Stuff and Things Part 1

When the government moves you overseas, it's a weird and complicated process. Back in July, we separated all our worldly possessions into several buckets: the violin (which I didn't trust in storage and didn't want to risk with the humidity here given that I was unlikely to find an orchestra) to my parents' house, six large suitcases and two carry-ons that were coming with us (which was then divided into stuff we'd need in the hotel and stuff we wouldn't to try to keep things a little bit organized), up to 450 pounds of UAB/air freight (which would get here first but had restrictions on liquids or batteries), up to 7200 pounds of HHE/slow freight, and the rest to storage.

For us, because our apartment was small, pack-out was two days. We had Apollo and the suitcases at the hotel the day before. I'd heard so many horror stories of The Bag That Must Not Be Packed getting packed, and we didn't want to risk Apollo getting out, so we just removed them from the equation. They did the UAB first because more people run up against the weight limit there, and since we came under it, it was good to have a reserve pile. We left 36 pounds on the table even with the reserve pile, but it didn't seem worth starting a new huge carton for that. Then was HHE, which took forever. We'd gotten conflicting instructions on whether to box things up, and it turns out we should have boxed more stuff up. We learned that lesson, and while the movers were hauling things downstairs I started stealing their boxes and tape to pack up all the books and DVDs for storage the next morning. Day 2, Storage, went much faster, and then our apartment was empty and it was time to clean and get it ready to list for sale.

Our UAB got here on Thursday, September 2, and it was really great to see some of our stuff again.* The best part was that Apollo beelined to his box of toys and immediately started rubbing his face on it. I had no idea he'd be so happy to see his stuff! Then he got to spend a few days jumping into and out of very large boxes. According to a database, our HHE is on a boat. It should be in Belgium on Thursday and from there will take more or less a month to get here (because Uganda is landlocked, they'll transfer it to a plane and fly it the rest of the way here, so we'll get it a little faster than usual).

*The timing was amazing since the next day we were leaving for Sipi Falls, which is a bit higher up (read: cooler) and we had sweatshirts in the UAB.