The Beginning Grows Near.

Another good week for us as we continue to prepare to move into the mothership. We continue to sort through property and plan and prepare for the not so distant future.

Sandy talked to some of her family and we now have takers for most of the items that remain here in the duplex, we only have a sofa that does not have a home. Sandy continues to sort through kitchen and bathroom cabinets; similar items are combined into one box and the excess packaging was disposed of. John has the motorhome storage unit emptied and swept out, only a few bags of cans to take to the recycler and a few bags of sand that will go into the pickup when the snow flies remain. John had a chance to work on a 2006 entry about a visit to Point Beach State Park.

We purchased a Panasonic High Definition Video Camera from Electronics Expo  which was ordered through Amazon.com. Video quality and Still Image quality are impressive, the unit has a 120 gb hard drive and a 12x optical zoom; our first production featured Diva KoKo chasing the ball. Sandy also had a chance to use it on Saturday when her family got together for an early Thanksgiving celebration.

We have been planning to visit South Dakota in early January to set up residency and obtain our driver’s license and registration. This week we noticed that South Dakota will institute some new rules for required documentation; these rules will bring the State into compliance with Homeland Security but will make it a little more difficult for us to get the documentation together; we will call out there this week to make sure we know what to bring.

We saved the best news for last; John’s retirement date is now on paper and in the computer with the Wisconsin Employee’s Trust Fund.  On Tuesday we had our appointment with them in Waukesha to discuss our separation benefits; we had a good idea about our choice of annuity plans so we were able to formalize this quickly. We went over a few questions and options but the entire process took about sixty minutes; John’s last day of employment with Calumet County will be January 6, 2010.