Anyway, been a bit of a pain in the ass moving this time. Arrived in Belgium the same weekend the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were visiting, so of course I ended up in a hotel 45 minutes away from work because everything else was booked.

Then, just to make life interesting, our poor dog got really sick, had to have surgery, then, when that didn't really help, spent 2 weeks in the teaching hospital in Liege, 2 hours away. He was 72kg when we left the US in July, but by mid-August, he was down to 46kg. They finally diagnosed Addisson's disease, which at least is treatable, but even though he's out of the hospital, he's not putting on much weight, though he seems stable. Caused my wife to have to miss my trip to Madrid, which she wasn't at all happy about. Yikes.

On the plus side, we found a nice house in Waterloo, and got our furniture delivered Wednesday. Other than destroying my wife's Clavinova and breaking the legs on our dining room table, not too bad. And at least we're sleeping on our own bed.

My calendar at work has turned out to be ridiculous. Busy all day, then social obligations most nights, it seems. But I did get to meet the King and Queen, which was pretty cool.

How's things around here?

I imagine you have to be careful when buying stuff in case it's quite fragile.

Anyway, there's always something that gets broken, especially since the government is required to choose the lowest bidder when contracting movers, and until recently, believe it or not, was not allowed to consider their actual job performance as a hiring factor. In Europe, the packers tend to be better, since the labor laws allow them to do it as an actual career; in the US, many times the people packing your stuff are simply day-laborers with a minimum of "training."

In terms of monetary damage, this will probably be our second-worst experience, since our table and piano are each about $3k. Our move to Germany in 2002 resulted in the complete loss of an entire crate, that we think fell overboard and was fished out of a harbor, since the entire contents were dripping with sea water. On that one, we lost our home theater, many of our clothes, and our mattress and box spring, for a total close to $10k. It was lucky for us our personal insurance covered water damage, since the government didn't provide replacement value at the time. Now carriers are required to replace broken items, but it's a Byzantine process and, true to government contracting rules, the company has all the power.

A more normal move, though, will see the odd glass or plate broken. But there's also always the scratches and rubs on bigger furniture that can't be fixed and that no one's willing to pay for, so over time, your furniture tends to deteriorate.

So most folks have either really solid stuff, or cheap stuff they don't care about. We've gone the first route, but it's nerve-wracking at times. I don't think we'll have any trouble getting a new piano, since it's obviously destroyed, but I'm pretty sure they're going to fight me on the table, since the legs are just broken and cracked. They'll want some shyster to come in and throw some glue at it, and I'm not going to accept that.

Given the amazingly huge worldwide operation, though, I'd have to say it works reasonably well overall.