Contract Update

I've email telling me the employment contract has been signed by the Governor of Bermuda and the Department Director, and will be emailed to me by end of tomorrow...It is becoming real!

Now, to finish the details on the US-side of things. It is easy to trip over these, with life in two places, tho not quite, yet.

• Most, if not all, of my tax W-2s etc have now shown up, so I may be able to get that bit of business taken care of before I leave.

• I haven't been able to sell my car (2002 Subaru Forester L, 94,500 miles, manual, pearl white with roof rack, gray herringbone upholstery, regularly serviced, new brakes...), so I will transfer it to Trevor, who needs a car. We agree that having the money from an outright sale would have been helpful for me, while our deal involves some money and his labor management my house in Raleigh as a rental. Oh well - he needs a car, she needs a good home, I need to send her off into the world. It is a good solution. To do that, David (Ramp) has provided us a list of the steps we must take. (Thank you very much!) Trev, we need to jump on that!

• I will be paid in Bermudian dollars, which are keyed to US dollars - you can use either easily while in Bermuda, tho you can't use Bermudian dollars in the US. While I will have a bank account there, a big reason for taking this position is to be in a better position to pay down debt here, so I need to find a way of transferring money into the US accounts that doesn't cost a bundle each time. So far, it has seemed there would be both a transfer fee and an exchange fee. I suspect there is another way to deal with that.

• I will have a cellphone there, of course, though I intend to do most of my US calls via Skype (sign up, people, and let me know your contact name if you want to chat over your computer sometime. If you have a camera on your laptop/desktop, so much the better!) My cellphone is unlocked, so a Bermudian SIM card works, though I may try to keep a pay-as-you-go phone for those back-and-forth times. More than one Bermuda-based correspondent has mentioned that Blackberries (etal) are a terrific deal. I tend towards the simplest, leanest, biggest-buttons-est phone, however.
  
• I'm researching my options for internet service. The available service is ok, tho not blazingly fast; a new cable being laid across the ocean floor as we speak will upgrade the available speeds, I'm told. (That just seems weird to me. It all seems like magic, anyway.) Mike has found a program that appears to effectively turn some cellphones into a wireless card for the computer (and how in the world does that work??!) I want something that will move with me in Bermuda, which narrows the options.
  

I'm easily confused by all this. None of the US phone/internet companies have affiliates in Bermuda, and the captive market is reflected in the prices (well, to be fair, prices acknowledge that there is no potential for economies of scale, everything is beastly pricey, and there is a limited pool of potential customers in the first place.) There - my econ major side feels better.

So - this stuff, and cancel car insurance; put house insurance on automated pay; finally get a wedding gift to Mike Stock and his bride of a year+; configure the external hard drive; load in the music, lectures, etal I want to bring; figure how to work with pictures (I am used to the PC world, but shifted to a MacBook in April, which requires a cable rather than just slipping the datacard into the machine, something I have to re-learn each time I do this!). Get all the stuff that is left behind stored and out of the way. Finish my first read-thru of the Bermuda general plan, which is also basically the zoning and subdivision ordinance and is the central tool of the Development Controls office. Find the drivers manual so I can take the license test shortly after arriving on the Rock. And so forth - I feel like I have taken care of so many things, but, like the sown-dragon-teeth Sparti warriors, they continue to spring up with amazing ease.

Onward!