Ramblings from ?home?

It is true – we are back Stateside.

I’ve been relatively quiet lately due to lack of internet in some of our cool vacation destinations, only having one computer for both gozi and me (sharing is HARD), being busy just enjoying the vacation, and getting home to no communications opportunities in the house (no landline phone, no internet, no TV, no….).

So  now (still no internet – using the wifi at the Seattle Public Library – GO LIBRARY SYSTEM!!) we are ?home? – back in Seattle, in our (empty) house – reacclimating to ?normal? life.  I think not.

• Our totally cool vacation adventures make the “mundane”  return to Seattle disappointing.  Although there IS the Space Needle, it doesn’t really compare to Angkor Wat.
• Not surprisingly, my shipment from AUC has turned into a total CF!  The office that takes care of these things says that there is nothing wrong, however:
  • My shipment arrived in Seattle BEFORE I did.  Only by a few hours, but by the time we got to our messages, there was already one from Lufthansa Cargo.
  • The cargo company was calling because my shipment arrived with no paperwork.
    • For those who don’t know – that means that all the pain and agony we went thru to make a detailed (kinda) inventory of each box, the multiple customs forms and power of attorney forms etc. were simply not sent.  My shipment arrived in the States as 19 boxes/630kg of “Personal Effects”.
    • This has caused  no end of problems – including my having to go to the cargo office to print out my inventory and then to customs to get the boxes released from AGRICULTURAL hold.  Apparently the US customs officials are MOST worried about plant/animal importation problems so if there are no papers, it gets held in agriculture.  Joy of Joys.
  • Lack of modes of communication (see above) has made the sorting of these problems more… exciting.  We have mobiles (Thanks Pat!!) and Skype,  but no internet at home to check Skype for messages.  Getting this worked out.
  • We can’t take delivery  of the shipment (should it be ultimately released to the forwarding company to be delivered) until next week due to scheduling issues at the house.
• We (I guess I should say, I) made the mistake of suggesting to stop into our favorite watering-hold for “just one or two” the day after we got back.  OOPS.  We stayed a LONG time.  Friends kept insisting on buying us drinks.  I wasted most of the next day with a hangover – my own doing….
• Shopping here is TOTALLY WEIRD.  Everything is BIG and BRIGHT.  There is TOO MUCH of everything and it is all TOO EXPENSIVE.  The shops DON’T ALLOW hagg^H^H^H negotiating on the prices!!!  Who do they think they are!?
  • Not news to anyone who has moved recently, but we’ve spent EXCESSIVE amounts of money on NOTHING lately.  Stupid stuff like cleaning supplies, paper towels and toothpaste.  It is mind-boggling.
• Also not surprising, but frustrating, is that I don’t fit in a lot of the clothes that I left here!  That severely limits my clothing options until the shipment arrives (see above), which is not likely to be soon enough.

Ahh, welcome home!  Change is hard.  Life is an adventure.

I guess I live in interesting times.