Holy Jiminie-Joe-Bob it has busy around La Maison du Talley! We finally got the green light from the French authorities for our work and residence visas. A week later, the movers showed up, packed our place and loaded most of our possessions onto truck that drove away, hopefully to be seen sometime again in February/March in Toulouse.

We have a list two pages long of stuff to get done before we take our flight around the first of December. Yard work, paint touch up, moving The Nana, small fixes at the house, selling vehicles, etc…

Speaking of the last point: I FVCKING hate car dealers. For me, they rank right up there with lawyers, who hand out cards at accident scenes. You walk in the door of a dealership and you are a mark, like a rube in the big city for the first time. Big smiles and hand shakes, innocent questions, a free coffee or coke, all to gauge how much they will be removing from your wallet. No matter how informed you are of how much research you do, you will be bargaining from a position where they hold all the cards. This is doubly so when trading a vehicles.

We are trying to sell my truck preparation for our move and I want to strangle someone a little. Because of our time table, a private party sale is not going to happen, so we have to take the dealer route. The first dealer I went to offered me $16K for my 20 month old truck and had the identical model on his lot for $23.5K. Even with fees, he stood to make 7 grand on the deal!?!!

I get it. Everyone is in business to make money, but come on… Hate car dealers.