Moving and packing and jobs and friends

So, there's been a slight change of plans. We're still moving to Denver, and we're still doing it on the same day that we've been planning, but I won't be taking the new job that I was offered. I fully intended to, but when I gave notice at my current job, they asked me to stay on and work remotely, and offered some great perks to doing so.

At first I thought no way, because I was so in the mindset of having the new job, but then I thought about it and realized that actually, it made way more sense for me to stick with my current job than to take the new one. Every factor just spelled out that the current job was the way to go--I love the company and the people, I love the work, the benefits are fantastic, there will be a promotion shortly, there are no unknowns, and I'll get to work from home, which will be great in terms of having a dog now and kids later. And plus, Torsten and I will be working at home together, which will be lovely, though we fully intend to work in separate rooms, because he spends most of his workday on the phone (loudly), and I can't edit with that level of background noise.

So, after I made the decision I had to write a really awkward and guilt-inducing email to the people who offered me the new job, telling them that I wasn't going to be able to accept it after all. I felt really bad about it, but as my friends and family kept telling me, you have to do what's best for you, and companies are used to things like this happening. And in fact I got a very classy response from the guy who interviewed me, wishing me luck and telling me to stay in touch. So, I feel better now.

And this totally opens up our options in Denver. We'll both be working from home, so we need at least a two-bedroom place and preferably a three-bedroom so that we can each have our own office, and we have a lot more flexibility on location. Originally our thought had been to get a place within walking distance of my office so that we wouldn't have to get a second car, but now there is no office, so we can live in whatever neighborhood we want.

Of course, this kind of throws off our apartment-hunting plan, which was to go to my new office and walk from there, stopping into every building on the way and looking at available apartments. Now that we don't have a specific location in mind anymore, we're going to need to do more of a broad city tour to get a feel for the neighborhoods and where we might like to be. We're doing a bunch of research ahead of time and plan to make some appointments to view places before we arrive, but ultimately we're going to leave things open and see what comes along.

This weekend was a whirlwind of packing and logistics and seeing friends. There's nothing like a two-week deadline on your tenure in a place to make you realize how many friends you have there, because there are so many people that we want to hang out with one last time before we go, and short of having a giant packing party at our place, there's no way we're going to fit them all in. But we are doing what we can, and they and everyone else will just have to come visit us in Denver.

We did book the movers, and can we discuss what a stressful thing that is? We did a ton of research and found a company that is very reputable and gets excellent reviews and is well-rated by the BBB, etc., but OMG is it stressful to research movers. The internet is flush with warning stories about scams and movers who held people's belongings hostage until they forked over thousands of dollars in extra costs, etc. Googling interstate moves is like Googling your medical symptoms, or reading What to Expect When You're Expecting while pregnant--bound to convince you that you will never make it to the other side safely.

But we will, ultimately, and the hope is that we can experience a beautiful dovetailing of circumstances wherein we find an apartment and then our stuff arrives shortly thereafter, so we don't have to spend too much time in hotels and/or sleeping on air mattresses in an empty place. Moving is stressfully inexact; they give you a two-day window of when they'll arrive, and you can specify a preference but there are no guarantees and you don't know for sure when to expect them until like two days in advance. And then your stuff doesn't fill the whole truck, so they do a bunch of moves all at once, and it's hard for them to tell how long it will all take, and so they give you a window of how long it will take until you're reunited with your stuff, and the window usually spans a weeklong period.

I totally understand it, because moving is an inexact science, and movers are held hostage to circumstances, and the self-reporting abilities of the people whose stuff they're moving, and weather and weigh stations and all the rest of it. But that doesn't make it any easier to deal with. What is making it easier, I think, is the fact that we ourselves are being so open-ended about this. We don't have a set date that we need to be there, since we're both going to be working remotely, and we don't have anyone waiting for us or anything, and we don't even have a place to stay.

So, you know, what happens happens. All we can do is research as much as we can, make smart choices, and hope for the best. And ultimately, we'll be together in Denver with good jobs and a place to live, and the exact details of when and how all that happens will become unimportant in the long run. I just hope that in two weeks I'm not eating my words.