Job change and relocation complete - Florida here we are!

We had decided to move closer to my family in SW  Florida a while ago but had not really decided when to make the move. Well, about 2 weeks before the K12 schools started in Fl we decided to make the move.  My wife was awesome in finding some temporary housing and in under 2 weeks I had them down in an apartment while I still job hunted. 

Last month, I interviewed with a large company and decided that it was a good move.  A number of other good opportunities were available but this one just seems like the best fit from a "whole family" perspective. Not an easy choice by any means and even harder when you are in the middle of trying to further your in-progress relocation.

I will say that there were many things that came together in just the right way but many other things were pretty painful.  The job and housing came together with amazing timing.  There are huge praises regarding those. Now the fact that my wife and kids were in Fl which left me with all the decisions regarding getting out of our Virginia house was pretty painful.  For my 2 week notice with my previous employer, I worked on packing/organizing in the evening for 2-3 hours each night.  I had my in-laws help with some items as well which was great.  Probably the biggest problem/praise was dealing with the bulk of 16 years of accumulation in the house/garage.  It was an enormous undertaking getting it all of of the house.  We decided to get the house listed for sale by a prior church friend and set a set of Sept 15th to be listed.  This gave me around 9 days of full time attention to get the house packed and into a POD, our travel trailer, my mother in-laws house/garage or into our truck/utility trailer for a final run before I start the new job. I timed it so I would still have around 1 week of time to "relax" before the new job but that really means dealing with drivers licenses, and car/truck/motorcycle/trailer/travel trailer titles, licenses and insurance. 

Anyways, back to the boxing and storing..  I have to give much praise for our friends - the Martinez family.  There were such a wonderful blessing that words are not enough.  I would not be remotely ready without them and would likely have ended up in the hospital trying to do it alone.  I am still in a ton of pain from some of the stuff but I am SO grateful for the help I received which was far from easy on them as well.

We ended up packing a 8ft x 8ft x 16ft amazingly tight (thank you..).  That took the bulk of what we didn't move via Uhaul and pickup truck in 2 prior Fl round trips.  I did end up with a pretty large truckful for my last "one way trip" prior to the job starting.  I put a good amount of stuff in our travel trailer and a little at my mother in-laws.

I made about 2 1/2 heaping trailer fulls of junk to the dump.  A lot of it was little odds/ends of wood working projects from long ago which "could still be useful for another project".  Lesson learned is to throw away the odds/ends and just get a bit of new wood/stuff as needed.  It is probably cheaper in the long run that way and way easier on the back. 

I'm hoping that the dreams of boxes and strapping tape running out soon end. 

The 10-14 hour days packing over the last week+ were not fun.  Pretty much every muscle hurts. I did lose about 5-7 lbs which was the only major plus I can think of.  My phone indicated that on a few days I carried it with me that I walked over 8 miles in a day.

Getting a POD (Packrat actually) is a great way to move stuff.  It will get shipped to a storage location and held there until we get a house.  This was way easier than carting the remaining stuff via Uhaul and having to do multiple load/unloads in the process.  About the only 2 negatives are cost (still pretty pricey) and size.  I wish we had been able to go a bit more than 16ft in length - 20-24 ft probably would have keep me from needing to store in the travel trailer and mother in-laws. Some of the moving trucks are larger but even more expensive so it was a trade-off.   Getting a nice convertible hand truck from Sams Club was good along with some Harbor Freight dollies and a few other moving items. ** Boy am I glad I didn't buy a milling machine yet (1800-2400 lbs)  !!!  **

Having time to do things at an non-rushed pace would have been great but our choices didn't allow it.  Having great friends made that bearable. 

I would recommend not waiting to do some of the "hard stuff" like drywall patches, painting and removing things like the surface mounted welding wiring and RV wiring you are going to take with you. I ended up getting up at 5:15am the day I was leaving to sand a drywall patch and paint it since the patch wasn't dry by midnight when I was trying to finish up.  Stuff like that makes for a difficult long drive. In my defense, we did have a couple days of rain which did put of a few of the tasks.

Anyways, a brief trip in October ought to allow us to get the bulk of the remaining stuff and travel trailer.  Only major thing which needs to wait on a house will likely be my wifes favorite roll top desk. 

A new house is still in the research phase.  Tough decisions and more trade-offs.  We are having some issues with some aspects of the local schools.  I think the police are now going to be at the bus stop for the middle schoolers - a few of them are just out of control.  The schools are overcrowded and the buses are a big issue in general - the behavior of some children just puts things over the top.  I feel very sad for my kids and many other on the buses. We didn't see these types of problems in VA to this large of an extent. 

So much more to do but getting there.

