Things on my mind.

I need to type this all out or I might go more nutty than I already am...

School

I'm hoping we can get Anja into a Montessori school. Really, really hoping. It'd be one less thing for her to acclimate to, and I feel like it's really important in terms of influencing who she is and how she develops. I know that for a lot of schools the registration was much earlier in the year, so I'm hoping our relocation agent can help us negotiate placement, if any schools are flexible enough to do that, in June/July. Getting this settled will make me feel SO much better about the whole move. Hugely.

Housing

We're looking at 2-2.5 bedroom places, but there so many factors to consider. Cost is obviously one. Proximity to our work locations and to school for Anja. Proximity to a park and public transporation (that's mandatory, since we won't have a vehicle, to be near something. Ideally U-Bahn or S-Bahn, or maybe even tram. If all else was perfect except this, bus.) Desire to live in a place that doesn't just feel like a group of white boxes tacked together, and has some character. We'd love to have some lawn, and a balcony. The need to find a place that has a kitchen already built in (EBK) and doesn't cost an arm and a leg to keep... oh, and that accepts pets. Are we nuts to think we'll find this? I hope our relo agent is FANTASTIC.

John finding a job

Anybody reading this know anybody in Munich who's looking to hire an excellent Entwicklungsingenieur? (R&D engineer)? Once my salary is figured out and John has a job and salary figured out, we'll have a much easier time of narrowing down apartments, partially based on cost, but also locations. This piece, along with school for Anja, are the two that are on my mind the most.

There are just a million things on my mind, lately, though. Those are the big ones. Other ones include:

• finding a good endocrinologist
  
• making sure to have enough diabetes supplies for a month or two in the beginning
  
• buying other meds/vitamins/etc. ahead of time in bulk to ship over with our stuff
  
• how to handle the selling/rental of our house, and corresponding lack of place to live during that time
  
• how to handle the selling/shipping of our household goods, and corresponding lack of stuff after everything ships/sells/etc
  
• how to handle the selling of our cars, and renting cars after that, to minimize cost and stress
  
• who's going to watch our cats for the month or two until we're ready to have them shipped over?
  
• finding trustworthy babysitters that don't cost an arm and a leg, babysitting co-ops via school?
  
• when to hold our tag sale, what to do with everything that doesn't sell
  
• managing our household food needs after the move - my need for wheat-free, Anja's sensitivity to cow's milk, finding a place to buy good, local organic produce and goods, getting into the pattern of how to grocery shop in small batches
  
• getting involved with some music communities, me for banjo and dance, Anja for singing, John for bass
  
• figuring out how to transport all this great free or cheap furniture that we won't have a truck for?
  
• finding time this summer to make it to the beach as much as possible, and balancing that with all the stress mentioned above
  

Edited to add, I missed a few...

• Granting my dad power-of-attorney so that someone here has that
  
• writing official wills, just in case
  
• figuring out automatic bill pay for student loans via our EuroBank setup
  
• to keep or get rid of our local bank acct?
  
• letting all relevant financial institutions know our new address, once we have one, and figuring out billpay for CC, etc.
  

I'm sure there are still more, of course. Wheeee!

Monetary Freakout

Or, $7,350?! Are you freaking kidding me??

So, that was the approximate estimate we got... we had someone come out a couple weeks ago to do a cost assessment for the transportation of our stuff to Munich. Bear in mind that we have a 900 sq. ft. house, and a lot of stuff *isn't* going. I told the guy who came to do the assessment that I'd like to do two appraisals, one including the cost of our furniture and one not, as we're more than willing to replace, second-hand, virtually everything in the house. He assured me that it was more cost-effective to ship stuff. I don't believe it.

They came back today with the estimate of 3,000 lbs of stuff, a 20' box, and a cost of $7350!! There is no WAY that we could not replace all of our furniture, used, for waaaay less than that cost! I wrote back to ask for either a re-estimate, excluding large furniture, or an itemized estimate so that we can determine what's "worth it" to take, and what's overhead.

We are already planning to leave a lot of books with my mom... we'd sell our furniture and buy used stuff over there, since we're not that attached to anything, and we're planning on staying there for at least two years. Poor John, he got the brunt of my outrage at this... but then, he knows I need to freak out about things for a couple hours and then I'll calm down and we'll figure out how to handle it. And this is just one company, we will of course be getting more estimates.

I know that we will find a way to make it work. Honestly, I'd be willing to move with pretty much what fits on our backs and a couple extra suitcases that we paid the airline fees on. I've done it before. :) We could put more of our stuff into Rubbermaid totes to store with my mom, things like books and mementos and things that if we moved back, we wouldn't have missed for the two years, but aren't ready to part with, you know?

