Countdown is ON!

I spent the last week spending time with friends, including some dinners, a happy hour, golf, and the Belmont Stakes. Today was a homebody day, with a big to-do list and not nearly enough accomplished.

As the days are getting fewer before my ultimate departure, I am struggling a bit because the to-do list keeps growing longer... I'm thinking about...

- Which electronics need new power cords / chargers (importantly: the toothbrushes and Wii!)
- Where to send the mail (Mom & Dad, you may have noticed some heavier-than-normal deliveries? Maybe not yet.)
- Who is going to buy my furniture? I started today with 9 pieces + 1 TV. Ending the day with 8 (+ TV), with 1 of those promised to someone who "can't believe" I have this desk because it's "exactly what [she's] looking for". Go figure, I thought that would be the hardest to get rid of!
- When am I going to sell the car?

You know, the little things.

Meanwhile, 5 hours into the future, Jason has been busy taking care of little things too, like trying to find us a place to live. I'm excited to be going out on Friday (funded by Unilever- yay business class!!) to help with the hunt; hopefully we'll be able to find something over the weekend, since the days in temp housing are growing shorter too.

So a quick count of the days:
22: Days left on Normandie Court lease
17: Days til the movers come
15: Days left on Wish-Bone
12: Days left in the office
12: Days before anniversary #2
11: Evenings I'm in NYC before the movers come
6: Evenings I might be free and able to get something done before the movers come

Yikes!

Jason's Off!

Flight It's Saturday morning and Jason is now en route to the UK. I brought him to the airport for an 8:30 flight and I can see that he's currently at 37000 feet traveling at 556 knots (the internet is an amazing thing).

Food We spent the last week gorging ourselves silly on all the food we'd miss in NYC: walked the Brooklyn Bridge for Grimaldi's pizza, and binged on East Village Italian, Nina's (our favorite neighborhood spot), Pio Pio delicious chicken, and porterhouse at Benjamin. It was fantastic but we're both feeling the after-effects. While we cook a lot of dinners at home (and when I say "we" I mean "Jason"), one of the highlights of New York is of course the restaurants. We will likely never live in another place that offers as much gastronomic variety.

Final Day Many folks have asked us what we were going to do for Jason's last day in the city. Now that it's come and gone I can say that it was a fairly normal day other than his pending departure looming overhead. He talked with some Long Beach friends & his dad, we played some Wii, watched the Dodgers, and made tacos. It might have seemed anticlimactic, but anything more would have been stressful.

Frozen Yesterday I discovered the top tier of our wedding cake in our freezer (on our roughly 1 year 49 weeks anniversary). Given it was 80 degrees outside and in, we decided to leave it on the counter and check it out after dinner (about 6 hours later). We weren't hungry but gave it a try anyway. It was surprisingly delicious, though we only had a few bites. I was very glad that Jason was still here when I remembered the cake, but this small event made me overwhelmingly sad. I'm still trying to figure out why; I think it's premature nostalgia for this significant period in our lives that is coming to a close.

For Now... I am back in our little apartment, trying to sell the rest of the furniture and figure out how to make the most of the next 4 weeks, which are sure to fly by!

And it begins!

Greetings!

I'm creating this blog as a (public) diary of our latest adventure. In a month or less, we'll be moving to London!

Jason leaves on June 1 (1 week from today!), and I will hopefully make my voyage at the end of June. Either way, we're out of our Normandie Court apartment as of June 30, after nearly 5 years in NYC. We have mixed emotions about the move, but the dominant one is excitement over exploring a new culture, and the ease of access we'll have to a different region of the world.

I'm not yet sure how we'll use this, but my goals are that it will serve to help us:
- Keep a record of our travels over the next few years
- Keep in contact with friends and family over the miles

I expect our comments will be primarily focused on what we find...

• surprising
• frustrating
• interesting
• curious
• absurd
• disturbing
• thrilling
• hilarious
• depressing
• fascinating
• confusing
• better
• worse
• oddly similar

...about living abroad and traveling through different countries.

If anyone chooses to follow along, well, first we expect that you're a close friend or family member. You'll likely find this to be frequently entertaining, occasionally insightful, potentially introspective, and perhaps it will even inspire you to come visit! We will be welcoming visitors and looking to crash European vacations, so please let us know if you'll be (relatively) nearby!

More to come,

Jess