Six Days and 10 Hours … Call it a Week

Friday, 23 November

As I write this, the countdown clock says we have just over six days to retirement.  Seems to me it’s off by a day, counting down to the morning of November 30 instead of the evening.  That’s OK; I can live with that discrepancy.

First of all, I hope all those celebrating Thanksgiving had a wonderful day yesterday.  This was our first Thanksgiving since moving to the US in 1982 that we did not have a turkey dinner with all the trimmings.  Even plans for having turkey wraps for dinner fell by the wayside, but no biggie … we still gave thanks for all that we have to be grateful for.

We spent T-Day at the motorhome continuing the rough settling in process.  Mui had a few things he wanted to do — like hanging up an over the door towel rack in the bathroom, and a few quick storage mods that I will blog about in a separate post.  The picture to the right hints at one of the mods Mui made … and no, I’m not talking about the bottles themselves ;-)

We’re on track for the permanent move into the Phaeton a week from today; first stop — a few days at Bull Run Regional Park.  We will probably go out to the coach both days this weekend to do some fine tuning while we’re still in storage.  We figure whatever time we spend there now will speed things up and perhaps we can leave Bull Run earlier than planned and head to warmer climes that much sooner.

With so little time left in the stix & bricks, I thought I would post a few “then and now” photos to remind us of our living conditions after we got down to the serious business of moving stuff to storage and donating what we didn’t want to keep.  All I can say is that camping out like this is nothing like camping out with the motorhome — we much prefer doing the latter.

The “then” photos were taken after we sold our townhome and moved into our temporary digs in May 2011; the “now” photos were taken yesterday.  Whatever furnishing you see in the latter set of photos are either things we plan to leave behind/donate; or stuff borrowed from the coach so that we have a place to eat and a place to sit.  There are a few things — like the TV — that will be going in storage; we plan to make a last trip up to Winchester before we leave the area.

Then … first floor living spaces.

Now … the table and chairs go back to the Phaeton; what boxes that aren’t used for
stuff going to storage will be recycled.

Now … Storage bins re-purposed as coffee tables; you use what you’ve got!

Then … the spare bedroom that served as my office and the guest bathroom.

Now … the laptop on the left is going back to my work office on Monday; which means
I won’t have a need for the external monitor anymore; my Mac is going on the road
with us — I just can’t give it up; Mui designed a nifty way to keep it safe when we’re
rolling down the road in our quest for new adventures.

Then … the master suite.

Now … not much left; the box springs and mattress will be put in the
trash room on Friday to be hauled out to the dump.

Yes, the condo looks pitiful; but we don’t mind.  Seven more days and we’ll be in the coach to begin our gypsy lifestyle.