“Pack out” is part and parcel of the Foreign Service experience in much the same way running into burning buildings is part of being a firefighter. It’s an essential part of the job and it’s never fun. Moving is always a hassle, moving overseas exponentially so. The State Department has been moving people around the world for a long time and folks do their best to make it as easy as possible, but transporting a household full of stuff is more organized chaos than anything else.

Halfway through the process, it’s clear that an organized and clearly labeled set of shelves gets packed quickly.

In our single FS tour over the course of about two and a half years, we had to pack out four times. Austin–>Washington, Washington–>Tashkent, Tashkent–>Tashkent (when the State Dept. was unable to renew the lease on our house), and Tashkent–>Austin (only two and a half months after the previous move). You’d think by the fourth time we’d be total pros, but as any FS or military person can tell you, every pack out is different.

You learn lessons every time, which certainly helps. On our Tashkent to Tashkent move, we didn’t think about the fact that our Sleep Number mattress would lose some air when we disconnected the hoses to the air pump that allows each of us to set the firmness for our own side of the bed. We got to the new house and had to sleep on the embassy-issued guest bed for a night until I could find the Sleep Number remote in the poorly labeled box of stuff from my nightstand. This time the remote went in my suitcase. We also organized a huge section of the basement into shelves clearly labeled for Air Freight (to arrive in a few weeks) and HHE (household effects to arrive in about three months).

Yes, we want the boxes. Please don’t accidentally pack the ginormous ladder.

However, some things are beyond our control. The language gap, for example, is always a problem on an overseas move. I appreciate the convenience of having a team of movers whose job is to pack our stuff for us, but even two people can’t see everything half a dozen guys do. Also, they’re from a foreign culture and don’t understand what some stuff is because it doesn’t exist in their country. Add to that a language gap (my Russian is okay but far from precise) and lack of familiarity with Foreign Service procedure and there are going to be problems.

I’ll skip over most of the craziness for the sake of brevity, for example, the fact that their weight estimate was off by more than 2,000 pounds, forcing us to sell our gorgeous tapchan at the last minute when, with planning, we could have sold or given away a few hundred pounds of less awesome stuff to meet our weight limit (200 pounds of overweight fees add up to more than 900 dollars). An estimate being off a bit is fine. An estimate being off by the weight of a Volkswagen ain’t “I missed that chair and a bike.”

Farewell, beloved tapchan. At least we know you’re going to a good home!

I’ll focus on one example of logistical difficulties just to give a sense of what it’s like to pack out in Uzbekistan. When they arrived, the somewhat-English-speaking supervisor introduced me to their “kitchen specialist.” His job was to pack all the fragile kitchen items while the rest of the team did their thing. Before we knew it, he had packed several things that shouldn’t have been packed (I’ve heard tales of garbage cans being packed, garbage and all, then shipped overseas or even put into storage for years.

Our kitchen “specialist” packed the two embassy owned dish-drying racks, which was really our fault for not pointing out they needed to stay with the house. We caught that quickly and he managed to retrieve them without much trouble. It was much later before we discovered he’d taken the silverware rack out of the dishwasher and boxed it up. In a city where many lack electricity, I can understand how he could make that mistake. However, we told the entire team half a dozen times that all of the electricity transformers had to stay. Their supervisor told them in Russian. Still, one ended up packed, a mistake we didn’t notice until it was deep inside the moving truck. Anyone in the U.S. want to buy a European to American power transformer that we had to buy from the embassy? No? Oh well, live and learn. Best of luck to everyone with their next move!

t seems I posted that Mega Post about the end of our time in Washington DC a bit too soon. We were supposed to fly to Uzbekistan on Tuesday, August 2nd. Today is Sunday, August 7th and we’re still in DC with no set  departure date.

So, what happened? I wish we knew. Our visas for entry into Uzbekistan have not yet been released by the Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Folks at the U.S. State Deparment and U.S. Embassy in Tashkent have been working to get them but at this point we don’t know why they haven’t been processed or when we’ll get them. Hopefully the fine folks at the MFA will get them ready for us soon.

Over the course of last week, we woke up every day hoping for news that we could get on a plane. In the meantime, we took advantage of our extended, if impromptu, stay in DC by having a “last meal” at Restaurant Nora. Then another delicious “last meal” at Eventide in Clarendon. After that we gave up on the whole concept of savoring a special last meal and have just been enjoying DC’s cuisine as if we’ll be here for a while.

