The Clock is Ticking...

We are hours from getting on a plane to Zurich (...by hours I really mean 117 - we don't actually leave until Saturday at 11:30 am). We have a lot planned for the 6 days we'll be there, the most important (to me at least) is finding somewhere to live - but we're also meeting with his new boss, meeting with our tax accountants (there's a slightly funny story about that coming up...), and figuring what we will be able to take and not take.

We've gotten to the ackward stage of packing. I've gotten through the bulk of 'stuff' we have in the house, it was either packed, trashed, or given to the goodwill. Now we're to the 'take?' stuff - things like our desks, pots and pans, and small furniture. If we have space we'd love to take it all (and not have to buy it there - again) but we just have no idea. Once we come back from this trip the packing will be able to commence. We'll know how big our house will be and how much room/storage we'll have. Also, we aren't allowed to pack anything that we are actually taking for insurance purposes so we can't do anything with a large majority of our stuff.

We have to meet with our tax accountant while we're over there so that they can prepare us for what's to come (yeah, I know I'M a tax accountant - let me tell you how weird it is to be a tax accountant going to a tax accountant...). I could go into all the crazy tax equalization calculations they go through to figure out how much tax we have to pay but no one cares about that but me. Anyway, back to my lame story, one day Kyle comes home from work with a big grin on his face - you know the kind of grin that makes you wonder what he did he shouldn't have...he informs me that we are now 'rich'. Of course, I'm thinking 'Oh really fool, let me explain to you how you are 12 kinds of wrong'. He had found out that KPMG will be doing our taxes while we are out of the country since we will be ex-patriots. At one time I had told him that KPMG only does taxes for 'rich' people, I didn't know that there would ever be a reason to further explain who KPMG actually does taxes for. Once I was able to stop Kyle from spending all of our money in his mind I realized how weird it is...

One of our bigger tasks we have to tackle while in Zurich is our electronic problem. Pretty much everything we own has to be plugged in. A lot of our smaller things can be plugged into an adapter or we can purchase another one there. (We will probably have to buy at least 1 American generator) But our TV, our poor, poor TV!! Kyle thought he had figured out every issue so that we could take our BEAUTIFUL TV with us (in case you can't tell - I think I'm actually in love with an inanimate object). One thing we didn't consider was getting a signal (apparantly the signals work differently there than they do here, don't ask me!). So, while we're over there we have to see if there is some way to get a Swiss signal to that TV. Our options are things like Tivo, or a digital box or something like that. I think we'll just have to get over there and see what can be done.

I hope to be able to post my next post from Zurich! (Maybe than this blog won't be quite so crappy...) I'll also figure out how to post pictures, I'm pretty excited to figure that out!

Until next time,
Crystal