Dates

We finally have a date set for our move! Something that I've been anxious to have since we made the decision to leave, because I'm the kind of person who needs to know what my schedule/timeline looks like. Even though I was told not to worry about it until July, I pushed for a contact at the moving company a couple of weeks ago - and that woman told me that I really should have called earlier because the end of June/beginning of July is the busiest moving weeks out of the whole year. (Grr! I have been trying for over a month to set this up!!)

My new work pays for 4,000 pounds as part of our relocation assistance, and we have been thinking that we were well under the limit and needed to buy more food and supplies so we don't let any of our allowance go to waste. However, according to the man who came to do an estimate of our stuff, we are putting 4,000 pounds into storage and bringing 6,000 pounds with us. Really? We own 10,000 pounds worth of stuff in the house? No! Surely there is a mistake somewhere. Aside from a couple of chairs, we aren't bringing any furniture - so I have no idea how he came up with that amount. The woman from the company who received the estimate went briefly through the list and suggested that perhaps he over-estimated but we should still sort things into a "must-go-with-us" pile, and a "nice-to-bring-with-us" pile the day the movers come, since they'll be weighing our things as they pack.


The movers actually have to do our things in two stages: they will be by on July 9 to pack and load everything that needs to go to Baker Lake, and then they will be back on July 27 to pack and move the rest of our stuff into storage. We will be flying out on July 30 and then I start my new job on August 7. Eek. When you lay it all out like that, it doesn't seem like it's very far off at all. In fact, it's actually really, really close. /cue panic

The route that our things take to get from Ontario to Nunavut is actually a lot more convuluted than I expected. I thought it was going on a plane and...that would be it? Nope. It's actually going to be driven from our house in Ontario to Thompson, Manitoba (slated to be there between July 18-26...that seems like a *really* long time, doesn't it?). From there, it is prepped to get ready to fly, but it goes by rail to Churchill, Manitoba and then finally, it is loaded on a plane and will eventually fly to Baker Lake, Nunavut. No one can promise me that it will be there before we arrive on July 30 - so we will have to pack into our luggage a "survival" kit of some of our key needs that will hold us over until our things arrive, should that be the case. I'm going to be very, very unhappy if our stuff isn't there before us or relatively soon after we get there.

So! The plan between now and the 9th is to stop procrastinating and get sorting. All of our clothes need to be sorted into what we can live with for a month and what can go up first. My kitchen needs to be looked at with a critical eye (do I really need 7 frying pans? 6 cookie sheets? etc.) - if we are significantly over our weight allowance I'm going to have to leave things behind/give stuff away.

Just remind me not to procrastinate!!
-L