The Mandelbear's Musings

This is my fourth "Done Since" post from Schildhaven Centraal. I'd consider making a list of things I forgot to pack, or neglected to do before we left, but it would be embarrassingly long and depressing. It's made for quite a few otherwise-avoidable $A orders. That by itself is embarrassing for reasons that should be obvious.

I also persist in thinking that I'm not getting enough done. The gap between things to do and things I've done may not be quite as wide as my brain weasels say it is, but it's still pretty wide. Quite a lot of writing, both of blog posts and of email, has fallen into that gap. It may be a struggle to haul it out.

Everything else in the week has been overshadowed by our cats missing their flight. The deities of felines and FedEx willing, they'll be here next Friday. If everything else goes as scheduled, G and m will be here Wednesday, which will help with cat-wrangling.

( Notes & links, as usual )

This marks the end of our third week in Den Haag. The cats are coming on next Friday, and the rest of our people the following Thursday. We are just barely going to have the place fully habitable by then, and the stuff we had shipped, and a few special order items, won't arrive until December.

Tomorrow I order a bed and internet service. We'd been using the internet connection left by the previous owners, but that ended three days ago -- a few days sooner than I expected. We've been getting by on our phones and my phone's hotspot since then.

I've been spending altogether too much time and bandwidth on $A. A lot of that is indecision, much of it more like decision paralysis. And a lot more is just forgetting -- I should have made a better checklist. And I should look more often at the one I did make.

And the whole plan is simply crazy. But so far we're pulling it off. Sort of. Today was a massive shopping trip for furniture, mostly successful; tomorrow a big Ikea delivery comes, including a chair for the desk I just finished assembling, and we need to order internet (which has been intensely frustrating so far).

( Notes & links, as usual )

We're here! It's been a difficult week in a lot of ways, but we're in Den Haag, with keys to our house and a large quantity of luggage. (Even so, I made a couple of really stupid bring-vs-ship decisions -- the Starport tableware and the (Cal. Academy of Sciences?) stuffable backpack would have been really useful.)

But we made it. We have until Wednesday to finish moving ourselves out of the hotel, meaning we have until then to make the house minimallly habitable. We're going to start by getting some blankets and maybe sheets at HEMA, across the street from the hotel. The beds left in the house aren't what we want to end up with, but they'll do as a stopgap.

In the last week we have:

• Sold Molly (to N's ex, which simplified things greatly).
• Packed suitcases (leaving behind a few things that would have been very useful, like a stack of maske, the tableware from the Starport, and a stuffable small backpack).
• Flown to Schiphol, and taken a cab from there to the hotel (for which my large MEI suitcase/backpack proved very useful indeed, because it's about a block from the nearest drop-off point -- the street the hotel is on doesn't allow cars).
• Registered with the municipality.
• Met up with (real estate agent)Ceva, who gave us our keys, a lovely bouquet of flowers which we left at the front desk, and a trip to and tour of our house. (Details in yesterday's post)
• Been out to the house yesterday with j, taking a few items (my recording gear, Colleen's ashes, and the green tool bag that once was hers) and meeting the local swans.

It's been a difficult, strenuous week, but also a very busy and productive one. I'll take it.

( Notes & links, as usual )

After toasting to "our next adventure" in the Delta sky lounge at SeaTac, N explained that we were between adventures -- buying our new house, shipping our belongings, and packing for our flight marked the end of our previous adventure. The next will begin when we move in to SchildHavn later this week. In the mean time we are in liminal space. I find it particularly appropriate that my current reading is "On Fairy Stories" by J. R. R. Tokkien.

Internet here on the plane is flaky. The passenger "entertainment" system crashed, and it took them half an hour to reboot it. Apparently this is standard. My assumption is that they've gone over to the dark $ide. The food here in "business" class, OTOH, is excellent.

