Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.....or, in this case, turn on your computer....the blog is back. Sorry...it's been five days since I last sent in an update and if I don't write it down, it's lost to history (I have a good memory...but it's short).
I don't want to bore you with all the details of the last five days (well...maybe I do), so I'll condense this as much as possible: We moved. We're tired. The end.
Actually, that is a pretty good summary...but it's only 8:30 here and way too early to go to bed (although Tuck's schedule hasn't changed...he still finds his bear and puts himself to bed between 8:00 and 9:00). So sweet.
We successfully moved everything we own...again. Two guys from a local moving company showed up at our storage unit at 9:00 sharp and we began the now familiar process of moving plastic storage boxes. We liked these guys and they did a good job....but they were slow. The move took almost five hours, which was about twice what we had planned. A lot of the blame lies with the driveway to the new house. Remember when I mentioned a while back that these are mountain communities and the driveways are seriously steep on both sides of the road. Well...our house sits on the downhill side and the drive is....well...seriously steep. And at the bottom, there's a 90 degree turn. I'll post a picture later. As much as I hate 26' Penske trucks, we had planned on moving everything with another one (but this time, I didn't have to drive). Alas, the Penske truck was too tall and would have hit low-lying tree limbs on the drive and it wouldn't have made the turn at the bottom without the driver using our new neighbors drive (never a good way to introduce yourself when your moving guy backs over your neighbors shrubs). So, we had to opt for the 16' truck, which meant making two separate trips and doubling the moving bill.
In the interest of time (remember these guys were slow), we decided to use the living room as a "staging area" and unload everything there, with the exception of the tools. Let's just say we're really glad the main room has a cathedral ceiling. We made three rows of boxes, each about 2' apart and maybe 6' tall and pretty much filled the room. It looked a little like a Sam's Club or a Costco aisle. The only thing missing was the greeter with no teeth.
Since then, we've been unpacking boxes (hooray....I found my underwear and socks) and taking the empty boxes down to the shop area (which is huge). Slowly, but surely, we are eating away at the rows of stuff and by this weekend, we're pretty sure we'll be able to see the far end of the room, which won't be too difficult, because we sold almost all our furniture. Can you remember the last time you had NO furniture? I think I was a freshman in college and Nixon was in office. I'm not sure which was worse.
We began the quest today for new living room furniture and a new TV. I'll update on that later, but I will quickly say this about the new generation of televisions....they're amazing and huge. At the rate Samsung is going, I'll be able to hook one up in a few years and have our friends drive in the yard to watch...all we need are some of those nifty speakers that hang on your window so you can sort of hear the sound (who watched the movie at the drive-ins anyway).
I'm sure most of you reading this have had experiences with the local cable guy. Where do they find these guys? I'm pretty sure the list of requirements goes something like this: Must have an odd appearance, must have an "attitude", must have an odd personality which borders on creepy, must be late by at least 2 hours, must spend most of the time at your home on the phone with "the home office" discussing why the modem isn't talking to the router, must be able to turn a normal conversation about TV's or the internet into something Stephen Hawking wouldn't understand and last, but on certainly not least....you must be able to drive away in your van before the homeowner figures out that nothing you did is actually working. Such was our recent fun afternoon with "Matt", the cable installer for our local internet company, SuddenLink, which as it turns out, isn't sudden and doesn't link.
Matt rings the bell and I open the door, at which point he says "show me whatcha got". I didn't know whether he was looking for old tattoos or he wanted me to take a swing at him. He looked like one of the guys in a Clint Eastwood western movie bar scene. Rough beard, dirty clothes, an odd stare and an attitude. I can talk to virtually anyone on the planet, but I gave up with this guy after 15 minutes. He would not talk. So, Claudia and I left him alone to do whatever it is the cable guys do and an hour later, he announces he's finished. He's wired three cable boxes and hooked up the internet and he drives off. We immediately realize he has left us with only one controller and most of the channels don't work. Damn. Claudia gets on the phone and finds out after an hour that SuddenLink must be the company that Jim Carrey worked for in the 1996 movie. They got the initial order wrong, the install was all wrong and everyone blamed someone else. Today, a new installer (Josh) showed up to fix things. It turns out that Matt is indeed an incompetent wierdo, has been fired at least three times by the company and no one at the company will talk to him because.....surprise....he won't talk to anyone. Josh tests the three TV junction boxes Matt has installed and finds that only one works. Matt never ran cable to two of the boxes, he only mounted a face plate on the wall to make it look like a hook up for your TV cable. Amazing. Stay tuned.
Last but not least, the dishwasher story. We had to do a very extensive check list for the property manager, called a "Move in/Move Out" form. It was four pages long and it went over every nut and bolt in the house. Each item had to be inspected, checked off and listed as either being new, satisfactory or other (notes had to be added). We went through everything, found a few small items to be noted and turned it in to the property manager. And then....we cook dinner that night, load the dishes in the dishwasher and turn it on. A few minutes later, I hear Claudia say "Uh-Oh, something is leaking". I hate it when that happens. I run over to the sink and see water pouring out of an air vent next to the faucet (the vent is only necessary if the main dishwasher drain becomes clogged). Had it continued to run, it would have run over the counter top and flooded the wood floor and we would have been looking for a new place to rent. We call the owners and they show up the next day. They quickly figure out that the prior tenant installed a new disposal and didn't tell them. And, instead of hooking up the dishwasher drain line to the disposal, he had simply run the drain line up to the vent on the counter top. Ironically....the dishwasher was the only thing they hadn't run before we moved in and the only thing we hadn't tried yet because we hadn't cooked anything. A disaster was averted and a new disposal is being installed tomorrow.
That's it for now. I hope to add some pictures soon.
Cheers!