Phew! It's been busy...

The days are flying by at an alarming rate at the moment. We are on the go constantly with very little time to stop and smell the coffee...so let me give you a quick update on what's being going on in the past few days.

Wednesday: Panic set in. Spent time sorting "stuff". Rental furniture picked up. Went to work. Came home and sorted more "stuff".

Thursday: Packers arrived. Had to halve air shipment. Retrieved shoes/jackets/kitchen roll from ground freight boxes. Checked into hotel. Went to leaving party. Went for drinks.

Friday: Woke up with hangover. Back to house to meet packers. Stuff loaded onto truck. Stephen returned car and picked up rental car. Lunch with Morag. Began cleaning. Stephen returned comcast equipment and went back to car dealer to pick up the stuff he'd left in the car. Dropped some stuff off with British couple recently moved here. Back to hotel. Dinner (fab!). Met the newlyweds for drinks. Back to hotel totally exhausted.

Saturday: Back to house to finish cleaning. Got grumpy coz tired and hungry. Dropped boxes of stuff off with the newlyweds. Went to Le Madelaine for lunch. Back to house for more cleaning. Valet parking chaos at the hotel. Car park gridlocked. Big delays getting car back. Down to Morag and Simon's for dinner. Back to hotel exhausted.

Sunday: Brunch at the hotel. Back to house for final clear out of remaining stuff. Said goodbye to neighbours. Walked round Old Town. Had last ice cream in Pop's. Went to Rudy & Carol's for show and tell of 3,500 holiday photos. Dropped BBQ gas canisters off at Lowes. Back to hotel. Taxi to O'Connells to meet Morag & Simon for drinks and dinner...and more drinks...Farewells. Tears.

Monday: Woke up with hangover. Had coffee. Down to house for final handover of keys. Off to bank to move money to the UK. Into work. Final goodbyes. Tears. Back to bank to pay in cheque and bags of change. Back to hotel. Repack luggage to try and get it down below 42 pieces.

So there you have it...in a nutshell...what's been going on for the past few days. We're both pretty exhausted now. We don't seem to get a full nights sleep at the moment. Someone called Stephen's UK cell phone at 05:30 this morning and woke us both, and once my sleep is disturbed I find it difficult to get back into a good sleep. He had better switch it off tonight....

Wedding Bells

Paul and Kristen are getting married next year in Scotland, but it seems they were impatient to tie the knot so they did the legal bit very quietly yesterday. We met up with them later on whilst they were having drinks with their friends in Old Town. Congratulations! Here's to many years of married bliss!

The newlyweds

The Brits are leaving - its time to Par-tay

Thursday night was the leaving do for the Brits leaving the office, namely Paul, Stephen and me. We were a teeny bit frazzled come 6pm as we'd spent the day reducing our air freight by half and unpacking stuff that Walter had packed!

Tim had volunteered his apartments roof deck and party room as the venue as it had stunning views of DC. Its only a pity that, after months of dry weather, it began to rain on Thursday and for the first part of the evening we didn't get a view of much, but I have to admit that the view was stunning when the clouds lifted.

Stephen was almost christened Mr Wrong-Kind-of-Beer in Mr Wrong-Kind-of-Beers absence as he had the temerity to complain that the beer was warm! I guess someone has to keep up the tradition of moaning about something!!

Almost everyone from the office was there and Lynn came back too. It was truly fantastic to see everyone there. I was getting a little teary towards the end. I guess realisation is kicking in...

As the person who normally organised buying and circulating the leaving cards I had to smile when Dawn pulled me aside and told me to turn a blind eye whilst they signed my card as it had kind of fallen off the to-do list that day! What will they do without me??

I had asked for a Welcome Pineapple which apparently caused some head scratching amongst some. Thankfully Dawn knew what I was after and knew not to look in the produce section of Safeway! It was a tradition amongst sea captains in Virginia to place a pineapple outside their home when they returned from journeys to the tropics to signify that they were home and visitors were welcome. Look out for my pineapple when I return to the UK! We got some beautiful gifts including a lovely DC throw. I was embarrased to get so much, but we both truly appreciated the gifts and the words that went with them.

Paul gave us a lift back down the road and we rounded out the night having a drink in Rustico along with Dawn and Jeff. I was thrown when my drink came. I had asked for a water and a PG and the waitress brought a half pint glass which I assumed was the water until I took a slurp and found out it was the wine!! The next morning was a little weeny bit of a struggle...

Me with Dawn and Jeff

James, Lily, Joni and Preston


Yes, I AM that short!! Me with Rick and Simon.



