The Craziness Starts

So, once we made it back to Petawawa, we had about 24 hours to unpack and get the house ready for Howard and Marilynne to visit.  We both left for Petawawa the same day.  They were coming from North Central Wisconsin(by the cabin) from the family reunion.  We ended up seeing them in Michigan for a few minutes.  We noticed a motorhome towing a jeep parked at a park and thought it might be them so swung around and stopped.  I think we really scared them....they weren't expecting us! 

Our other exciting news was that we received a phone call one of the first days after we left for WI.  It was a call from Argonne National Labs, basically with an offer for a new job for Jeremy.  He managed to escape for a minute after getting home and saying hi to Howard and Marilynne to call them back and see what the offer was about.  We sat on it for the weekend and called back Monday to accept. We had already tentatively accepted the job in July and were aiming at a start date in early October but were awaiting the formal offer.  Jeremy and I both gave our notices at work that Thursday so Oct 11th would be our last day(that was our best guestimate).  We were waiting for his manager to return to work to give our notice.

In the meantime, we had fun visiting with Howard and Marilynne.  We almost immediately went out to the Nook Creperie - all of our favorite restaurant.  Jeremy also got Howard out fishing a few times.  I went with the very last time....thought it might be my last chance out on the river.  We had some good food, drinks and laughter during the 10 days or so they were visiting and made it back one more time the Creperie. 

So, once Howard and Marilynne left Sept 16, we had less than a month of very hectic and chaotic times.  We had so much to get done to get out of Petawawa.  Jeremy's tentative start date was set for Oct 21st.  We immediately began working on clearing up the house, however, Jeremy came down with a bad cold and I somehow managed to mostly fight it off.  We both ended up taking a few days off and were able to clean a bit.  We cleared out a lot of the miscellaneous stuff and boxed it up and put it in the garage.  We wanted the house clear so it would have an easy viewing once we put it up for sale.  We also contacted a realtor and got things moving.  The house went up September 25th. 

In the meantime, I headed to Ottawa the weekend of Sept 21st for my final Canadian race.  I had signed up for the Army Run in the spring, not knowing if I'd be able to run it or not.  Guess I managed to just squeeze it in.  That was duck opening weekend as well....so with me gone, Jeremy managed to get Hayde out for some quick duck hunts....had some success and some slight problems.

We had a viewing on the house the day after it went up and another the next day.  Turns out it was the same couple.  By Sept 27th, our realtor called to tell us they had an offer for us.  We ended up putting the house up at our lowest price we were willing to go, knowing that all the work we put into the house in the 4 years we owned it, was gone.  We ended up settling on an offer about $2k less than our listing price and managed a closing date of Nov 1st.

We finally got the movers scheduled(everything was pending this date) and I took two days off to be at the house with them.  They came on Oct 9th to do all the packing.  The drivers came back on the 10th to load it all into the truck.  Since this was also our last week of work, we had several going-away parties and our week was completely booked.  We had about 30 min to run around the house before the packers came to grab whatever we thought we might want for the next unknown amount of time.  We had no place to move into other than a hotel.  Anyway, the truck left Thurs around 3pm with all our belongings.  We just had a mattress we were going to get rid of, the last bits of junk to take to the dump, the cats, dog, a few suitcases of clothing, and our important documents(ie. passports, immigration docs).  We tried to make a list of everything else we were going to have to close down or inform of our departure...hoping we got everything.  So, we went to work on the 11th, said our good-byes, did our exit interviews and handed in our badges.  We spend the next day cleaning up, getting the last bits to the dump, and packing up the truck.  On Sunday the 13th, we said our last good-byes to our neighbors, whom we'll surely miss, and got in the truck(pulling the boat) and headed out of town.  We ended up giving the car away(it wasn't going to pass the safety inspection so couldn't sell it to anyone), and sold the jeep to our realtor for his farm.  Again, it wasn't going to pass the safety so our realtor wanted it for a farm truck.  We looked into importing the car, but didn't have enough time to get all the documentation to get it imported.