Great to see some action in the forums. I'll be jumping in there in the next few days.

It's good to be back in Virginia.

4. Get Organized. As your moving date gets closer (ours is 6 days out!), your To-Do list will get long. A lot of the things that need to get done all have to happen right at the end.

We had our pre-move inspection last week, during which I made sure the inspector took note of insane number of books we own. I also made sure she heard the story of our last pack-out, when the packers arrived at our place only to take one look inside and say, “We didn’t bring enough boxes,” whereupon they left for another hour and a half.

Between the morning's delay and their long lunch, they were at my house until 10 o'clock that night.

In an effort to avoid that this time, we're trying to be super-organized. Check that: my wife is the organized one; I'm just trying to be as useful as possible. So last weekend we disassembled the office and touched up the paint. We moved furniture. We filled Rubbermaid tubs with stuff that we’ll be bringing in the cars.

This weekend we're organizing the basement, taking stuff down from the scary loft, and donating or throwing out everything we know we won't need at the other end.

Here’s a handy (though by no means exhaustive) list of a few things you’ll need to think about after the jump:

3. Househunting This may seem like a no-brainer, but get the househunting done early!

It's also important to never succumb the allure of leasing a place sight-unseen, no matter how far away your destination. It might mean taking something temporary until you find a more permanent solution. We almost got suckered conned tempted into doing so this time, but we saved a lot of money and got a much nicer place by making the trip to see the place for ourselves.

Just by way of illustration, the couple who will be moving into our house when we leave have been living in a house that "smells like a meth lab" for the past month because they didn't inspect it for themselves before signing the lease. And they even had a realtor look at the place for them!

My wife is a bad ass.

(This is part of an ongoing series on Permanent Change of Station moves. To read the rest of the posts, click here.)

We've got a PCS (Permanent Change of Station) coming up hot on the heels of the holidays, and, while I'm still filled with anxiety over everything that has to be done between then and now, it all feels like it's coming together a little bit more easily this time.

Part of that comes from experience. This will be our fourth move with the Navy, and we've largely got the situation figured out. Herewith, some pointers:

2. SMARTWebMove This should have been number 1. SMARTWebMove is the online utility that you use to apply for your moving dates (N.B. this is a Navy utility, but I assume the other services have something similar). You select every detail from whether or not to do a Personally Procured Move (see #1, above) to whether or not you need to place your household goods in storage.

The SMARTWebMove interface is sort of clumsy and overwhelming the first time you look at it, but you'll get the hang of it as you read. And there's a lot to read. Unfortunately, it's all written in bureaucratese, so the service member in the household may have to be consulted.

The nice thing about it is that all the information you need (and more!) is right there on the web page. And it's convenient. Once you've selected your preferred packing and moving dates, the service member will have to submit her orders to the folks at PSD (Personnel Support Detachment - again, this is a Navy thing). After that, you'll get your packing and moving dates and be on your way.

We've got a PCS (Permanent Change of Station) coming up hot on the heels of the holidays, and, while I'm still filled with anxiety over everything that has to be done between then and now, it all feels like it's coming together a little bit more easily this time.

Part of that comes from experience. This will be our fourth move with the Navy, and we've largely got the situation figured out. Herewith, some pointers:

1. Do It Yourself At least partially. Every time we've moved, we've wound up with our cars full of the stuff the movers won't take. This includes houseplants, domestic pets, dangerous household chemicals, anything flammable. It also includes anything you'll want immediate access to: laptops, reading material, music, important documents, etc. And finally, it includes anything you just don't want the movers to potentially lose, like photos, artwork, Star Wars figurines in their original packaging, whatever.

So, when you fill out all the forms using the SMARTWebMove site, make sure you request both the do-it-yourself option (now known as the "Personally Procured Move") and the household goods option. It involves having your vehicle weighed empty and packed, but it's worth it, since you're going to have a full car anyway. This time, we're renting a U-Haul for the trip, in addition to our two cars. Since we have a toddler, now, the Raptor will be pretty much full of his gear, and the Privateer is too small to haul much. So, the U-Haul. My sister is going to pilot one of the cars, and yours truly has been promised the privilege of riding with the meowing felines in the U-Haul.

UPDATE: Crunching the numbers, I found that we would have to load the U-Haul with at least 2,000 pounds of our household goods to make the expense of the truck rental worthwhile. Since I'm lazy, we modified our plan and are now renting an SUV from Hertz to transport some of our goodies. We'll still have to be conscious of maximizing our weight, but we won't have to move quite as much on our own in order to break even.

We just bought a new car. It's really a second car, because we're getting ready to move and the one-car lifestyle we've been enjoying will not work when Danielle goes back to sea.

Anyway. It was a fine experience. We went back to Mazda and I tortured them for a couple weeks, but in the end it was a pretty easy negotiation, and we got exactly what we wanted for the price we wanted at the rate we wanted it.

Nice.

Then Danielle had to sit down with the business manager and hear her pitch. And, finally, when everything was signed, when I was off playing with Sean, the manager (a great beast of a woman with terrifying hair) told Danielle she also lived in Newport.

"Is your son in pre-school?"

Danielle told her, no, but that I stayed home with him. Whereupon the woman said, "Oh, he's doing the Mr. Mom thing."

Danielle just looked at her. "No," she said, annoyed almost beyond reason at the utterance of that inane monicker.

"Oh," said the beast-woman, "Not a lot of cooking and cleaning getting done?"

She's lucky all the papers had been signed already, because Danielle would have walked out of there right then if they hadn't been.

On our way out, Danielle was pushing the grocery cart and making googly eyes at Sean (because that's what moms—and frequently dads—do to their two year olds), and we blew right past a captain. In uniform. No salute. She quickly said, "I'm sorry, sir!" and noted that I probably should have been pushing the cart. Oops.

With almost eight years in, I should know better. I mean, I've read all the etiquette and protocol guides (take note of the fourth "Do"), so there's no excuse. I guess we've been on shore duty for too long. I'm getting soft!

Or, Drunkfest V

We just got back from a weekend in Boston, where we celebrated Thanksgiving with a group of friends from our college years. This was the fifth time we observed the holiday this way. It's always a fine affair. We call it Drunkfest.

We call it Drunkfest because that's what it was that first year: a festival of drunkenness. That's what it was the second and third year, too, but, as we have matured, so has Drunkfest. Now it's more of a beer-and-wine-and-cocktail-and-really-good-food-fest. There's much less drunkenness. We're generally in bed by midnight.

But the spirit remains. The point has always been to see old friends and make a few new ones. It's a rejuvenating weekend that has none of the pressures of work, nor any of the pressures of a family gathering.

And anyway, you're going to see the family at Christmas, right?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Battlestar Galactica, shame on you. Move it to the top of your Netflix queu immediately.