On the deck overlooking DC

Paul finding a creative use for the lettuce! Tim manfully ignoring the distraction whilst pouring the champagne.

The lovely Joni and me

With part of our lovely leaving gifts

Paul aka POQI aka Stewie - opening his Family Guy DVD

Paul looking mischevious!

The gang!

Moving out

Our moving truck - which was quickly filled with our wordly goods

Our very empty sitting room

Our very empty bedroom

Our very empty den

Its all just very empty - so sad

Kerry's Kleening did a superb job - I'm not planning on making it a full-time career though!

Our luggage ready to load into the rental car.
We have SO much to take. How did that happen??

Clean me up Scotty

We had a few funny moments with the packing - aside from the kitchen roll being packed! We had taken off our jackets and thrown then over the back of the sofa without really thinking about it. They were packed and had to be retrieved by Carlos. It was the same with Stephen's shoes. They had just left for the first night and we were getting ready to leave for the hotel when we discovered that Stephen's shoes were missing. D'OH! Thankfully we found the "living room" box that had shoes marked on it pretty easily, otherwise we were going to have to buy him some more whilst the others sailed across the ocean!!

We've spent the past two days in a flurry of activity - Stephen has been running around returning the comcast equipment and the car and I've been doing "Scottish Calvinist Cleaning" in preparation for the final walk through on Monday. We figured it wouldn't take too long once the place was empty...it took longer than expected (it was a big house!) and was flipping hard work - especially as I was doing detail cleaning. The place is gleaming! Certainly cleaner than when we moved in. Much elbow grease was expended. Kim and Aggie would be proud!

Packing up

A large sofa shaped package - beautifully wrapped.

These guys must be ace to be around at Christmas!

Our ground floor in boxes

A truly gigantic roll of "executive stress relief". The bubble wrap isn't so much for packing - more for the stressed out homeowner!

Me with our worldly goods

Where's the kitchen roll?

Walter and Carlos are packing machines! They got here just around 9am and its now 1:45 and they've packed a large proportion of the house. They were working much faster than we expected - we were upstairs sifting the air freight when they moved from the bottom floor to the sitting room. There were a couple of things on the chaise that we hadn't moved yet thinking we had hours before they got there...I got down just in time to see them packing the kitchen roll....

What is it with these guys and packing my kitchen roll?? It was beautifully packed (wrapped in paper and everything) on the way out from the UK too. I was laughing when I retrieved it from the box!

Time to PANIC!!!!

I woke up on Wednesday morning, looked around and had a huge panic when I realised that we were nowhere near ready for moving yet!! We've been pretty busy and although we'd spent as much time as we had available since Sunday sorting out, as I'd been spending a lot of time in work, it wasn't really enough. I pinged POQI to say I wasn't coming in to work until later and got to work. We got a huge amount done, but there was still a load more to do. Its things like finding the software for the printer that we're giving away...not something you immediately think of, but time consuming. I was in a pretty stinky mood last night as Stephen met up with work visitors promising that he'd be an hour. Three hours later he turned up at home!! I was mad and very tired as I'd been trying to do loads of stuff and having two of us doing it would have helped a lot!

Corts came to remove the rental furniture yesterday and the packers have begun to pack our stuff today. Its going to take them 2 days to pack us all, and due to changes in what we're taking back air freight (namely Stephen's golf clubs) I've just had to go through my clothes and shoes and down select the stuff I can live without for a few extra weeks. How can you ask me (Imelda Marcos of Old Town) to down select shoes???!!

Los Tios

The good news is that Los Tios did have a table for us on Monday. The bad news is that they got confused when everyone arrived separately and we had Julie and Andy on one table (unbeknown to us) and Paul, Stephen and I on another. We eventually found one another! The margaritas were just as good as we remembered them being - and just as huge! The food was pretty good too - excellent corn bread and fried plantains. Very yummy!

In action blogging away...

At Los Tios enjoying the ENORMOUS margaritas

With Julie and Andy in Los Tios

Enjoying an ice cream in Pop's

You know its Springtime in Old Town when....

The man who plays the water glasses is back!

Que?

I phoned Los Tios (a Mexican restaurant) this morning to make a reservation for tonight. The Scottish/Mexican conversation was not an easy one!!!

"Can I book a table for tonight please?" I said in my best AmeriScots accent
"Okay. How many?"
"Seven"
"Six"
"NO! Seven"
"Okay. Seven. What time?"
"Seven pm"
"Six pm"
"NO! Seven pm"
"What' your name?"

Oh God. You can imagine the fun we had with that? Kerry is not a common name over here, nor in Mexico it would seem....

