We are officially knee deep, well actually more like chest deep in boxes. Quinny is being oh so helpful. For every box you tape and write the contents on he'll come around behind you rip the tape off and relabel (in his own handwriting of course). Every task is a cat and mouse game. Our dining room has officially morphed into a storage shed with boxes stacked to eye level. We are using the dining room table itself as our wrapping station so when we sit down to eat dinner we are placing our plates on top of the 25 pounds, literally 25 pounds, of paper we use to wrap the valuables. When we moved in we didn't own a table, a couch or a toddler. Now we own all three and another couple thousand square feet of belongings. It was significantly easier to move into our home. I can remember being on conference calls with colleagues and being asked if I was in the bathroom. It would of course surprise me that someone would be thinking I would be doing, well leave that up to the imagination while in the bathroom. So you think I'm brushing my teeth and holding this conference call or....? The house was so devoid of furniture it didn't matter what room you were in, it echoed when you talked. When moving in I remember trying to get Carrie's desk out of her apartment. It broke maneuvering it out the front door. Well, that solves trying to fit that into the truck. I then threw it off the second story balcony to save time. I miss the good old days. Today we don't even have a balcony to chuck our belongings over.
Carrie's favorite moving story is when she drove down ahead of me to let the gas guy in the house for hot water usage. She wasn't used to a door that when locked would open from the inside but not the outside. She promptly locked herself out. The gas guy couldn't get in. We spent our first weekend with no stove or hot water. It was the 4th of July holiday weekend so it was extended and my brother was in town to help us move. It makes for a great story and something we are aiming to avoid by a large margin.
Tampa and Gainesville are two hours apart with Gainesville a little more centered in the state and 100 miles farther north. I asked my brother to fly into Tampa so I could drive down with a car load of belongings to drop off at the house. It's the holiday weekend so the interstate is jammed with people heading to their weekend destinations. I get 30 miles outside of Gainesville and blow a tire doing 80 in the fast lane of a 6 lane highway. As I am negotiating my way across those lanes to the relative safety of the right hand shoulder with three tires I am thinking about my spare tire and how it is buried underneath a car packed full of things to be moved. I get to the side of the road. Cars and more frightening semi trucks are flying by me as I come to the realization that I am going to have to empty my life's collection of stuff on the side of the road. Fantastic! So I get all my stuff on the side of the busiest highway in Florida and pull out my pansy size tire. I get the old tire into the trunk. I load up my belongings and I begin to drive 45 MPH on my teeny little sorry excuse of a tire. My brother lands. I have about 1 hour 45 minutes left to go on the drive. What to do, what to do? I call Carrie freaking out and think about switching cars, but as I make methodical progress down the freeway the next exit miraculously has a tire shop. I am saved. I exit off, find the tire shop. I pay a ridiculous price for a tire brand usually reserved for vehicles made in China. Oh, don't forget I had to unload all my belongings again, but this time at the tire shop parking lot (which happened to be next to a Dairy Queen with lots of ice cream eaters googling my collection of stuff) to get to the blown tire/rim. I changed the tire, got the donut back, loaded it back into the trunk, put my gear back in the car and began my journey to pick up my brother who has been stranded at the airport for hours at this point. I have now packed and unpacked the car 5 times and I am really looking forward to doing it a sixth if I ever reach my "dream home."
I pick up my brother, drop the stuff off and head back to Gainesville. Tomorrow we are to get up at dawn to pick up the biggest truck someone will rent us which we reserved months in advance. We wake up the next morning and I make a call to make sure everything is in order. Well, apparently, just like the Seinfeld episode these rental places don't quite grasp the definition of reserved. There isn't a truck. If one wants they can just keep the truck for as long as they like while racking up charges. No one turned in any trucks so there were none to rent out. Maybe I can tell that to the apartment people that said I have until midnight to move out. I find a new place with two little trucks half way between Gainesville and Tampa. It's around 11. I drive the hour down there pick up one truck because logistically we don't have enough drivers to take two and get our cars there. Carrie drops us off and begins on her lock herself out of the house saga.
I now have a truck a third of the size I need. It's after 12 noon. I have to drive back to Gainesville and I have two apartments I have to move out of. This was one of the major reasons the desk was sacrificed. There was significantly less space than we thought we would have. By the time my brother and I had both trucks loaded up it was around 12:30 am. We were left to clean Carrie's apartment. I just paid the fine at my place. We're dudes and we had been living in the same place for three years. Trust me when I say it wasn't worth saving the $250. But Carrie is a girl and unfortunately for her my brother and I are not. So even after carefully cleaning her whole apartment with a toothbrush for endless hours in the pre-dawn morning she still incurred a hefty fine. Is there no justice to this day?
