Back from Chicago only to pack

The big move started today.  It turned out that, at least psychologically, I was pretty well prepared.  C+R helped out coordinating things with the movers and packed our items for Indiana in their truck.  I was pretty impressed...R got almost everything in the trunk of the truck.  I was convinced they were going to need a U-Haul trailer.

The packers were from Allied Freight, were very nice and crazy efficient.  There were only two of them, both women to my surprise, they arrived around 8:10am and were done by 2:00pm.  They also were very generous with packing food.  I was under the impression that none of the food was getting packed.  They ended up packing almost all of it!  An option also exists for them to move the piano to my sister's house, for a charge.  I'll check on that tomorrow.  If the price is right, we might be able to take care of that too!  I definitely want to give C+R a gift of some kind for helping out and storing our stuff.  Thank you two for helping out so much!

I received my wife's copy of the Power of Attorney today and found out about it after everyone had left.  With plenty of time left in the day, I hand delivered a copy to my realtor...if nothing else to get it out of the way.  I made dinner, and then went to the soccer game scheduled at the early time of 6:15pm.  We ended up losing 0 to 1, but I am okay with it.  We got scored on because we started taking more risks offensively, after playing the majority of the game over-defensively.  My team was openly impressed with my stamina and speed.  We'll see if that helps the team out in the near future.

I made a short video of the first floor in terms of how it looks with most things packed.  Sadly, the video is too long for this blog to accept.  I'll take pictures of the entire house after the movers load everything onto the truck tomorrow.  The house will be about as empty if not more so than when I first moved in with my personal items.  Now that the house is packed, I feel like life is truly in count-down mode for me until Germany.  There are few pieces of information left that I need to complete the trip to Germany.  Some of those include a flight date to Germany and whether I can temporarily store items at Fort Benning for purposes of shipping the car before leaving the country.

On the Georgia front, land navigation in teams was today.  My wife's team found 5 of the 8 items they were to locate in their time allotted.  While this was the requirement, they are being tested individually tomorrow.  Failure means a retake of the test until success is achieved.  I also learned that her training is officially done on the 16th of March.  While this is good information to have, she still needs to contact the Carlson Wagonlit  Transportation Office in Fort Benning to coordinate PCS travel to Germany.  I called them today and, while they were very nice and helpful, they told me upfront that they will only talk to service members and not any dependents.  This makes my situation almost completely dependent upon what information my wife gets and when regarding our flight out.  I'm choosing to make the POV shipment date dependent upon the flight date. I need the flight date so that I can appropriately get our dog's vet certificate signed within the required 10 day time frame for international travel.  It will be slim timing for me any way things get sliced.

I am still very glad that my wife and I met up in Chicago!  It was very much worth it!  We'll have to make an effort of planning a getaway at least once if not twice a year like that!  Attached are the extremely few pictures I took.  My wife took more, but I did not get copies of them.

Hard to read, but the gold lettered sign pictured reads, "Thou shall eat pizza - the 11th Commandment"


Below are pictures of my night flight out of Chicago.  The pilot flew us around the downtown area and Magnificent Mile.  I didn't notice until the pass was halfway done.  It was a really cool view.  While my camera didn't get a good resolution of it, the Navy Pier can be clearly seen on the shore of Lake Michigan.