Cars & Trucks

Today Joy is selling her car. I sell my truck the day before we leave (less than a week now). I should say, “turn over the cars,” because the sales were already a done deal. My truck was basically sold by May I think to Eddie, who works at TNRCC , the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission. He’s being really patient and letting me hold on to the truck until the last minute. It’s all working out as smoothly as it could, not a wild rush to find a buyer. For which we are grateful.

I still have to clean the truck out, finish the shed-doors-won’t-close-properly project, ostensibly fix some siding problem, and cut down the last 3/4 of the mulberry tree. Plus Joy and I together have to clean and triage the bathroom, kitchen and hall cabinets. And by the way, it’s been raining nearly every day for 2 months and there’s water standing in the yard since yesterday.

With that in mind, here’s our schedule:

Today (Friday) - Joy Meals on Wheels function; sells car; dinner with friend. Luke: Lunch with friend; dinner with friend.

Saturday - Joy breakfast with friend; Luke morning meeting; Both: lunch with friend; dinner with friends.

Sunday - Joy breakfast with friend, finish tree and shed projects & siding? Movie with friends.

Monday - Pack; finish all house-related, mail-related and computer-related tasks; dinner with Parents

Tuesday - Finish and packing; move out of house, clean house.

Wednesday - All last minute items; sell Luke’s Truck.

Thursday - Fly to Quito

Looks pretty un-doable to me.

Saying Goodbyes

Today we continued phase 3 of getting ready to move to Quito, Ecuador. It’s the Goodbye-and-come-to-visit-us phase. We should have finished phase 2 (packing and moving out of the house) before we began phase 3, because now there is no time for anything but socializing. I had lunch with one friend, dinner with another, while Joy (as you recall, my lovely wife) had lunch with some stranger I think. I asked, “why did you need to say goodbye to a stranger?” but she ignored me. That was fine, because, as I often discover, it was a rhetorical question.

Top 3 questions and comments from these goodbye events:

1. So, are you all packed (over a week before leaving)? (A: Yes. In fact, we packed a month ago and have been camping in the back yard since late June.)
2. Will your email still work in Ecuador?
3. What is Joy going to be doing? (A: You mean besides keeping me in line? Isn’t that a full time job?)

On a related note, what is the proper etiquette for these goodbyes? What is the correct protocol? It goes without saying that since I’m the one leaving, I get to pick the place. But, the big question for me is this: when they try to pay, do I let them, to allow them express how much they appreciate me and are going to miss me?    Come to think of it, I guess that wasn’t such a tough one.

Joy and Luke about to embark!

My first blog entry begins 9 days before our departure from Austin, Texas to Quito, Ecuador, where we’ll be living for 2 years. With barely a week to go, we’ve done a lot but have a lot left to do. Who’d've thought that there was so much to do simply to move to another country and out of the house where you’ve been living for the last 13 years (while getting it ready to rent)?

In Quito I’ll be teaching 6th grade math and science at Academia Cotopaxi, apparently a prestigious international school (K-12) who got duped into hiring me based on a conspiracy involving my friends, current and former bosses, a word processor, and Skype, the amazing tool for talking (and videoconferencing) computer to computer for free. How long will I be able to maintain the deception that I belong there?

Part of what’s so much work about moving out is that Joy (my wonderful wife of 13 years –though she’s really much older than that) and I both seem bent on rebuilding our house from the ground up. We installed a new water heater, had electricians completely redo the electrical system in the house, put in all new interior doors, hinges and knobs, cut down one tree (OK, that’s still on the to-do list), planted another tree, trimmed the big ash, touched up lots of paint and washed all the windows (including the acrobatics seen to the left). What was I doing while Joy was doing all of this, you ask? Don’t ask. Mostly farting around on the computer, working with my friend Daniel, trying to get Linux and Windows set up as a dual-boot on our new laptop, because that sounded like a really cool thing to do. Oh yeah, and burning all our CDs to mp3 for the trip. So you see, I was busy doing important things too. What will all this change bring? Which way will the toilet water spin? More soon.