Back Up and Running....

Finally! We are back up and running with the internet, phone, AND cable in our new house! Hallelujah. It took only over three weeks to get everything installed, but at least that time is now behind us and it is amazing how stagnant it felt not having the Internet to use for a while....I guess we have REALLY become dependant upon the web - and namely GOOGLE. 

The best part about having all of our services transferred from our old house, to our new house, was the letter I received from our service provider, SKY. 

It read:

Dear Mr. XXX,

Thank you for choosing SKY again as you move homes. We understand you have re-ordered your broadband internet connection to be transferred and we expect that this service installation will be complete by the close of day on Tuesday, March 10, 2009. To check the status of your order and its progress, please log on to : www.sky.com/service and enter code XXXX. 

Sincerely,

SKY Customer service

If we do not have the internet in our house, how can we check the status of our order??? 

I love great customer service experiences such as these.

(SARCASM)

Life in Boxes

Our dining room as a holding point for boxes and furniture to be moved.

We have been living out of boxes again this week as today is moving day (again) for us. Post-robbery and car vandalism, we have not felt 100% comfortable in our current house, so we have opted to break our lease and move to a different house. We are sure our current house is probably safe enough but it is more the idea that someone has been inside this house and seen our things. Since we have no long term ties or ownership rights to this house, we took a break clause and found a new, lovely house in the "suburbs" of our town. 

The movers are here today and I am sitting back drinking my coffee and hoping all goes smoothly (Scott of course has escaped yet another one of our moves!). We are excited to be in a new house and hope it doesn't take too long to settle in there and unpack our belongings. I will post photos of the new house soon but the best part of the new place is:

#1 - We have closets. At least 7 of them! In this house we do not have a single closet and it has been a bit messy for things like coats, etc. with no place to really go...

#2 - We have a full size "American" refrigerator. The bar/dorm sized fridge just isn't cutting it and although I enjoy going to the grocery store, having to go every day due to restrictions on space is getting annoying. I am thrilled to have space for platters of food and maybe 2-3 days worth of food. 

And we will have two extra guest rooms in our new house, so if you are contemplating a visit to the UK, we will have a room for you. :) 

Our "closet" room and my fabric stash packed and ready for the move.

The living room in boxes.

Arachnophobia blues

After our second night in our house (tangent: have we mentioned that in the history of uncomfortable beds, ours is likely the 3rd or 4th most uncomfortable? possibly a post on this later)...but anyway after waking up from our second night, I awoke today to a reality version of the b-movie, Arachnophobia.

I came home at lunch to find a bleary eyed Cassie, eyes red and damp from melting down over finding a spider in her towel after showering. Oh, and the millions and millions of spiders we have in our house. My superhero wife spent the morning vacuuming the windows and crown moulding, wiping out cracks and crags above, behind, in-between, and below most every object, doing her best to rid our humble establishment of the very living beings who ultimately protect our living environment from various critters, pin-head sized or otherwise. Only trouble is now, she says is that we have a spider population equivalent to the state of California (or Great Britain as they call it in Great Britain).

So upon coming home at lunch, Cassie explained her toils to me, breath interrupted, and in one motion, grabbed a paper towel, lunged across the room, and smashes her fist into the wall, all while screaming 'Victory!!!!!' She opened the rag to reveal her spoils......a spider the size of a grain of sand....and a fat one at that. Turns out that I married an expert mini-spider hunter....which of course I find very attractive.

Anyway, this evening while having dinner and settling in afterwords, we had multiple periods of increased heart-rate....quivering lips....complete paralysis....upon discovering another...and another.....and another....and another spider.....turns out that we really have a lot of spiders in this joint.

We went to the UK version of Walmart....to check out the local, economically-priced wares, namely spider cianide, tarantula toxin, arachnid anthrax....where there was a complete lack of pest control products. Coming from a country where we love our chemicals, We were truly surprised not to find any pest control products of any sort.....but we did buy some clothes pins, cling wrap, anti-bacterial wipes, and a toilet brush....which are great....but still are not creepy-crawly killers.

So now we are off to bed....where we are sure to encounter night-terrors of the eight legged kind. To those of you who know what I am talking about.....thank you for your prayers....goodnight.

A night in Nashville

We are in Nashville for one evening. Our lawyers who are working on our work permits and visas were able to secure our biometric appointments for us at the application support center here in Nashville for tomorrow mid-morning. There are only 129 of these "application support centers" in the US and we could not schedule this appointment with such a center until we returned from our second home finding trip from the UK, because we will have to surrender our passports at this appointment. 

