T-1 Week

This posting is from about a couple maybe 3 weeks prior to our R2I journey till today.

The planning is picking up speed. The movers are decided, still struggling with what to take and what to donate. Cars still not sold (tip: start this process early). Going down the checklist and making sure most of the things are taken care of sooner rather than last minute rush. Electricity, Cable, Gas, Phones, Newspapers, Magazines all have been disconnected/discontinued effective 27th July.

A lot of friends invited us for going away dinners. Cesar, a very good friend arranged a beach party. Collegues and Friends at work had a going away lunch and all 22 folks invited showed up. These guys are definitely eager to get rid of me :)

Wednesday before we were to leave a shocker from the INS arrives. Pallavi (my wife) recieves her letter for oath for Citizenship on Aug 1st, a week after we were supposed to be gone. Good and Bad news. Glad that we could get over with it while here, Bad as we had to replan the whole trip and had to drop stop over in Dubai :(. Also the house was rented out so we were homeless and car less (i managed to sell my Sienna meanwhile, thanks to cars.com and Civic is also almost on the way). So we were back to camp Srinivas. What would we have done without the Akella family and Mehta family? All friends had given an open invitation for a stay at there place, we are so blessed to have so many of them. We decided to split our week between the Akella's and the Mehta's.