Thanks for reading,
Scott

Prepping for change - hoping to relocate

Well, we have made a decision to move down to Florida to be nearer to family.  It is a tough decision and still requires many things to happen.  I'm currently job hunting for positions in the Tampa area. We decided to go ahead and start packing up non-essential stuff (lots of my books fit that criteria from what my wife says). We are doing house stuff - starting to paint bedrooms right now.  My deck project not long ago was part of this preparation process. Things are moving along but it just feels so slow at times - until I find a job I am sure. We are still figuring out how we will handle things if I get a position and go down now.  We have been talking with a nice realtor and have seen some nice houses (online) but the job must come first. If I find the right position I will likely haul our travel trailer down and stay in it - that will allow me to start the new job and look at houses in the evening or on weekends.  If it works out well we can all be down there before my kids need to start school - that would be a blessing. Whatever happens we will just roll with it though.

I know our friends are really sad that we are trying to relocate. We are both sad that we won't seem them as often but are also excited about the potential great things that will come from this. I'm going to aim for a house with an extra room or 2 so friends and family can visit (hint hint to those in VA and MI).

[update 2016/8/15] Well, we now are partially relocated near Tampa, Florida as of 8/6/16. The kids were able to start school on day one. Working out an apartment, registering for school and moving in under 2 weeks was a miracle in itself. My wife was amazing in this process and coordinated so much in so little time that I can't praise her enough.  Our kids are doing well (day 1 of school had everyone in tears though) and I can't say enough about how they recovered from the very fast decision to move.  I'm still in Virginia while I interview, keep up the house and continue to prep for a final move once an appropriate Tampa area job is found.  I miss the family bunches.

[update 2016/08/16] Things are looking up job hunt wise and we are very happy about that. Note to self - why did I accumulate so much stuff in the garage? Hoping something less than a full tractor trailer is needed for what remains in the house and garage. Might still be leaning toward holding onto the current house until we find a new house just to reduce the need for a large (or multiple storage units). We are pretty sure the house will sell pretty quick once we declutter and get it on the market. It is time to start looking into mortgage information; based upon the housing market in our target area we will have to move fast when a nice house comes available.

[update 2016/08/24] Yeah, I accepted a good job offer in the last few days.  There was a hard choice to make but I think I chose what is in my families best interest right now.  Still dreading the remaining packing. I'll be starting the new job within  a month. I've traveled around 4000 miles in 18 days while carting my family and many belongings to our temporary apartment.  Heading back to VA, I have been able to make the one-way trip in just under 14 hours straight. That is wearing me down quickly but I am hopeful to only have one more main trip to the new place.  Hopefully, everything remaining will be in a POD and stored somewhere soon.  At that point we will we house hunt - we are starting that a bit now but it is posing challenges in breadth of available houses.

Philippians 4:6-8

6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

My book case - Non-IT

Ok, this post documents most of the remaining books on the book shelves.  The content mainly covers Christianity, Home/Repair, Metal working, Gardening, Mat and Science.

Here is a link to my previous post covering my IT related books.

I'm not going to document all the magazines and the remaining books - a combination of family "fun reads", cook books and other miscellany.

Here is my bible (I find the "New American Standard Bible" pretty easy to read) and a few other books we have.  One nice thing about God is that God doesn't need to change - one book tells it all. Oh, we do have other books because I like to understand historical context, etc at times as well.  For better or worse, I don't think I could ever consider myself a bible scholar though.  I find myself having to read a lot more IT technical books to keep up with the changing times.

Here are other Christianity related books on the other side of the bookcase. Most of these are my wife's.

I had a brief plan to do a bit of a career change from general IT into Bioinformatics but decided that the combination of a time consuming primary job along with the need to spend quality time with my family outweighed my desire for change.  On a different note, when studying material like this I find it hard *not to see* God's handiwork. 

For as many barn/shed books as I ended up with (cleaned out my fathers stash when they moved a while back... I couldn't say no), I should have built the workshop I planned.  Maybe after we get moved.. I found most of the deck books either had overly fancy projects or didn't really meet current construction codes - googling for stuff kept me code compliant but you still have to double check things.  The books on electricity and concrete work helped me out with a couple projects.

Here are a bunch of my "hobby" books.  I will say that I am hugely impressed with how much raw data is crammed into the "Machinery's Handbook" - it is purely a reference but helpful too in a sort of "find what you don't know" kind of way.  At some point, I would still love to build a CNC router and maybe work with some milling, cutting, plasma cutting type tools.

 Most of these math books are related to my math minor.  The more "business statistics" related books are my wife's.  On a rare occasion I pull one of these out because I want to remember how to solve some problem or another.  I had hoped my son might read these a little bit (he does like math) but these just don't have the draw of his fun reading or drawing activities.

 The physics are from my undergrad degree and the others are actually text books I got from my dad when they moved.  The old books are dated technology wise but still have some interesting things here and there.  It is kind of interesting to see the difference in writing styles between ~1960's text books and technical writing today.  The old text books are a bit dry in style but I have to wonder if the "easier reading style" nowadays isn't required because everyones attention span is so low. I did laugh at some article indicating that the average adult has around an 8 second attention span while a gold fish has a 9 second attention span.

Here is the last of the stuff I care to document. phew.  I do like gardening and hope I will still again have time to do some once I find an appropriate job and relocate as desired.

I hope you find something enjoyable out of all this.  Thanks for reading!
Scott

Proverbs 18:15
15 The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge, for the ears of the wise seek it out.