Logistics have been a problem, of course. We weren’t living in the Oakwood apartments so we were outside of the goverment’s system and had to deal with housing on our own. That meant we had to move out of our apartment on Thursday because our landlord came to town to supervise the workers who had been scheduled to come and repair all of the water damage we sustained in the great kitchen flood. The matter of housing was further complicated because we’re at the tail end of our per diem allowance which left us only around $40 per day to put towards housing. That’s not enough for a hotel room in Oklahoma City, much less DC! Fortunately, we were able to stay with our good friends Erin and Rob. They were very generous to share their home with us.

On Friday, Lisa’s boss in the UZ encouraged her to plan for being here an extra week rather than hope that every day will bring us magical travel visas. As a result, Lisa is scheduled to go to work at the State Department on Monday, working with her colleagues-to-be on the Uzbekistan desk. Now at least your tax dollars won’t be paying for Lisa to take a stay-cation!

As for the dogs, that’s a whole other mess of logistical problems. The pet shipping company came and got them on Tuesday, planning to hold onto them until their Sunday flight to Tashkent (the only flight that will take pets in the heat of the summer). The dogs can’t arrive in Tashkent before we do, so now they’re waiting on our visas as well. The only problem is that there’s only one flight per week that works for them. That means that when we’re held up beyond a Monday arrival, they automatically get pushed back one week. As a result, we have to pay for an extra week of boarding. We also have to pay for a new vet examination and USDA certification since they have to have a health examination within ten days of their arrival in Uzbekistan. The bottom line is that the pups have to spend more time away from us and it’s costing a whole lot of cash that can’t be reimbursed as a cost of the move.

There is some good news, however. Thanks to folks at the State Dept., Lisa’s per diem has been bumped back up to 100%. That means that we can get a hotel room. We’ve found a nice hotel in the Arlington area that will take the dogs if we choose to get them out of boarding until we go. Doing that will be problematic since it means renting a van to drive to the Dulles area so that we can pick up the dogs and their big airplane crates to take them to the hotel. That wouldn’t be a big deal, except we could be on a flight any day and will then have to return them to boarding on the way to the airport. Taking them out of boarding for a week will save us money, but if it turns out we can leave in a few days, we’ll have gone through all that trouble for nothing. Also, I’m not sure what’s more traumatic for the dogs: staying in boarding without us or moving into a strange hotel room for a few days then going back to boarding before flying halfway around the world. At this point, we’re holding off on making a decision until we learn about the status of our visas on Monday morning.

To be continued…

Welcome to the first post in my blog: a place for friends, family, and complete strangers to follow my adventures as a writer, editor, supermodel and world traveler. Great to have you aboard!

People have been suggesting for years that I should write a blog. I get that. I have an interesting career. But as cool as it is to be working on Spider-Man, Star Wars, the World of Warcraft or whatever, most of my day-to-day activities on projects are top secret. Of course, plenty of other creative types have blogs so it’s clearly possible to have an online forum without revealing the deepest, darkest secrets of the Jedi Knights or whatever.

But still I asked: do I have something unique to say? Something that isn’t already posted all over the web? And then my wife, Lisa Goodgame (together we’re known as the Goodjamins), got a new job. She’s going to be a Foreign Service Officer working for the US State Dept. Essentially, a diplomat. So now I’m not just a writer, editor and, of course, supermodel, I’m also going to be an international traveler with a diplomatic passport (yes, I get to go through the special line at the airport, but only when we’re traveling on Lisa’s official business). And what better way to keep up with friends and share my travels than on the web?

First up, this is my last week at Bioware Austin where I’ve been working on Star Wars: The Old Republic. BWA is a fantastic company and I’m going to miss spending my days with so many talented, dedicated, brilliant fellow geeks working on what is sure to be an amazing game. I just hope I’m posted someplace where I can play SWTOR when it comes out! I’ve made a lot of friends here and I’m going to miss y’all!

On the flip side, I’m going to be doing plenty of writing while overseas. First for new writing projects is my latest release: World of Warcraft: Shaman. More on that in a future post but here’s the cover and a link to the book on Amazon.

World of Warcraft: Shaman