Giving notice, appointments, and flat-hunting.

I gave notice at work on July 5, and my last day will be July 29.  At the moment, I work at a well-known hospital in Durham, NC as an admin assistant, but I have also been an appointment-scheduler at a psych office, and an intern and occasional beer-slinger at a local record company in previous lives.  My supervisor is incredibly difficult to work for, and on the whole I won't be sorry to leave.

I have a GYN appointment on August 1 and an eye doctor appointment on August 2, to make sure everything is in good working order and to stockpile meds and contact lenses before I leave.  Health insurance is something I haven't researched yet, but I'm not counting on being able to get those things for cheap over there.

I've spent the last several weeks flat-hunting online.  My (naive) hope was that I could get a place lined up before I left, go straight there after getting off the plane, have a look and make sure it wasn't a total dive, and sign the lease, pay the deposit and move in straight away.  But this is proving to be impractical, the fact that I can't view any places for a month or so is proving to be a stumbling block.  My plan at the moment is to suspend the search until a week or two before I leave, and then start contacting people and places again to make actual viewing appointments.  However, I have been in contact with one landlady, and a girl who is interested in the same place (it's a 4-bedroom flat) and is in the same boat as me arrival-date wise, and this looks like it might be promising.

Speaking of arrival dates, I still don't have a firm one.  The Border Agency tells you not to book your flight until your visa's been approved, but I'm going to anyway (as I suspect everyone does).  The date I'm looking to leave is August 19, arriving in Edinburgh August 20.  I may end up pushing this back a day, leaving August 20 and arriving August 21 instead, because I will be arriving in the middle of the Edinburgh Festival AND the Military Tattoo, and in the hostels which aren't completely booked up already on August 20, the only beds available are in the cattle-stall dorms (dorms with 12 or more beds).  I'm going to be booking my flight and a hostel this week, because if I wait much longer, even the cattle-stall hostels are going to fill up, and then the dream I had a few weeks ago about arriving in Edinburgh with absolutely no place to stay will come true!  AHHHHH!!!