.

Tall Yard 2
The building where I want to be…and even there I will be mostly outside

I am glad I have employment and I did realize by coming back that I have learned my System Administration job fairly well.  I put a lot of effort into it and it shows.  Being able to just pick up and sail freely along is cool just due to the sheer amount of information that I have to know in order to do it.  I like to learn and grow and I feel that I have accomplished my goal of being an Application System Administrator.  I knew I could do it; and I have.

I want to be a tropical farmer, innkeeper and a surfer too.  I am sure I’ll look back at some point and be able to say that I’ve also accomplished those goals. I am ready to live where there is more green every day than grey. More plants than computer screens. More sensations to experience than sitting on my behind.

In the mean time, I will go back to the stark, dull building that shields me from the harshness of the outdoor world of Colorado… and plan my escape.

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Puerto Rico Prep Time

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Can you believe it has already been 2 months since Britton’s memory/health scare? Me either! He went back to work this week and our schedules have normalized once again. However, what is in the back of our minds (and sometimes in the front), of course, is our move! This is a big deal for us because we have lived in our Greeley, Colorado house for nearly 10 years now! Talk about time flying! Now that we have only 8 or 9 months until we move we are seeing how much really needs to get done!

Thankfully we have already made our checklist and have started working our way down our timeline to Puerto Rico at a nice pace. We are certainly on track, but just like any major event (say, planning a wedding for instance), most things have to wait until just before the actual event is about to take place.

In the mean time, we have accomplished a few tasks on our lists. One of those was to find Kitty a pet carrier that was airline approved. We found a Sherpa brand soft-shelled cat carrier on Craigslist for just $20. Brand new they cost about $70, so we thought that was a decent deal and Kitty seems to like it ok.

Kitty and the Carrier
Kitty and the Carrier

Britton in carrier
Britton liked it more! 🙂

We also pulled the trigger on buying new carpet for the upstairs of our house. Now that Schnoodle is gone and we will be renting out  the house when we move, it makes sense as an investment to fix it up for the future tenants. Plus we will be able to enjoy it for these next few months. I believe they will be installing it this weekend, so stay tuned for the before and after transformation.

In order to install the carpet we have to move off all of our furniture and anything else that is on the carpet. That has helped us to see more clearly what we will be dealing with in terms of “stuff” when we actually move. It’s kind of astonishing how much “stuff” we accumulate over the years. And we have consciously tried not to buy or accumulate!

Basement Stuff 2
Stuff from around the house now in the basement -clothes, shoes, computers, pictures, guitars, etc

I am starting to see the wisdom in Britton’s view of starting fresh in Puerto Rico and not bringing much with us. For one thing we will be living in a studio cabana when we first move there and two, it is going to be difficult to transfer/ship a lot of our life and belongings there. Already a few of the items in our “first moving bag to PR” ended up getting broken in transit even with the “Fragile” warning. So…we have a lot of stuff to clear out one way or the other. It is eye opening to realize that our stuff is just that -stuff- and it feels good to have a clean slate. But it is still difficult to sort through especially when you’re a sentimental and collecting type like me.

Overall, things are swinging right along during this Puerto Rico prep time and we are still on course for our tentative move date. As it gets closer and closer, our dream life of Puerto Rico and “real” world  of Greeley life are starting to converge and it is very exciting!!

Tall Yard 2
Soon we will be back here!

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Our First Moving Bag to Puerto Rico

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Since Britton is going down to Rincon in a little more than a week for  a short trip to check on the property, get a little work done and help our friend in his search for a Puerto Rican property, we thought we should take advantage of this trip to send some of our stuff with him.

So we went down to the Arc, a local Greeley second hand thrift store, to look for a suitcase that we could fill up and then just leave there AKA our first moving bag to Puerto Rico.

Suitcase
We found this suitcase (now filled and ready for PR) for $1.25!

It was a little hard to decide what to put in the suitcase because, after all, we still need to live here for another 9 or 10 months. But we filled it with stuff that we thought would be handy there and that we could live without here (and that weren’t really that exciting for possible thieves). For instance, our juicer, waffle maker, some glasses, some plates, our fish platter, an extension cord, hammer and screw driver and a few knick knacks.

Britton really just wants to start out fresh down there and buy everything, but I reasoned with him that for everything that we bring and don’t have to replace at retail price we will save a lot of money. One checked $25 bag full of $200 worth of stuff saves us $175 in replacement cost. Plus, shipping 50 lbs of stuff via mail would be a lot more than $25.

So if you see someone sporting this exciting and fashionable 1980s brown luggage with a red racing stripe, you can say ‘hi’ to Britton. ha!

Also, while we were at the Arc he also just happened to spy this pair of Doc Martins, that fit him, for just $8! Awesome deal and he loves them!

Doc Martins
Doc Martins

 

 

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Moving to Puerto Rico Checklist

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Lately Puerto Rico has really been in our mind. We are MORE THAN READY to move mentally/emotionally. So we have been thinking about getting ready to move physically. We wrote up all the things we will need to do in the next few months so that we can just up and move there. A lot of this is a general checklist for moving pretty much anywhere, but some of it is specific to moving to Rincon Puerto Rico.  After living somewhere for so long (Greeley) there are things we just don’t think about much.  We have lived here in our first home for 10 years.  Things like car titles, using up old stuff, medical and school transcripts/records , making sure we have Social Security cards, etc.  Also we don’t really have an “address” to ship stuff to, so that will be something to figure out.

For those of you who have already made the move to Puerto Rico (or elsewhere), are there any other things we should think about/take care of before we ship out?

  • Banks (change over address and ensure future bank cards are delivered to us)
  • Open new Bank Account inPuerto Rico
  • Cars (get titles together, sell)
  • Buy new car inPuerto Rico
  • Go thru all Stuff/Junk (to friends/family, charity, sell or toss). *Question: How much should we take with or replace?
  • Find new homes for the chickens
  • Get Kitty’s vet records and learn what it will take to bring him with us on the airplane
  • Get house cleaned professionally (carpet, bathrooms, kitchen, etc)
  • Put remaining properties under managment(2)
  • Host a going away party!
  • Put together all personal / professional records
  • Call insurance agents to cancel car insurance and change home policies to rental and update address
  • Sell assets we can’t manage from afar
  • Use up old stuff and don’t buy new stuff (Frozen food, cleaners, canned food, bathroom supplies, etc)
  • Look for boxes and pack up / label and have family ship to us when we get there
  • Buy airline tickets and line up rental car for appx 1 month while we look for a new car
  • Find new homes for our plants (coffee, banana, orchids)
  • Get tax documents together for 2012 filing
  • Update address with property tax assessor, 401k, IRA, etc
  • Setup things we need down there (we already have water and electric.  Mayyyybe internet?  Cell phone? )
  • Find new server / hosting for website and promote

We have been thinking about this a lot more lately as it appears we will be moving our date up.  We don’t have an exact new deadline but we figure we can take care of a lot of these things now in preparation.  Stay tuned for posts on many of the items in the above list!

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