The Vacation's Over: Working from Home

My three week vacation officially ended on Sunday and I've now completed half a week of working from home.  Part of the three week vacation involved some work, including packing all of our things in Nashville, organizing a garage sale, among other things.  Once we arrived in Dublin we had to take care of some things like finding an apartment, getting Irish bank accounts, electricity, internet, social security numbers, etc sorted out.  But we had fun in the meantime and had plenty of time to do some touristy things, go for some hikes and generally have fun exploring Dublin.  (I can't really complain though, considering Richard started work only two days after we arrived.)

We're now mostly settled into our apartment-- only partly settled since we won't receive our shipment from Nashville for another two more months or so.  Why would it take three months to get our stuff?  Well, only yesterday did our things arrive in Charleston, South Carolina to be loaded onto the boat.  That means our stuff sat in Nashville for about three weeks.  Once our things are loaded on the container ship in Charleston, it will take a few more weeks to arrive in the port of Felixstowe, England, then has to go through international customs.  Then it will be driven across England and Wales, ferried from Wales to Ireland, and finally driven to our apartment.  

I have a temporary office set up in our living/dining room.  Once our shipment arrives I plan to use the second bedroom as my office with our old kitchen table as a desk.  Until then this set up will work fine.  The technical logistics of working for a Nashville company from Dublin have so far worked out great.  We have a lot of tools to make this easy, included video conferencing, instant chat, email, and I can work through our Nashville server and access all the files and programs I used back at my old desk.  So, really, the only difference is the six-hour time difference and not seeing my coworkers and hearing the chatter in cube-land.

Well, that, and the fact that there's an Irish pub across the street.  Padraig Pearse, that is, where on Saturdays they have Irish karaoke.  Where two Saturdays ago I maybe sang a very sobering version of "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" by Joan Jett (that one was especially for you, Mack and Holly).