Packing up was frantic -- I hadn't left myself nearly enough time. Several errands disn't get run, and in the confusion I left most of my stock of masks behind. Among other things. Well, G and m will be coming in another four weeks or so, and we're working on the assumption that we'll be able to come back occasionally for visits. "Leaf by Niggle" is also appropriate.

A large part of the problem with packing was second-thinking my luggage decisions. In the end I wound up putting my sling bag into my pacsafe (?) tote. The tote's bigger. The question is whether I'm going to have to carry my carry-on as a backpack. Should probably have used the small Travelpro as my carry-on, but it really depends on whether we're going to be taking rail to the hotel. Which I don't know yet. Hope not, because my main suitcase weighs over 50 lbs (up from 39 when I checked it yesterday). That way madness lies.

A glass of wine and a light lunch in the Delta sky lounge went a long way toward helping me unwind. As did the excellent food in 'business" (let's just call it what it is -- First) class. A glass of something alcoholic on the plane is a large part of my travel ritual, and has been ever since I started college at Carleton. The drinking age in the air back there wa 18; I don't know whether it still is.

Unlike the food, the "bed" that the seat attempts to turn into is the most uncomfortable damned contraption I've ever failed to sleep in. It would have helped if the seat belt was adjustable. Why in blazes would they make a seatbelt that can't be adjusted? And I may have eaten a little too much. The idea of being able to overeat in a plane is still somewhat bizarre.

... Posting from our hotel, Cove Centrum/Passage Den Haag. Now that I've unpacked a machine with usable posting software. The new (ad)venture starts with the next post.

The obvious next question is "What am I doing in this handbasket?" I think I'll leave that for the next post.

Right now, the answer to "where am I going?" is Den Haag (The Hague) in The Netherlands. The First of October. This may not come as a total surprise to the very few people I hold regular conversations with, nor to anyone who's been following this blog for the last few years, though in the latter case I wouldn't blame you for missing it.

I'm going with my family of choice -- N, G, and N's oldest kid, m. N told me that, shortly before she died, Colleen had asked her to take care of me. She had a point -- statistically one's chances of dying go way up after the death of a spouse. Followed closely by, among other things, death of a parent (Mom died in 2019) and retirement (2017). (My kids think we're crazy, BTW. In my darker moments I tend to agree with them.)

The last time N and I were in the Netherlands was back in July, getting j set up in his apartment -- he just started his first year at University of Leiden. Toward the end of that trip we connected with a real estate agent N had recently started working with, and visited a few houses for sale in the Hague. One had a perfect location, but it was a wreck. The one we put an offer on was this one. We, or rather our Dutch real estate agent, got the keys yesterday (as I write this). (That link will also give you our new address.)

We started planning this crazyness eight years ago, when the Orange Menace won the presidential election. We were within an inch of moving to Vermont and planning an escape to Canada, but were foiled by N's ex, who wanted to stay close to their kids and didn't want to move at that time (for good reasons, it must be said). Said kids are now both over 18, j (the younger) is out of high school (and see above), and in the mean time a close friend of N's who had moved to Amsterdam a few years ago told us about a bit of diplomatic hackery called (appropriately) the DAFT.

The Dutch-American Friendship Treaty

... makes it easier for US Entrepreneurs to open businesses in The Netherlands. It lowers the amount of needed investment capital from €27,000 to €4,500, frees US Entrepreneurs from the points-based test, and removes the benefit to Dutch national interests requirement. The residency permit is good for two years, after which it can be renewed for five years. The treaty is valid for all US citizens who are opening a business in the Netherlands or its territories. (Wikipedia)

Add to that the facts that the Dutch speak more English than anyone else on the continent, are incredibly queer-friendly, and know better than anyone else how to deal with floods and rising seas. After all, as they say, “God created the world but the Dutch made the Netherlands”"

I have already spent over two weeks writing this; I'm going to post it now. The movers are almost done packing up the house, and we'll meet them at the storage unit after lunch. Until later...

Edited to fix metadata screwed up by a superfluous blank line