That ticking is getting louder, I tell ya.
We’re officially out of the “long vacation” timeframe, and into the “standard” two week vacation timeframe. You know this one: enough time to fly to a distant land, see two or three different places, get really drunk in a bar and get robbed blind, realise you’ve actually got a funky disease you’re not sure if you got from the food or that person you swore looked like a woman the night before…
What? Why are you looking at me like that? You make it sound like no-one else has vacations like that.
Anyway, we’re running out of time, and it still feels like there’s a tonne to do. Our list now looks like this:
- Cancel our CableTica service
- Sell our car (currently trying, and having no luck at all)
- “Cancel” our phone (aka give it back to the company)
- Pack up the stuff we’re taking with us on the plane
- Have the rest of our stuff packed and shipped by slow banana boat (and I’m not really kidding about that — it probably is a banana boat)
- Arrange for our utilities in Calgary (gas, electricity, water)
- Get our cell phones working in Calgary (probably can’t do that until we get there)
- Organise the times/dates for moving our stuff out of storage and back into our house
- Arrange for plane tickets
- Arrange for hotels for moving (we have to stay at least one night in CR and one night in Calgary), and it they have to take cats
- Get a rental car
- Then buy a car in Calgary
- Figure out how to get what money we’ve managed to save up north so we don’t try carrying it across the border (read: bad idea)
- Arrange for documentation to prove that we can take our daughter out of Costa Rica (no, I’m not kidding — Temporary Residents need this for some bizarre reason, even if both parents are present)
- Make sure we can get our cat back into Canada (read: find all the documentation we had from 18 months ago)
- Clean our apartment top-to-bottom
- Give away what we’re not taking back to friends (and other organisations)
- Say “goodbye” to the people we’ve come to know very well over the last year and a half (this is going to truly suck)
- Make sure we have clothes that are cold-weather appropriate (at least until all of our other clothing is out of storage)
Maybe 50% of the list is done/covered. And there’s a few really big items that still worry me a lot. Like the car. I really REALLY want to sell that car. It’s an asset I don’t want lying around. I’ve got backup plans, if necessary, but having it dispensed with would REALLY help.
So… anyone in CR, want a car? Drop me a line…