But I think we're going to end up storing more stuff than we'd originally intended, either with my mom or in a storage unit. Furniture we're not taking, we'll sell, as we're not really attached to it. I *like* our bed, but it's from Ikea, and we could easily replace it with the same or similar, or I'd learn to like something else. Really, the stuff I care about taking: clothes for each season (favorites, give the rest to goodwill), shoes that I really like, some favorite books, my pottery for the kitchen, artwork that we own, some amount of pictures, some movies, a bunch of music, and a bunch of Anja's toys and stuff so that she can feel more comfortable with the move... the rest of it, I'm willing to part with for a couple years, or for good, really. The things I missed, living there last time, were really not material things that can be packed, more like foods and places and such. I need to remind myself of that. I also need to get more comfortable with just giving stuff away to get *rid* of it, instead of trying to wring money out of everything, as I'll make myself crazy that way!

A couple friends also suggested splitting the cost of a container with someone else, if we cannot get a smaller container, so that's something else to keep in mind... whee!

In happy news, banjo playing is going well, and I have every-other-Tuesday dance party tonight!!

The Peak Oil crisis

I'm starting to see more "mainstream" news about the global oil supply and demand issues, for example, this article that just came out. With oil over $97/barrel at the beginning of winter, when prices are traditionally starting to come down, that doesn't bode well, nor does the dropping value of the dollar.

A very interesting and scary graph of world oil production:


It's a recent graph from the Energy Watch Group's Peak Oil report - it's the very best report on Peak Oil I've seen - thorough, intensely analytical and very, very honest. You can get the Executive Summary here and the full report here. Both are PDFs.

With so much of this stuff, it's hard to know how much is hype and fear-mongering stuff, but I think at this point it's not debatable that things are going to have to change in the next 20 years or so, and that conservation and reusable energy sources are going to have to come into play, and soon. Aside from that, oil runs not just our vehicles, but petroleum is the basis for so much of what we do - plastics.

Additionally, with the Euro now buying $1.47, it's going to be debatable about whether we can even save enough money to make this move happen. Pay for the move in $$ on credit cards and then pay it off once we're earning Euros? Is that cheating? Is it even realistic to think that could work? Oy.

In a word -

Overwhelmed.

Money sucks. Or rather, lack of money sucks. However, I've sold three books on Amazon for a grand total of about $14. Whee. Time to get a crapload of stuff together to take to Auction King (eBay warehouse place) nearby. And to put more books on Amazon. And... to keep cutting the things we don't *need*. The woman at the cable company got pretty damn incredulous when I told her that I wanted to cancel cable, yes, even the basic cable, yes, even though it was only $6/month. Because OMGZ, HOW CAN YOU LIVE WITHOUT TV?!@?#$!1!

Heh.

Anybody out there have any brilliant and legit money-making schemes, besides picking up a p/t job?

Things on my mind tonight...

It's the nitty-gritty details that are on my mind. Finding an apartment, selling our house, our cars, finding Anja's school, I'm convinced that we can handle those things. It's this stuff that gets me:
1.) How to travel with three cats? One each, with Anja taking Faith (the smallest) in a soft carrier? Sedate cats for length of travel?

2.) How to ensure that apartment is livable the first night? Eat out, buy some food, don't really want to have to buy an air mattress or sleeping bags upon arrival... hit IKEA for mattresses the first day? Oy.

3.) Selling/storing/giving away all the Crap that we own. This will be a great exercise in letting go, paring down, figuring out what's important. However, it's also a bit overwhelming. Gotta stop at the ebay store tomorrow and ask about their policies, figure out about selling stuff. Take pics of things and post them on ebay/Craig's list. Freecycle as a last option.

4.) The opposite of arriving - departure, how to ensure that we have a place to sleep, ride to airport with all appropriate stuff, etc., etc.

5.) Finding a moving company and deciding what gets shipped. Feeling like Anja's stuff is important, some books, some clothes, computers, a little of my pottery, a few house-decorations that I'm attached to. Instruments?

Just so, so many details. This only touches the very surface of where my brain has been lately... whee! Pillows? They don't weight much, ship 'em? Probably not worth any money, hate to throw things away. I guess that's part of it for me, I hate to see things wasted, so if I can't sell it for money or give it to someone who will make use of it, I feel *stuck*. This is going to be an interesting year for me, in terms of that.

Also, I'm sad that we will likely lose the opportunity to own a piano, as it would have come with my mom's house. :( One more thing to accept in trade for this opportunity... My dad was asking today about if they brought the price down, what about the piano, no chance of finding another house like this at this price, etc. And I know those things, and I know what I want to do, but it's still hard, to hold on to that determination. I'm gonna miss people like crazy, I know that... hanging out with friends tonight really confirmed that. Just being able to drop by and hang out. So many challenges... remind me again, why? Ah, yes. Because we want to.