Saturday, May 3, 2014

Starting to prepare

Just in case anyone is curious (and just in case anyone is reading) I figured I'd go through the process of preparing to go to post.

We've met with the guy who will be managing the house when we rent it in our absence. He's a childhood friend, so I feel very comfortable with the situation. Based on his assessment, we know what we need to do to prepare the house and what isn't as important. Now we need to get quotes and determine when it will happen (so far so good, the first quote was well within budget although it leave Terry doing a chunk of the work).

We've gotten all the information from Post we can find and it turns out neither of our cars will be allowed into the country. So we need to buy another car. And it will be new or relatively new. It will entail a car payment, which is something I have avoided for my 40 years until now.

We're started our Consumables list. Astana is in fact a post wherein we're entitled to Consumables shipments, although at any post we put together a list of the food and other consumable items we love and can't get at post, for example Thai red curry paste. Or peanut butter. Chocolate chips appear to only exist in the USA. You get the picture.

We did a decent job of purging when we moved into this house, but as the baby years are now firmly behind us it is time to find new owners of the things we've held onto. And, of course, there is always more purging one can do.

My boots have survived 3.5 Petersburg winters (I got them during the first winter). They have no tread and owe me nothing. I have ordered the replacements. My down coat has kept me warm 4 Petersburg winters and also owes me nothing. After trolling all the usual suspects (Cabelas, REI, Lands End) I have determined that nobody has warm enough coats out yet. My fingers are crossed that this situation will change before August.

We're still working out the departure schedule and who exactly leaves when; i.e., will I get to fly alone for the first time in 7 years, thus blissfully sleeping through the red eye flight with no guilt or children pulling on me?

1 comment:

nicole said...

Hmmmm...let me know how that pans out!!