oh my

I'm trying to be a good girl and get my affairs in order before next week. One of these said affairs is to get a bank account in the UK. Of course, my current bank doesn't have branches in the UK, which meant I had to open a new account with a global bank. It's a multi-step process apparently:

1) Go online (because there are no global banks around here) and open a US-based checking account. Done.

2) Call customer service to obtain a form to apply for a UK-based account + a credit card.

3) Be transferred to three different people, only to find that it costs $245 to open a UK account from the US.

Yeah. No.

I think I'm going to wait until I get there to open the second account. Either way, I'm going to lose money because I either have to pay to open the account now OR bend over and take the exchange rate on my US credit card. Sigh.

In other scariness, the third dude I talked to was based in the UK and speaking English, but I could only understand about every 5th word. :-)

procrastination

I keep trying to pack. I really do. Yesterday I was up at 4:30 am (not on purpose) and decided since I couldn't sleep, I may as well put some more stuff into boxes. The problem is that I keep finding things I forgot I had, then spending too much time oohing and ahhing over them. Found object del dia? The Action Heroine's Handbook. I discovered this buried on my bookshelf and hence ended up sitting around reading for the better part of an hour, when I should have been...packing.

So, I'm a bit behind but I can tell you, I'm now an expert at things like how to ward off the undead or drink my opponents under the table. Highly useful in the UK probably.

I also find that I need to listen to music while packing (attempting to pack). I just downloaded some new tunes and keep listening to the same three over, and over, and over again (my neighbors adore me, I'm sure). If you're curious, these are the three songs the good people of Torrence and I have been enjoying for the past two days:

Heavy Cross - Gossip
Love Etc. - The Pet Shop Boys
Sentimental Hearts (Ludacris vs. She & Him) - The Hood Internet

Ok. Off to try to sort through my shoe collection....

closet catharsis

there's been a growing mountain of stuff for Goodwill in my hall. for the past month, pretty much every time i get dressed or open a closet, something new gets tossed onto the pile. i just have too much...crap. my mother has offered to store some things, which makes sense for say, furniture, but really, do I need 15 winter coats? the answer is no. so with great difficulty, this packrat bagged everything up and drove it over to the Oakley drop-off center today. while i probably won't even know most of this stuff is gone, the seemingly endless pile of sorority t-shirts and bad gifts from Christmas past is is a little piece of my history that for some reason, I have carted from house to house to house. i guess it's just not a piece of history i particularly need to take overseas. :-)

down the rabbit hole

it's official! yippeeeee! God willing, six weeks from now i'll be an ex-pat tooling around London town trying to figure out stuff like how to weigh myself in stones. start date is 11/2. got a few things to do between now and then such as:

- get a visa (company will help with this).
- purge my closets of anything i haven't used in a year (hello, Goodwill!).
- attempt to sell some furniture.
- figure out where to store the rest of my furniture.
- pack up stuff i'm not taking, e.g. dishes, anything with a plug, etc. and bribe my parents to keep a few boxes for me.
- cram my clothes and perhaps a set of sheets into a very large suitcase and a backpack. if something doesn't fit in there, i don't need it.
- sell Scion (will be a sad day indeed).
- figure out how to back up the 15 gigs of music i've stupidly stored on my company laptop.
- think seriously about at least looking at a map of the Tube system.
- buy a raincoat.
- maybe get a bank account or something over there.

really not sure where i'm going to be living, nor can i figure that out from this side of the pond. my plan right now is to couch surf a few days with a pal who is going to work in London for two months. i'm hoping i can find something quickly once i arrive. it only took me a week to find an apartment here in Cincy (and i looked at about 15), although i knew the city and where i wanted to live. i'd love to live within walking distance of the office, provided that the neighborhood is cool and affordable. my worst fear was having to live underneath a train, but my friend Emily who lived there for three months said you just get used to the noise and anyway, the trains stop running around 11 pm. Grand. :-)

this might actually happen

i got the transfer offer today! needless to say, i had a hard time focusing this afternoon at work, given that my hands were shaking and i wanted to stand up on my desk and yell "i'm moving to london" alternating with "holy shit, holy shit, holy shit."

benjamin button

i found out today that i am going to have to have roommates in london. massive amounts of roommates. just 2-6, actually. i don't know how i feel about this BUT i do know that one of the things i liked about peru was having other people around. and i already know what it's like to live alone in a good-sized apartment in Midwest, US. and isn't the whole point of me moving to have a new experience?

either way, i've decided i'm benjamin button. i've gone from owning a house and having a husband to getting my first apartment on my own to getting an apartment with roommates. but then, doing everything ass backwards seems to be my MO... :-)

running down a dream

i'm fortunate enough to work for a company with offices around the world. ever since i came back from peru i've been...restless... and i decided to put in a for a transfer. truth be told, one of the reasons i wanted to work for said company was because i liked the idea of working internationally, but the time was never right. until now.

i have no lease, no car payment, no pets, no kids, no significant (or even insignificant) other.

it's time.

our london office just so happens to have a position available and i might just be qualified (knock on wood). have i ever been to london? no. but i don't see this as a deterrent. :-)