I've been talking and thinking about starting a set of the Innovation Dollars to show the boys as they get older and a seller on eBay gave me an offer for this after I watched it so I decided to bite. After shipping it cost me $20. At that price it just becomes fun impulse buy at a stressful time. I thought it was worth it to begin the journey of about 50 coins with this one. I think I will make a set of these, but in the near term I think my focus will be adding a few more presidents to that old set - I'm probably going to buy year sets of those for 2015 and/or 2016 soon.

In looking at this label though, with all that information and all that color... I just couldn't help but laugh. If you look at the labels for the old fatty holders they say hardly anything usually. Just something like S$1 and a year and mint mark. Done. And you have to think they couldn't put much more on that label if they wanted too. 6 lines of information a barcode and the "American Innovation" tagline.

I really like that gear / mechanical wheel graphic on the label though.

I still find it odd that they kicked off this series with this one-off coin that breaks the whole pattern. One coin in a year rather than 4 and about a person and not linked to / for a state or territory. Honoring the first patent is also interesting in the context of modern times and the use / abuse of patents to lock competition out of markets and crush by litigation.

That coin arrived in the Mail Monday at the old house. I didn't get a chance to get it out until this morning because we've been going so hard but I didn't want to risk it being forgotten in the mailbox. We really need to set up our mail forwarding. Anyway...

Also on Monday - the really big news - Shandy got a new job!!! It has been / was a crazy week because she was having to do remote interviews and skills tests while we were packing every day and night too.. super stressful and crazy but Monday made it all worth it with the big news! So she'll be using her new home office for that and no longer doing 5 AM English lessons. We'll have offices together on one side of the house with a small bathroom between us. It's going to be great I think. We'll spend more time in the morning together with the boys. It's gonna be fantastic!

The movers came today and after a lot of hours and a lot work in the heat of August almost all of our stuff is over here now. We're going back to the old place one last time tomorrow to finish getting the last of our stuff and cleaning up a bit. But tonight will be the first night in the new house. With a little child-care help from in-laws this house is and will continue to "come online" very quickly.

Saturday night we'd brought a bottle of bubbly wine and apple cider with champagne flutes to celebrate. After all the unpleasantness that wrecked that evening we never opened them - it didn't feel right. But we'll get everyone over soon and pop the corks in a proper celebration of the new house.

It's all coming together. One day at a time.

Tomorrow's priorities are building the crib, setting up my desk so I can work Thursday and generally unboxing things as able.