We thought that our lawyers would push to schedule this appointment for us as SOON as we landed back in the states since it takes another 4-5 business days (after this appointment) to process our final visas, but as with every thing else we have experienced with this move, this appointment is not going to happen on time. Apparently the earliest appointment we could secure anywhere on the east coast or in Chicago was not until August 18th, so we asked the lawyers to look anywhere in the south and we would work to get there. Nashville's office is able to take us tomorrow mid-morning (the earliest appointment they could find almost anywhere east of the Mississippi), and so we are here. After this application center takes our finger prints, photos and verifies that we are in fact who we say we are, then they will send our applications to our lawyers. Our lawyers will then hopefully go back and forth with the US Government and British Embassy to process our visas quickly so we can finally move!

On the housing front, we still do NOT have a confirmed lease for this house we saw last week while we were in the UK.... Our UK agent actually emailed us after we returned from the UK to say she could not move forward with the lease on this house over there because she did not have credit applications from us. I almost went through the roof when I read her email. We were in this English town (same town as our agent) for almost THREE entire days with nothing to do but secure this house and she did not think to give us these applications until we RETURNED to the states?!?!

Such is par for the course on the way this entire moving process has been going for us so far....

Let's just hope our visa part actually goes well tomorrow.

Back in the UK for a 2nd Home Finding Visit

We are back in the UK for a second home finding trip and I am pretty convinced I will not be leading a jet-setting life anytime soon. The jet-lag has hit me pretty hard this time around. It is now 4am on Tuesday morning (UK time), and I am sitting in our hotel lobby surfing the net because I woke up at 2am with no real hopes of falling back asleep. 

We left Dulles airport on Sunday night and arrived at Heathrow airport on Monday morning (local UK time). We then drove back up to the Midlands Area here to meet with our relocation agent in the late afternoon. She had secured an appointment for us to view the house that we had recently found online so we could see it in person before signing the lease. It actually appears things are set in motion for us to secure this house as our new home. This row house is located in the actual town where Scott will be working and it is more of an "in-town" location, so we are both pleased with the choice. I will also be able to walk to a few shops and amenities, so I should be able to exist without a car for a while if needed.

Hopefully the front of our new UK home....

There are some downsides to the house: no closets anywhere, no wardrobes, no dryer, only a half fridge, no garage, etc, but overall it is a good choice and has old character, but has been nicely updated on the inside. 

The Refrigerator and the Washer ONLY (no tumble dryer.....)

Our time is limited at this point, so we would like to just settle on a place so we can move forward with securing the lease. We have FIRMLY asked our agent to make sure the check is cut for the deposit on this house. Only after the letting agent receives a deposit on a house, can one obtain a lease to then review and amend. The terms of the lease are not clearly spelled out with the owner and tenant until after this deposit has been received, and we are hopeful that the owner will not change the terms of our lease so we will not loose this house. Of course, finding this house and the process to secure it has been surrounded by more out-of-the-ordinary circumstances which now seem more normal to us, rather than if it had it gone smoothly. We are not sure if these problems have stemmed from the owners of the homes in the UK (who overall seem to have no motivation to move quickly on securing leases for their own homes) or if the problems have stemmed from the incompetency of our agent who is representing us here. Either way, it has been a less than enjoyable (and frankly quite frustrating) process. 

Since it seems that our housing situation should be as secure as we could hope at this point, we will be heading back to the US earlier than expected. We will drive back down to London on Tuesday evening to hopefully fly back to the states on Wednesday. I cannot wait for the jet-lag to set in again once I encounter another new time zone....

Moving Day #2

Today was our second moving day out of our house and our final one. The packers packed all of our remaining goods for storage today and then our renters arrived later in the afternoon to collect the keys to their new home. 

We had a total of 107 packed boxes going to the UK via our air shipment (only about 4 crates at 600 pounds each) and 114 boxes going into storage, plus all of our furniture. Thankfully we did not pack any of those boxes, although I have just realized that the packers accidentally packed my current cell phone charger. I am not sure if that will be shipped to the UK or stored, but either way, it is not of much help to me right now....nor will it be of much help to me if I find it in the UK....

Just a few of the many boxes all packed and read for crating.

Our dining room packed up for storage. 

Our kitchen completely empty...even the fridge! 

Scott & I enjoyed a final dinner of Chicago's Portillo's fine italian beef and italian sausage in our empty house before leaving the city. (We actually thought we probably were too stinky and not presentable enough from moving all day to be in a suitable restaurant next to other people, so we opted for take-out.)

We left Chicago late and drove away as the downtown lights were shining bright against the dark sky. We are now staying with Scott's parents for a few days and look forward to not doing too much while there.

Moving Day

Today is Day ONE of moving day out of our Chicago house. I saw the moving van pull up this morning and shed a few tears...mostly due to my lack of sleep last night and for not being as organized as I had hoped to be for this move. It is now noon and I cannot believe how quickly our house has gone into boxes. Pretty soon I am sure we will be staring at the walls of this house and will probably only have our suitcases remaining....

