Transition: Maple Leaf Land to Bald Eagle Land

So I've moved from Vancouver, BC to North Carolina. Or at least, I'm in the process of moving. My family (two kids, my wife and myself) took a full week to make the journey, stopping over with friends in Wisconsin and my sister in DC (don't call it Washington, she says, the locals all call it DC). What a ride! We really enjoyed it, even despite a six hour bus ride across the eastern half of Montana due to a freight train derailment and a delay of 13 hours. We were only 4.5 hours delayed after we got around the derailment, so other things were slowing them down. Anyway, Amtrak gave us a nice voucher to reimburse us for time in the family bedroom that we lost due to the bus ride and delay.

Now I'm left trying to figure out how to adjust from one place to another; from one lifestyle to another. I was working half time, as was my wife, and we cared for our children in the other half. We were paying $125 a month for health insurance, with no co-pays, deductibles, or co-insurance. $125 was all we paid, nothing extra even for two children. Now I am still trying to get through the bureaucracy to enroll with health care at my US-based job. And that will still mean a few hundred bucks a month premium, a few hundred bucks deductible that we pay solely, and after that insurance only picks up a percent of what our bills cost. Wow, what a step backwards.

I've been listening to Tom Allen CBC Radio 2 via the internet. This has been a great link to my life before, as I listed to him sometimes when driving across town to go play tennis with a friend. Tom's very funny and I enjoy his stories about his amateur hockey games, as well as his interesting tidbits on music. Plus, since I am now in the Eastern time zone, I can start work at 9am and hear him at 6am in the Pacific time zone, which is when I was driving across town to play tennis anyway.