17th October 2006

Greg Says.......

Finished work on Friday 13th. Now unemployed!! I shall definately miss all the people at work, but have no regrets about leaving at the moment. What we are doing seems to be the right thing for us at the moment. I had a good send off having a few beers at lunchtime, with a few more in the evening.

It's now only 4 days till we go, and we are on course to be ready. The furniture is in storage in Portland, and the house is nearly empty! Had a viewing today from a lady, who has said that she wants to rent the house, so hopefully fingers crossed, the house should be rented by end of next week!

We had the 'Goodbye' party on 7th, and saw a lot of friends and family, which was great. The 49 er went down well, I can vouch for that as I was in the utility room serving it up all afternoon!
There is a comment on the blog saying that hopefully there is 49 er in NZ.......Sadly don't think there is, so I suppose I'll have force myself to get used to some sort of lager! It's a tough old life! Still, the experience will give me something to look forward to on our return!

Alistair and Rowena are getting exited, and have sorted out all their toys and clothes. They are talking about how nice it will be to have their Mum and Dad teaching them, I thing they are under the impression it will be easy! We'll see about that shan't we!

Ben and Harry too, sound like they are looking forward to it too, as they are coming for the first week when we will be in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Just hope I can get them out of bed in the mornings!

Looking towards the weekend, on Friday we have a Ford Farewell at Hamworthy Club, let's hope I can get my final pint of 49 er there! Then Saturday it's D-Day......leaving Blighty for the next year or so!!! Blimey, it's come round so quickly!

Ok that's enough waffle from me, next entry maybe from the USA......oooh how exiting!!

4th October 2006

It has been a nightmare with NTL. We gave NTL the customary 30 days notice on 20/9/06 to cancel the phone on 20/10, but they went and cut us off immediately. No-one has been able to call us, which is great in one respect, but this is the time that people want to speak with us just before we go! The Customer service has been abissmal, we had two engineers come out to us, numerous advisors that we spent 1/2 hour on the phone with, and eventually two weeks without a phone line!
Then the bank decided to delete our bank account from the online system, and change the names of the account by deleting my name and adding my mothers. It's too complicated to explain, but as you can imagine internet banking is going to be vital for us to run our affairs when we are away!
Then of course there'sall the letters you need to send to change your correspondance address whilst you are away. It's surprising how many you have to send!
I have resigned from the bank and finish on 13/10/06. 9 days to go....it'll be nice to finish now that I've made that decision to leave. Funnily enough I haven't had any second thoughts up to now.
Still we are getting there, two weeks on Saturday and we'll be on the plane to California. Can't wait.