Monthly Archives: June 2017

Working the checklist: Bought a trailer

Posted on June 25, 2017 by Melissa

Spent yesterday in Marysville buying a cargo trailer. It’s 5′ x 10′ — a couple of feet longer than we had originally planned. When we drive to Mexico, this is what we’ll transport all of our belongings in. The car is solely for people and beasties. So stuff either fits in the trailer, or it has to go!

As the main driver in the family, I drove home from the dealer. This was my first time pulling a trailer. (Nope, I’ve never pulled a horse trailer.)

I pulled the new trailer from the lot in Marysville all the way to our house in Fall City, which on a Saturday afternoon ensured I got lots of practice with starts, stops, merging, changing lanes, curves, straights, and TRAFFIC. (Also bumps. Lots of bumps.) It was an entirely successful trip, though, and I got lots of practice going forward.

I got a little practice backing up. Before we even left the dealer, we pulled into an empty area, and Jay taught me the principles of backing up and turning the trailer while in reverse. On the way home, we stopped at Safeway, and while he ran inside to grab a few things, I practiced parking (and using reverse to straighten the trailer between the lines.

When we got home, we decided to pull into the driveway, then back it into a spot at the front of the property. I nailed it on the first try. (Jay was very impressed. He was impressed by how well I had parked it at Safeway too, though that took me more than one shot.)

I’ll get more practice over the next month as we use the trailer to transport a bunch of stuff from the house to whatever charity ends up with it.

Posted in Moving Abroad | Tagged moving, stuff, trailer | Leave a comment

Changing our address and forwarding our mail

Posted on June 18, 2017 by Melissa

As of June 28, we will no longer have the address we’ve had for nearly 14 years. We’re in a rental house right now, but in six weeks, we won’t have that address either.

So what to do with mail and all those other things that require an address?

The plan has always been to keep a Washington state address. We want a small (cheap!) home base here that will function as our permanent residence. Even so, though, it is, at most a physical address for those few situations that require one. We don’t plan to use it as a mailing address.

Our solution is to use a mail forwarding service for our mail. That name is kind of a misnomer, though. They won’t actually be forwarding the bulk of our mail. They will scan our first class mail, and we will look at it online and tell them what to do with it. Really, really neat service.

We drove out to Ballard yesterday and got that set up. On the way back, we ended up smack dab in the middle of Seattle Solstice Naked Bicycle Ride. Wish I had taken pictures, but honestly, I was annoyed because they seriously futzed up traffic.

In the upcoming weeks, I need to do a lot of address changes, including forwarding our mail at the post office, updating our voter registration, changing addresses at work, updating credit cards, and changing our drivers licenses. Jay can update his license online, but I’m going to go in for mine. I want to change from a regular license to an Enhanced Drivers License (which Jay already has). That will get us back and forth over the border more quickly.