A common language?

I've just got some good news - I've just checked e-mail and both our air shipment and our surface shipment have cleared US customs and are in storage in the US awaiting delivery to our new home. How perfectly has that worked out! That means that we'll have our own furniture, our own "stuff", and our own bed pretty much as soon as we arrive. I've missed my own bed terribly. When we come back to the UK I'm going to buy a comfier bed for our spare room!! I've slept in it for a month now and I'm finding lumps and bumps whenever I move!!

I can't believe that I'm finishing work tomorrow. It has been pretty busy for the past few weeks, and I seem to have managed to not do the winding up and finishing bit. I truly am just working to the bitter end! It rather feels like going on holiday for a couple of weeks, rather than finishing up for a couple of years! I need to empty my desk and all sorts. I did buy waterproof mascara at the weekend, just in case it hits me suddenly and I spend the day sobbing!

We have got a lot of stuff sorted out in the past couple of days, but I'm glad that we've decided to give ourselves a couple of extra days and travel on Sunday. We need the time - to relax a bit if nothing else!!

The office was in stitches this afternoon at my inability to communicate with the (not too bright) agent at the furniture rental store... we'd been emailing for a couple of days, mostly back and forward trying to get him to quote me for the actual furniture that I had e-mailed and asked him to quote for! All the e-mails had come back without any covering note, which was getting frustrating....so I took the bull by the horns and phoned him to arrange delivery of the furniture and payment of the deposit. The office was laughing because the conversation was going something like this:

"Hello Jeff. Its Kerry. You e-mailed me a quote for some furniture a couple of minutes ago"
"Uh"
"Jeff. Is it possible to arrange delivery of the furniture I was wanting for the 3rd July?"
"Uh-huh. I'll need the address to put it on the system"
"The address was on the e-mail, but let me give you it again. It was 828 South..."
"HTH?"
"No. 828"
"HTH"
"No. 828. In numerals. 8...2...8"
By this point the whole office was in stitches!! And it didn't get much better!! We had issues with the fact that we don't have a US bank account, phone number, or cell number as his "system won't even take the UK cell number you've given me"....like it was my fault that the world outside America doesn't exist for their company!! It sounded like I was dealing with Kevin the teenager! Only a sulkier version!!

David and Emma were over today with baby Ben. Unfortunately I didn't get to see them as I had a meeting with someone to take over the reporting side of the job temporarily. Stephen managed to pop home, and both he and Mum said that Ben was a cute as a button and very cute, happy, smiley baby. I hear that Stephen was doing his best to wind Ben up (it's Stephen's job to wind up small children!) - trying to tickle him and make him laugh - but Ben wasn't rising to it! He was happy to gurgle away.