We got there eventually - although I worry that we're going to arrive there and find I've booked a table for 13 at 9pm a week on Tuesday....

I am going to miss confusing the heck out of folks with my accent. Only one week to go...better ramp up the use of arcane Scottish/British words and phrases which have no meaning here. Fortnight is a good one. Whereas we acknowledge it means 14 days, in the US its a phrase used mainly in fairly tales and has no sense of actual duration. If you say that you'll send something in a fortnight then they wouldn't be sure when they'd get it, but it wouldn't surprise them if it arrived in a coach and horses!!

Half past when telling the time also is the source of great confusion! I made the mistake of saying something was scheduled for half past four when I first started in the office. There was a look of utter confusion on the face of the person I spoke to and he asked "Does that mean three thirty?".

Of course there is the reverse aspects to this cross-cultural contamination...I now litter American phrases throughout...in fact I sometimes have problems remembering what the British words are for things. There may have to be some re-education when I get home. And if I use "like" in conversation (as in: "it was like totally awesome") please feel free to kick my ass!!

Don't worry 'bout a thing...coz every little thing's gonna be alright

We managed to get quite a lot done this weekend... We went out for dinner on Friday night. We stopped at the weekend office for a while. I went shopping. Stephen went to watch his final Rangers game with the supporters club. We went for a walk. We had ice cream in Pop's. We went out for dinner with Morag, Simon and the girls. We went for breakfast. We went shopping again.

Okay, so perhaps we weren't entirely focused on the move, but we had a nice time! I did actually manage to get a fair amount of sorting out done in between the fun stuff... I've sorted out what we need to get rid of and have been busy distributing bedding, lamps, patio furniture and the contents of the food cupboards to people today. There are a few bags of toiletries to go into work too. When I said I had a few bottles I imagine they thought I meant hooch, and not body lotion. They are going to be disappointed!!

I still need to sort out what we need to take with us and what is going air freight. Time to drag the cases out of the cupboard... Everything else can be packed and if needs be I'll sort it out when we get it in the UK. Why worry?

Just over a week to go...The Countdown begins!

It has been a busy week! I think all our visitors had a good time and, with carefully staggered getting up times, managed to avoid total bathroom chaos in the morning! It was lovely to see everyone and we had a great time! Everyone has made it back to Glasgow okay and Stephen and I are now getting on with some serious moving home action.

Spot the family resemblance!
I see now what Kristen meant when she said to Paul
"There's a guy over here who looks just like your Dad".
l-r: John, Moira, Stephen and Jim
I was unable by this point to do late nights and early mornings...
in fact to be accurate I was unable to do late nights OR early mornings!!

We are being packed and shipped next week, so I need to sort out our worldly goods into what we're packing and taking with us on the plane (clothes and shoes), what we're sending air freight (clothes and shoes) and what we're sending sea freight (everything else). I also need to clear out the cupboards and dispose of the electrical goods....there is a lot to do and my to do lists keep getting longer as I think of other things to add. Gulp! I'm sure it'll all come together in time.

We've had a couple of hiccups though...I did an e-mail to all the relocation people involved in the move yesterday saying "Here's what I think is happening when" because I hadn't heard from the packing/shipping people in a while. I immediately got an e-mail and a phone call from them because they had us slated to pack on Monday. I had ALWAYS said Thursday/Friday. The girl was like "well if we pack you on Monday we'll get it on a ship on the 30th. If we pack you on Thursday/Friday it'll be the 13th April before we can get it on a ship". That's a shame, but I do not have time to get everything sorted out by Monday!!!! It does mean that I need to make a quick re-assessment of what we put in the ground shipment as we won't get it until mid-June.

We had a handyman come round yesterday afternoon to do a quick repair of the shelf in the closet. It had been groaning under the weight of my handbags... We had to move all my clothes off the rail and my shoes out from underneath in case he wanted to drill. The shoes made a very satisfying pile!!!!

The shoes....

Walking the Mall

I'm sitting here enjoying the most fantastic aromas wafting up from the kitchen! Moira and Jim are cooking a curry and it smells absolutely wonderful! I am salivating already and they're only just beginning the cooking process!

We have a bit of a houseful at the moment! We've got Jim and Moira plus Stephen's mum, his brother John and niece Leanne. I'm so thankful to have our own bathroom on the top floor as I'm sure the queues for the guest bathrooms are like Disney!! What I don't see I don't worry about though...no-one has complained too much yet! Although John, June and Leanne only arrived yesterday so I guess we haven't fully pushed the capacity yet!

