The One Week Countdown Is ON!

Whew! We've worked really hard and much of the packing and organizing is done. I think (I hope) that by the end of today we'll be done with all we can do except the last minute stuff.

Leaving us lots of time to spend with people.

I cleaned out Ivan's closet yesterday, finding a pair of my Reboks in the process. Not sure why or how they ended up in his closet, but I was happy to find them since the pair I've been using started falling apart some time ago -- the inside fabric has come mostly unglued and every time I put them on the fabric rolls up in a ball and is most uncomfortable. So finding this other pair with the interior intact is a blessing.

I also packed one more box of kitchen things yesterday, finding a mound of ant gunk in the process. Yuck! It was a corner cupboard (hate those!), all dark and hard to get into so it's rarely used, making it the perfect "playground" for the carpenter ants. When we build our house, there will be NO CORNER CUPBOARDS!

Ivan ran around in the morning -- while things were open -- and got about half the paperwork stuff done. Then he spent over an hour on the phone getting more things handled.

Today he'll spend most of the morning doing just one thing: the paperwork to sell our car. Not the actual sales paperwork, just the preparatory paperwork. For whatever reason, every time a car changes hands the government requires an extensive inspection to verify it is indeed the vehicle in question, matching all the appropriate numbers. We thought it was a simple matter of going to the office, paying a small fee, and having it done.

That IS an option... IF you want to get up at 2 or 3 a.m. and go get in line! People literally start getting in line by 1 or 2 a.m. because only the first 20 people get served.

Yes, you read that right, only the first 20 people in line get served.

Because what they REALLY want you to do is pay more than twice the amount to have someone come to your home and do it on site.

But before that can happen you have to:
1) go to the office and get a form and sign up for the on-site inspection
2) go to the police station for another form
3) take both forms to the bank and pay for them
4) take the one form back to the police station

Then we wait for the on-site inspector who will bring yet another form which we'll fill out and pay an additional amount directly to him.

Basically what has happened is that they've created another industry that (1) allows the office designed for this purpose to do minimal work, and (2) provides an income for the poorly paid police during their off-duty hours.

[Or at least I'm assuming it's their off-duty hours.]

You're paying for convenience.
Sort of.
It's not really convenient to spend a morning in various lines filling out forms and making payments.
But it is the lesser of two evils because who in their right mind wants to get up at o'dark in the morning to get in line?!?!

All this so we can legally sell our car to our co-workers.

You're probably wondering why we're even selling our car.
After all, we're only going on furlough for six months.

Long story made short:
When we bought the car we failed to note it has NO POWER STEERING.
I have trouble parallel parking with an automatic transmission and power steering.
I've already got one strike against me with the stick shift.
Throw in NO POWER STEERING and I am extremely limited on where I can go by myself.
I'd say 85% (or more) of our town has only parallel parking.
I can go to the grocery store with its normal parking lot.
And not many other places.
Or I find myself driving around and around (and around and around), looking for a spot on a corner I can just pull into.

So we decided back then, when we realized our mistake, that we'd keep it for this term on the field, then sell it and get something with power steering after furlough.

I have to say, I will miss our little Fiat Uno. It has been a good car, taken us many places in (relative) comfort, with few mechanical issues. So I'm kinda hoping we can find a newer Fiat Uno with power steering when we get back. We'll have to go up about a decade in that model to get it, which might put it out of our price range. In which case I'll be happy with any cute little car with power steering.

Finding a cute little turquoise car with power steering would be icing on the cake.

Oh, and have I mentioned? WE LEAVE IN EXACTLY ONE WEEK!!!