Friday, 28 May 1999
Derry NH USA

Well as great a metaphor that it would be to liken our final days in our house, neighborhood and town to the final days before the fall of Saigon it would be a little over dramatic. None the less it is real exciting and we defiantly have a slash and burn mentality.

You go through all your stuff once and decide that you have rid yourself of everything you possibly can but then reality sets in and you need to reduce the pile so that it will meet our 1700 pound limit. Maybe they meant 1700 hundred Kilos?

Getting rid of the cars(yes everything must go even your wheels) was exciting. We were not getting a lot of calls from the ads we placed and were starting to get worried. Then we get a call from this guy who comes over with his wife. They are not sure if they want the Corolla or the Camary. They introduce themselves and immediately start calling me by my first name. It was Frank this and Frank that. Well they were around for quite awhile and were real interested in our move. We felt like we had made friends more than negotiated for the price of the car. (no I did not negotiate the same way I did at the garage sale) They did decide to buy the Camary but better yet they thought their neighbor would be interested in the Corolla. So the next day the original people and the neighbors and a bunch of kids all show up. Eliesio (the first guy) introduces me to everyone. then Sue comes out and the introductions start all over. they continue to ask questions about our move and the cars always on a first name basis. The neighbor decides to buy the other car and we decide they will come over in four days to bring the rest of the money. Well Thursday comes and it is like family reunion time as we transferee titles and they leave their cars in our driveway as they go off with our cars to get them registered. I never knew this car selling stuff was such a social event. By the way they were both buying the cars for their kids graduation presents, pretty nice gifts!!!

Well it is a weird feeling to have people drive off in your cars and leave you only with rental wheels but it is also a very good feeling to turn them into cash as opposed to watching them depreciate everyday.

The next thing that We did that freaked us out was we had to purge all our cupboards and refrigerator of food. I hesitate to tell you of this because I think what we had was pretty normal but I am afraid a lot of you will think we are nuts. Well here goes. The easy stuff is the unopened canned foods like soup and tuna fish this goes to the food bank. Now I start to look in the cupboard and see about six different types of soy sauce all opened and used to varying degrees.Then all kinds of oriental sauces and Indian type sauces all opened and used to different degrees.Vinegar's, how many types of vinegar should two people own and open? well in our case around nine bottles.Then I see a couple of different types of sugar all opened and used to different degrees. Then oils, some hot some spiced, some vegetable , some peanut , some sesame, some olive in fact three or four kinds of olive oil. Then there was baking soda baking chocolate about nine different types of pasta and then all the rice, and on and on and on. Why did we have all this stuff? And why did we always open it but never use it all? Well that would have been only semi concerning but then I went to the refrigerator.I still can not figure out why we had 17 yes 17 different types of mustard all opened and partially used. We must be crazy. Then move on to barbecue sauce at least six opened bottles all different types but still all Barbecue sauce. Did I mention we have a few more bottles of soy sauce type things and of course three or four kinds of shrimp sauce and ketchup. I really hope that we are not unique in this position but if we are I can tell you it's not to bad being eccentric. I spent a few hours draining all these jars and bottles to fill the recycle bin. So to all of you that thought I could not find something to challenge myself with after leaving my job you can clearly see that I have been using all my management skills just to survive.

We spent the rest of the last two weeks taking little stickers and putting them on everything we own. Some denote surface shipment some Air and the others Storage. Everything must have a sticker for the movers who arrive June 2nd. If you hear a loud scream coming from the Derry area next week when we get back from Indy it will mean that all the stickers fell off while we were gone.

German lessons are over from this side of the pond. We will retake them back up when we arrive. We are more knowledgeable than we were before but we are far from where we need to be. I can hardly wait to see what Sue's hair cut looks like after she has been to her first German speaking stylist. I am not concerned because I can always go to the crew cut and maybe she will have to also I always liked Sigourney Weaver in her crew cut.A even more terrifying thought is trying to tell the Dentist that you want a cleaning and coming out with a set of dentures!!!!

So we have our one way tickets for Germany and we leave the day they pack the house (June third).I will not have E mail for about 30 days but as soon as I do I will send it out to you.I will be keeping this account open for a few months so I will be able to receive E mail on it but I will not be able to read it until I get everything set up in late June. We will be living in what the Germans call Rent a home for the first five weeks.

All I can say is this is very exciting and even though at times seems like it would have been simpler to just keep on keeping on but this is a lot more fun.