We've spent a couple of days at the Mall (the National one, not the shopping one!) since we got back from our holiday. There were a few museums we hadn't been to yet, so we've ticked those off now. The American History museum just re-opened last November after being closed for a couple of years so we have spent a fair bit of time in that. They have a really well done exhibit of the original "Star Spangled Banner" - the American flag hoisted after the Battle of Baltimore where it was spotted through the "dawn's early light". It was very moving. (What I mean is that I was welling up again! Especially as they had a montage of versions of the Star Spangled Banner playing in the background. Maybe its my age...)

We were back again today as we met up with John, June and Leanne. Stephen and I went to the Lincoln exhibit which we'd missed the other day. As we were leaving one of the employees had asked if we had heard of the discovery that the Smithsonian had made a couple of days before. As we had barely switched on a TV for 10 days we hadn't. Apparently Lincoln's watch was being repaired and the watchmaker had engraved something inside the watch. President Lincoln never knew it was there, but it was a legend within the watchmakers family. One of them contacted the Smithsonian very recently and told them, and when they opened the back lo and behold it was there as described. The watch was on display along with other artifacts so we stopped by the exhibit to see it.

Petrified Forest and Painted Desert

A petrified log

There were beautiful colours in them

Strange formations and colours

Ahhhh - this is why they call it the Painted Desert!

Meteor Crater

Meteor Crater - it was a BIG hole in the ground!

Stephen beside an Apollo capsule

Oak Creek Canyon

It was SO cold at Oak Creek Canyon we didn't hang about

What a difference a day makes!

It was stunning in the sunlight.

You know you're in the Southwest when....

Sedona photos

Sedona was so beautiful. Everywhere you turned there was stunning scenery.
This is taken from Red Rock Loop.

A wee Kerry arty shot...

The famous Red Rock reflecting in Oak Creek

Complete with horses - just like the movies!

The water was crystal clear

Grand Canyon photos

Some Elk having a light breakfast

Every view of this place was stunning!

Just a little further back Stephen...

Gorgeous!

Another stunning view

Time change

The US changes the clocks a couple of weeks before the UK - right in the middle of our trip as it turned out. This caused Stephen and I no end of brain melting moments as we tried to work out what the hell time it was! I'm sure you're wondering why - surely we just make the 1 hour adjustment and off we go.... Sadly no! Arizona (where we spent a good few days) doesn't observe daylight saving, but the Navajo Nation (a large part of Arizona, where we also spent time) does. To make it even more confusing the Hopi Reservation (which is in the middle of the Navajo Nation) does not. You can see why we were freakin' confused for the last few days!!!

Back to where we started

We got a scrummy breakfast at the B&B, then packed up (again!) and headed off back up Oak Creek Canyon (in MUCH better weather!) then onto Meteor Crater which is supposedly the best preserved and first authenticated crater. NASA used the crater for astronaut training - Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell all did training there.

From there we drove to the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert - a drive-through National Park! There were a couple of stopping off points which were worth a quick look. The petrified logs were interesting. Silica had seeped into the logs and turned them to stone. There were beautiful colours of quartz in the logs. The painted desert may have been more interesting if we'd seen it first! It was a bit of a let down after the wonders we had seen. Towards the end of the 28 mile loop it was a "drive-through at speed" National Park!!

It was then a long drive back to ABQ and a final re-pack of the cases before heading over to the Elephant Bar and a last couple of margaritas. We returned the car the following morning 1400 miles worse for wear. A grand journey!

Onward to Sedona

From Flagstaff we went to Oak Creek Canyon overlook. Its kind of like the Grand Canyon with trees. It looked nice but its 7000ft up and it was windy and freakin' cold! The little information centre said Sedona was 55F and sunny so we decided not to hang about and head down there next. It was voted the prettiest town in America and I can truly see why! It was stunning, surrounded on all sides by mountains carved into the most amazing formations.

Our B&B in Sedona (or Sonoma/Samosa as Stephen kept calling it!) was lovely. It was only a short walk into town and had stunning views of the mountains. We headed off to Red Rock Loop and Oak Creek Crossing - the most photographed spots in town - certainly by us!! The scenery was stunning!

We walked along and had dinner in the Silver Saddle - the posh bit of the Cowboy Club where John Wayne and other movie stars used to hang out. There were around 80 films shot in Sedona. I guess the rock formations are reminiscent of Monument Valley, just with more water. Oak Creek Crossing is famous from many movies where the cowboys splash across the creek on horseback.

The rim walk photos

The path around the rim. Note how close the path runs to the drop to certain death!

A couple walking round the cliff where we had just been.
Its a small drop...

Well actually, maybe not such a small drop....


F Me! That's a LONG way down!!

This is the rim we walked around...without a safety net!!!!