My brother and I finally roll into Tampa around 3 am to move in. We opened the truck found a few chairs, closed it up and began eating dinner; wings, pizza and a couple of much earned adult beverages. Carrie broke in to the house eventually (it's amazing what you can learn with 8 hours of free time) so she wasn't on the porch looking dejected for a full 12 hours. Our new neighbor did offer her a beer so that was a good sign. Nothing like a hot shower after a day like that. Oh, wait it would be another 4 days before the gas guy could come and turn on the gas to give us hot water and allow us to use our stove. At any rate that's our gold standard for moving. We vowed that day to pay whomever how ever much it took to never take on a moving project again. For this move we have hired help. We are hoping we survive.
Here is a pic of Quinny cleaning up the door. This time we don't have anyone to take care of it and just fine us. So we had a kid to do the cleaning. He's working the front door.
Carrie's favorite moving story is when she drove down ahead of me to let the gas guy in the house for hot water usage. She wasn't used to a door that when locked would open from the inside but not the outside. She promptly locked herself out. The gas guy couldn't get in. We spent our first weekend with no stove or hot water. It was the 4th of July holiday weekend so it was extended and my brother was in town to help us move. It makes for a great story and something we are aiming to avoid by a large margin.
Tampa and Gainesville are two hours apart with Gainesville a little more centered in the state and 100 miles farther north. I asked my brother to fly into Tampa so I could drive down with a car load of belongings to drop off at the house. It's the holiday weekend so the interstate is jammed with people heading to their weekend destinations. I get 30 miles outside of Gainesville and blow a tire doing 80 in the fast lane of a 6 lane highway. As I am negotiating my way across those lanes to the relative safety of the right hand shoulder with three tires I am thinking about my spare tire and how it is buried underneath a car packed full of things to be moved. I get to the side of the road. Cars and more frightening semi trucks are flying by me as I come to the realization that I am going to have to empty my life's collection of stuff on the side of the road. Fantastic! So I get all my stuff on the side of the busiest highway in Florida and pull out my pansy size tire. I get the old tire into the trunk. I load up my belongings and I begin to drive 45 MPH on my teeny little sorry excuse of a tire. My brother lands. I have about 1 hour 45 minutes left to go on the drive. What to do, what to do? I call Carrie freaking out and think about switching cars, but as I make methodical progress down the freeway the next exit miraculously has a tire shop. I am saved. I exit off, find the tire shop. I pay a ridiculous price for a tire brand usually reserved for vehicles made in China. Oh, don't forget I had to unload all my belongings again, but this time at the tire shop parking lot (which happened to be next to a Dairy Queen with lots of ice cream eaters googling my collection of stuff) to get to the blown tire/rim. I changed the tire, got the donut back, loaded it back into the trunk, put my gear back in the car and began my journey to pick up my brother who has been stranded at the airport for hours at this point. I have now packed and unpacked the car 5 times and I am really looking forward to doing it a sixth if I ever reach my "dream home."
I pick up my brother, drop the stuff off and head back to Gainesville. Tomorrow we are to get up at dawn to pick up the biggest truck someone will rent us which we reserved months in advance. We wake up the next morning and I make a call to make sure everything is in order. Well, apparently, just like the Seinfeld episode these rental places don't quite grasp the definition of reserved. There isn't a truck. If one wants they can just keep the truck for as long as they like while racking up charges. No one turned in any trucks so there were none to rent out. Maybe I can tell that to the apartment people that said I have until midnight to move out. I find a new place with two little trucks half way between Gainesville and Tampa. It's around 11. I drive the hour down there pick up one truck because logistically we don't have enough drivers to take two and get our cars there. Carrie drops us off and begins on her lock herself out of the house saga.
I now have a truck a third of the size I need. It's after 12 noon. I have to drive back to Gainesville and I have two apartments I have to move out of. This was one of the major reasons the desk was sacrificed. There was significantly less space than we thought we would have. By the time my brother and I had both trucks loaded up it was around 12:30 am. We were left to clean Carrie's apartment. I just paid the fine at my place. We're dudes and we had been living in the same place for three years. Trust me when I say it wasn't worth saving the $250. But Carrie is a girl and unfortunately for her my brother and I are not. So even after carefully cleaning her whole apartment with a toothbrush for endless hours in the pre-dawn morning she still incurred a hefty fine. Is there no justice to this day?
My brother and I finally roll into Tampa around 3 am to move in. We opened the truck found a few chairs, closed it up and began eating dinner; wings, pizza and a couple of much earned adult beverages. Carrie broke in to the house eventually (it's amazing what you can learn with 8 hours of free time) so she wasn't on the porch looking dejected for a full 12 hours. Our new neighbor did offer her a beer so that was a good sign. Nothing like a hot shower after a day like that. Oh, wait it would be another 4 days before the gas guy could come and turn on the gas to give us hot water and allow us to use our stove. At any rate that's our gold standard for moving. We vowed that day to pay whomever how ever much it took to never take on a moving project again. For this move we have hired help. We are hoping we survive.
Here is a pic of Quinny cleaning up the door. This time we don't have anyone to take care of it and just fine us. So we had a kid to do the cleaning. He's working the front door.
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