I Think She Liked It

I showed the house this afternoon. And the timing was good - we had gotten pretty lazy, and the house needed a good cleaning. Dave and I are both slobs, but pleasantly surprised to learn that we enjoy living in a clean house.

I showed the house this afternoon, and I think it went well. She will send her fiance to look later this week, and expects to make a decision next week. We shall see!

Tidbits

Tidbit #1: We seem to have an helpful HR person coordinating our move. It may be a bit late in coming, but at least it has come. There is a woman in Beijing who began working with us this week, and seems to have good answers to our questions. Furthermore, she has kept us updated on the progress of our negotiations. We expect to have more information on Monday.

Tidbit #2: After taking our house off the market this week, we are showing it to a potential buyer tomorrow. After psychologically preparing myself to stop selling the house, and resting in that decision, I am again convinced that this woman will want to make this her home.

Tidbit #3: 6 degrees of Dave and Lynne continues to bring us wonderful new connections. Thanks to everyone for your help, and your friends!

Off The Market

I removed the sign from the yard this morning.

What a relief!

No, there's no contract. But there haven't been any phone calls for the last few weeks either.

Our house is no longer for sale.

We may rent it. We may find a house sitter. We may make some quick improvements and put it back on the market in September. Or we may just leave it sit until next spring.

But right now,
we can rest.

Incremental Change

After an internet crash moments ago, I'm not sure I have the energy to re-write this posting. I'll give it my best shot, but please be sparing in your judgment :)

Over ice-cream this evening, my friend Janet pointed out that we know quite a bit more than we did a week ago. The offer letter was vague, but it still provided quite a bit of information. What's more, Dave discussed it with a few of his advisors and we've come to realize that vague can work to our advantage. We were reading the letter as an all-inclusive contract. And while there are certain things that ought to be addressed before he signs on the dotted line, we should feel comfortable leaving some things open ended.

I would like to have the date we fly solidified fairly soon. Once I purchase plane tickets, arrange shipping and temporary housing, things will be in place and I can focus on packing and moving my family, details be damned. I'm sure that will come soon, and the rest can fall into place as it will.

News! News!

I realize I've been lax in logging our family's updates and setbacks. This is, quite simply, because there have been few of any interest. We received a good response to the 6 degrees of Dave and Lynne, and our new connections have treated us to many wonderful Chinese meals as well as referencing many new books (my Amazon.com wish list is growing faster than my pile of gift cards!)

But the news referenced above is that after an unacceptable amount of waiting (5 months and 7 days after accepting the job), Dave has received an offer letter. As one would expect after waiting 5 months and 7 days, the letter is incomplete and leaves as many questions open as answered. Still, we have some news worth sharing:

• The job is currently set to begin October 8th. We're going to try to push that back a bit, because we can't leave the country until the new fiscal year, or October 1st. Our goal is for Dave to have a few days off while we relocate to help us find housing and settle in a bit. Either way, our original timeline is out the window. We'll post a revised schedule as soon as we have one, but we believe that Christmas in America is not in the cards this year.
• Our housing allowance is, to the dollar, what we expected. Interestingly, it will be paid directly to our landlord.
• After being verbally promised business class seats for the initial trip over the pond, the offer letter specifies economy class. Arrgh.
• Uncle H-- will be sending us home every year, albeit in economy class. This is as we expected, but still nice to have confirmed.
• The letter did not specify any moving expenses, beyond what we already knew to be the case - that they'll fly us over and pay for a hotel until we have permanent housing arranged. So the shipping, storing and purchasing balance remains to be defined.

That's all that's of much interest to anyone outside of our house. And so the negotiations begin. Please keep this in your prayers!

New Setback

The latest round in the waiting game has begun.

As many of you may have assumed, it will cost Uncle H-- quite a bit of money to move the family from the West to the East. We knew that the fiscal year begins on October 1st. What we didn't realize was that the investors would rather not see such a large sum of money added to their annual expenses this year.

So it may be October before they can move us. Or, we ask, maybe just October before we submit our receipts?

And no, we haven't heard anything from Second Shot (see below) since.