The Farwell Chicago Tour

We are on the farewell Chicago tour now...the time is now minus four days until we move out of our city home and live out of our suitcases for a few weeks before we actually get to move to the UK. Our renters move into our house on Wednesday of next week, so we have a weekend of more organizing our things ahead of us.

Last weekend we said goodbye to many of our friends in the city . This weekend we have another weekend of goodbyes ahead of us with both of our families coming to town, and a few more dear friends. Today was my last day of work (Scott has been "temporarily retired" for a week already) which seemed very strange for me because I do not have another job lined up at the moment....although I will be working at some point once we make the move and our settled.

Scott has joked with me that I have spent the last month on my "farewell tour" at work. I have had the great luxury of getting together with my clients and partners to say goodbye and to also transition my accounts over to other staff members. Sadly, I am leaving a job I have truly enjoyed. It is in fact exactly 5 years ago that I started at my job - on August 1, 2003. I would imagine such timing rarely happens when exiting a job.

I have been fortunate to represent the best city in the US and also feel privileged to have been able to experience and learn more about Chicago in five years with my job, than I probably ever would have experienced in many years of just living in Chicago. My work farewell tour culminated last night with a lovely cocktail reception in my honor at the new Trump Hotel in Chicago. It was only fitting that the room in which it was hosted was called the "Skyline Room" and had an amazing view of the city. It has been a great pleasure to work with such great clients, partners, and colleagues during my time in Chicago and I am fortunate to call so many of them friends now.

A Change of Address...Before even moving....

I guess we are learning that things in the UK really do not work the same as in the US.....
We thought we had found a place to live when Scott & I went over to the UK for a week on our house finding trip. The Latimer House that we had selected was the best home we saw during our visit and really our best option overall. It seemed like a quaint "English" house, and I already had identified my favorite things about the dwelling. All other homes were either quite small (and dumpy) or else they were homes out in the middle of nowhere. Granted this area to which we are moving is not large overall, but the "villages" we visited during the house tour consisted of a street or two, at best, with a few houses on them. There may have been a local pub in that village, but there was definitely not a grocery store, gym, or even a store that you could walk to if you wanted to go out for a stroll. The "towns" we saw do offer such amenities and that is why our only one viable option for a house (which was in-town) was the one we selected.

Sadly, we found out this past weekend that the landlord of the Latimer House decided he did not want to sign a 24 month lease with us. Since we need a two year lease for a house (part of the agreement of our move), we were unable to move forward with this contract on the house. I am slightly frustrated that this information about the lease terms was not presented at the very beginning of our interest in this house, but as we are learning, things are done differently in the UK than we would expect in the US.

Everyone who has lived in the UK continues to tell me I need to take all of my American expectations and throw them away. I will need to adopt a new set of expectations. Situation #1 has arrived. I am just hoping we do not face a simliar situation with the next house we would find.

So, we are back to the drawing board in the search for a house. I am quite anxious to find housing since we will be moving in less than 3 weeks and I have no idea what bed linens (sizes), kitchen items, etc. I will need to pack for our shipment of goods that will go with us. I am also a bit nervous about signing a lease on a place that I have not seen in person, but we are lucky that with the Internet and digital pictures, we should be able to get a (fairly) good sense of a property before agreeing to live there.

I guess my dream of having an AGA stove in our English house was nice while it lasted.....

What's in a Name

Well, Cassie and I are moving to England.  

Just when the thought of moving abroad had escaped our (my) conciseness, the opportunity has finally presented itself.  My employer will be moving us to a small town (near the birthplace of Shakespeare) in the central part of England.  

The thought of our coming move has had us dreaming of the travel....the romance...the history....the...wait, we're moving out of the country.....and soon.

The thing about moving is that it is kind of hectic....make that really hectic.  And moving out of the country is just that, but raised to some exponential degree.  There are packers, movers, tax accountants, real-estate agents, human resource professionals, bankers, lawyers, travel agents, new bosses, foreign exchange consultants, insurance agents....and more that we have yet to talk to.  

The funny thing, though, is that considering the inherent diversity of the ex-pat relocation support army....almost each and every one of my soon-to-be British compatriots has had the same response upon completing their respective introduction:

Ex-pat support infantry person:  I'm so-and-so and I provide such-and-such.

Me:  Thank you for your time.  

Ex-pat support infantry person: Your name,  well that's a good Scottish name!

Me: In fact I am of Scottish descent - here is my family history, looking forward to living in the UK, thanks again for your time

Ex-pat support person:  Wonderful.  This is my family lineage, (this is where the specific infantry person's story varies somewhat)....and finally let's get down to business.

We're not quite sure exactly what is going to unfold over the next few years, but one thing is certain....I do have a uniquely Scottish name, a family name now for both of us.  

We decided to enter the blogging world to chronicle our adventures ahead, and invite you to follow along as we explore our new home (England) and neighborhood (Greater Europe) and settle into our new, strange, historic surroundings. 

Cheers!