Progress... Mostly.

Since last we talked...Had a great day on the water yesterday with David and Kay MacVicar. Cruising, tubing, lunch in Kirkland -- and Miles capped the day with a few leaps off the high dive at Windermere beach club.

Ceil and the kids went for passports today. My homemade passport photos were not up to snuff, but they let us run across the street to Kinko's; all in all it was about a 45 minute process: passports will arrive in the mail in three days.

Ceil and I also got "International Driver's Permits" today. AAA issues them -- small paper pamphlets with our pictures pasted in them and the phrase, "Us folks in Washington State USA sure think this here guy is a swell driver" translated into forty different languages. Thank heavens we didn't need negotiate a round-about or parallel park on the opposite side of the road.

We picked up two large suit-cases as well -- duffle-bag looking things that can be pulled behind you on wheels or carried like a backpack.

And (in an example of burying the lead)... we've arranged for the cat to stay with a family down the street. So that takes care of Lee's primary objection to the whole affair!

Renting the house...
We had two very quick and very promising responses to our initial email. One fell through when the family chose another option; the other one has posed a dilemma -- a family, much like ours, loves the place, willing to pay the asking price, but only wants it for three months. This has been an interesting experiment in our willingness to trade off the certainty of having "a deal" in place, with the costs of carrying our mortgage while we're away. Ceil, whom I would characterize as the braver soul, has preferred "the bird in the hand" -- sign 'em up! I, to my surprise, have demurred, confident that other six-month-long tennants are out there.

We had a call last night from a friend's niece -- she'd need to find room-mates, but this would be the perfect place for her while she's trying to get into med-school. We've had two calls about families moving to town, looking for a short-term deal while they find a house to buy. And none of them are in any way definite at this time.

We called the "definite-but-only-for-three-months" family tonight and told them we wanted to keep looking for a longer term deal; they agreed to keep looking on their end, and that we'd stay in touch.

More to follow...