When The Boat Comes In

The things that have tripped us up have been unexpected. For instance, the medical insurance fiasco was a surprise. The latest surprise is the delay between our household belongings clearing customs, and having them actually delivered to our house. We're currently waiting to hear when the delivery company has a slot in their schedule. Presumably our 40' container is sitting in a storage facility somewhere right now. In contrast, it was surprisingly easy to set up services at the new house. One phone call to the City of Sunnyvale had the billing for water supply and garbage collection sorted out. It took a trip down to the local PG&E office to get our gas and electric billing sorted out (they needed to confirm my identity before they could bill me, it seems). AT&T had our telephone service connected within a day, and our ADSL should be connected tomorrow. And Comcast installed our digital cable (complete with a DVR, just like Sky+) the day after we phoned them. We get to the end of the corporate housing on Sunday, so we have to leave the apartment. It would be possible to extend this, but it needs approval from several levels of management, and we might not be able to stay in the same apartment. By contrast, living in an unfurnished house with an airbed, a travel cot, a portable TV and some borrowed crockery and cutlery sounds appealing. At least it'll be our own place. The optimist in me thinks that we'll hear from the shipping company tomorrow that they can deliver on Friday. Realistically, it looks like we'll be enjoying a bit of a camping vibe for a few days (albeit with cable TV). Still, it makes for a more interesting story.