Less than a week to go...

Moving

All the stuff I want to go to the US has gone and is now all paid for. My sister has been through my house and found so much stuff that I simply couldn't take - it's heartbreaking.

Selling the House

The company buying my house is doing everything in a weird order. I had to pay a deposit to get them to value my property. They sent me an offer without looking at the house. I've now got a solicitor (lawyer) who has put together the paperwork and sent it to the buyers. Now the buyers want to view the house. This is all taking time and should, in theory, delay my emigration.


Leaving the UK

As I've filled in US customs forms declaring the actual date of my immigration, I will be entering the US on that date - no matter what else is happening.

I'm hiring a car, driving it down to Gatwick, using Virgin's "Twilight Check-in" (nothing to do with sparkly vampires) to get rid of my luggage the night before, sleeping in a hotel, dropping off the rental car at the airport and strolling into the airport with only hand luggage.

A Moving Experience

• The movers themselves were excellent.
• They just didn't seem to know anything about filling in the forms.
• They called head office who talked me through the bits of the 3299 that I wasn't sure of.
• They were professional and polite.
• They hardly talked to each other.
• It was all over in less than two hours.
• Once it goes onto a container I will be given its details (so that I can track it on its way to Los Angeles)

Oh good - a new form! "The 3299"

I could have sworn that, in the guides I read at the start of the year, that the moving company did all of the paperwork for you. Oh well . . . here we go with form 3299 "Declaration For Free Entry Of Unaccompanied Articles". It has to be filled in in blue ink apparently and (according to the mover's instructions accompanying it) should be handed over at time of pickup (but, according to the cover note in the package, the form is one of the things that I should send to them before the time of pickup).

BTW I've sent my movers my insurance evaluation form plus copies of my passport and visa, as they requested.

The 3299 itself is a strange looking form, my movers provide lots of notes to stop me from screwing it up. There is even more information on Google (though searching for "3299" will get you the form but little else).

The 3299 arrived with a "Supplementary Declaration For Unaccompanied Personal And Household Effects" an "Alcohol Inventory" (fortunately I don't drink) and, more worryingly, a Power of Attorney form...

Sorted . . . nearly

Phew!

It turns out that I have a LOT more stuff than I thought. It's killing my back, sorting through books, DVDs and various ephemera. I also noticed that, even though I told my movers that my belongings will be going into storage in Las Vegas, they've opted to send everything by air. I've got to contact them this morning to try to get them to ship it.

Also I'm moving along with my house sale. I'm using a quick sale company - Note: None of them seem to answer their emails so, if you're in a hurry you'll have to phone them. The first one I called was very unenthusiastic and hasn't called me back. The second was pretty keen but charge an up-front fee. The third ones finally phoned me after I'd given up and gone with the second ones.

We'll see how things progress...

Progress Bar (aka an update)

Okay, I finish work in seventeen days.

• I'm talking to a moving firm to come and take my stuff next week (they should be ringing me back with the details soon).
• Once I have a removal date I'll prepare to get rid of the house too.
• I've cashed in my endowment policy which should hit my bank at the end of this week.
• I've arranged for my pounds to be converted to dollars at the end of the month (when my bank account should be at its fattest) at last week's rate. I'm banking on last week being a high-point for the pound.
• My résumé is in California and Nevada, hopefully my contact is passing it around to the right people...
• My flight is set. I changed the date online (Virgin's flexible tickets, "free" to change, cost £13 to change).
  
• Foofer awaits me.

The "Vegas Face"

Them "So, where are you emigrating to?"

Me "The US."

Them "Oooh, that's nice! Whereabouts?"

Me "Las Vegas!"

You often get a noise, usually a weird "wooh" type of sigh, but you always get the face - a strange look of surprise, jealousy, incredulity, amusement and, mostly, "WTF???".

I've grown used to seeing the "Vegas Face". People ask me where I'm going and, when I tell them, I'm rewarded with the "Vegas Face". I know that some people think I'm lying ("Poor guy - trying to get attention before he flies out to Buttfuck, Nebraska") and I'm stunned that some women start to flirt with me immediately (some even try to continue once I've mentioned my wife, who I'm flying out to live with) but the one constant is that I'm seeing the "Vegas Face" again.

BTW - packing continues (with Foof telling me to use a "don't know" pile to speed things up and my friend Bananas telling me that I don't have to sort through the things left at my Mum's house quite so carefully as she's guessing that my Mum will look after anything I forget to take) and I've started to send out my résumé - though I'm still at the stage of emailing it to a select group of people - I'm not at the point of sending it to every agency in the South West quite yet.

Being Brutal

Clothes, books, CDs, DVDs, electronics, "collectibles" - it's amazing the amount of stuff I've collected over my 40+ years on this planet.

I have to sort them into three piles:

Stuff to take with me on the plane. Obviously the smallest pile but, as I'm planning on everything else going into storage, I have to be clever about what to pick. I have to have anything that I'll really need in the next few months.

Stuff to put into storage. And to eventually move to the US, where I'll store it again (for a while). I have to learn to tell the difference between the things that should be in this pile and the shiny stuff that really truly should be in the next one...

Stuff to dump/give away. This is where I have to be brutal. I don't want to leave a huge pile of junk at my Mother's place. I'll bin the obvious rubbish but I want to give anyone who wants to a brief window to scavenge whatever they want of my old clothes, VHS cassettes etc. before I throw them all away.

I have to be brutal - I tried this earlier in the year, threw out a load of shit and thought I'd done a good job until I looked at what I'd saved. I shall devote an hour per day (starting tomorrow (oh dear - is that procrastination?)) to sorting through my stuff.

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Edit: This post helped me to put everything in perspective. I had previously thought of sorting through my stuff as "what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to throw away". This was a bad way of thinking as "keep" seemed to imply (at the time) (maybe some of) the things remaining in the UK.

What I need to do is just look at what I want to drag 5,000 miles with me into the desert.

And forget the rest.