Shipping Quotes & more Packing

Today I was finally going to tackle the entire issue with getting shipping quotes for the move to Europe. I wasn't particularly looking forward to having to deal with that. But apparently there is no way around it. I had to check 10 companies...the rest of the international shipping companies had such a bad reputation, that they didn't even make the first cut. I checked their BBB rating and the number of unsolved complaints against them. The pretty much cut the field in half. Of the remaining 5 companies I checked what complaints are listed against them and what the overall customer experience is. Well 2 of those companies had a really bad reputation. Normally I wouldn't even bother and give them a call. But since I knew what service I wanted and what I need, I decided to hear what they have to say. I was obvious that they were reading a sales script. They couldn't answer specific questions and some of the answer leave a lot to be desired. It occurred to me that the only thing they were interested is up-sell certain services. So I scratched those 2 off the list. That leaves 3 companies. 1 emailed one of those companies, but have yet to receive an answer. With the second company I talked on the phone and they will be sending a representative to survey the stuff that will be shipped and give me a more detailed estimate about the costs. Company number three knows what service I require, the dimensions of and number of the boxes I intend to ship...but I haven't heard back from them so far.

After lunch I went out into the garage to sort through some of the boxes and I made quite good progress. I carried stuff inside to put into my 'personal relocation box'. Slowly that box is starting to fill up. After I was done in the garage I started with the DVD's and pulled all those DVD's that belong to me and that are being moved to Austria. Turns out that is quite an impressive number of DVD's. Now the

DVD shelf in the TV-Room is full of 'holes'...and it looks quite sad actually.

Once I was done with that I checked with my airline to see if Travelocity had forwarded my reservation to them, since I was unable to reserve a specific seat on the flight and had to do that directly with the airline. Turns out the airline has the reservation and the reserved an aisle seat pretty much in the rear of the plane and I didn't care too much about a window seat anyways. In case it should turn out that this flight is a repeat of 'Lost'...well then I'm definitely in right part of the plane! When I was checking the description of the seat I realized that every seat is equipped with a USB Port for PC and iPod. That way you can recharge your electronic devices and are not limited to the onboard entertainment during a 10 hour flight. I'm definitely very happy about that.

So all in all it was quite a very productive day!!