Book Review - Moving your Household without Losing your Mind & It's Your Move

This isn't so much a book review as it is an update on what I've been reading.

But first - breaking news - our AC has decided to stop working! Yay! (she said, with only a trace of sarcasm) 

Right now, we live in central Texas. For those of you who haven't lived in Texas in July before, let me paint you a picture:

Mercifully, our apartment faces east and therefore avoids the long, languorous heat as the sun slinks behind the hills to the west. Still, after being without AC for a day, our apartment has held steady at 80 and we (thankfully) have ceiling fans in both the living room and the bedroom that are whirring furiously. I plan on calling the maintenance emergency line tomorrow even though I'm strongly opposed to forcing anyone to work weekends. Sadly, it just has to be done. 

Back to the topic of the post: reading material! The It's Your Move guide is free to download from the DoS website. I read through it a few days ago over the course of a few hours. Mostly I skimmed for the particulars of the first packout to TDY to the District, but I filed away some longer term wisdom that should help when the first "real" packout rolls around and I don't have the luxury of just tossing things I might need in the car at the last minute. 

The Guide to Moving your Household Without Losing your Mind is the first in a planned series of "foreign service companion" books published by the AAFSW and contains contributions from many bloggers I've recently discovered (and promptly read their entire archive). Diplopundit did a lovely job of summarizing the main points of the book, and I was able to read through it in about three hours. Granted, I bookmarked the section on digitizing important documents so I could do that later (after the All Important Arabic phone test on Tuesday) and I skimmed the four or so chapters on traveling with offspring of different ages. With any luck, I won't need much of that advice for years to come. 

This collection of advice was usefully compiled into one place. There's a kindle version available but I opted for the paperback so it would be easier to make the EFM read it, and in the future loan it out to FSOs in need. 

Biggest takeaway: stuff is just stuff. Know what you have but be willing to leave it all behind. Focus your contingencies on what you cannot bear to lose by prioritizing the health and safety of your family and your pets.

And in this case, the health and safety of my family demands that I call maintenance and get my AC up and running again. Pronto. *sigh*

UPDATE: Our super sweet maintenance guy was able to swing by this afternoon and drain the AC line (I don't understand but this has happened three or four times in the three years we've lived here) which made Ellie exceedingly happy, because she can usually con him out of a treat. (He knows where they are in case he has to drop by when no one is home). Ah, the gentle caress of air conditioning has returned to my life, and all is well again.