Still Not King

This is all the living room stuff, 1/3 of the bedroom stuff, 2/3 of the kitchen stuff, most of the closet stuff, some stuff we intended to put in storage but didn’t label, some stuff we intended to sort through and toss but didn’t have time…

We’ve made a bit of a dent since then, but it’s going to take a while.

We did it!

First, a big round of thanks to wayens and andrea_wot for their help throughout the morning and afternoon, and to alenxa’s father who pitched in by adding a trip with the van. I don’t know how we would have managed without them. I mean, it was a nightmarish process as it was!

Some problems:

1. We vastly underestimated the amount of stuff we’d accumulated over the last 7 years in one place.
2. Late Friday night, alenxa started feeling dizzy and unsteady. Fortunately it passed by morning.
3. Between #1 and #2, we weren’t done packing when the movers arrived, or when Wayne or Andrea arrived to help.
4. For the same reasons, neither of us got more than a couple of hours sleep the night before.
5. Around the same time the movers showed up, I started feeling dizzy and had to sit on the couch hyperventilating with a glass of water, occasionally folding a box lid because that was something I could do. (We still can’t figure out what gave us both the exact same illness/reaction, several hours apart.)
6. It was a really hot day, roughly 95°F (though at least it wasn’t humid).

The movers were here about twice as long as anticipated. By early afternoon we told them to just load the rest of the furniture and big items, and we’d come back for the rest later in the day. Even then, we ended up wrapping up just under the wire. The leasing office at the old place said they were open until 7, but they were locked up at 6:55. I knocked on the door, called & left a message, and eventually went around to the back door and knocked there before someone let me in to give them their keys.

We got the bedroom & computers mostly set up Saturday night (bed = critical, and we had AT&T coming out on Sunday morning to set up the Internet), and we’re starting on the kitchen. The living room, at the moment, is mainly a box storage facility with a path from the front door to the back of the place, but that will change as we go through and start putting things where they belong, or moving them out to storage, or getting rid of them entirely (since we ran out of time to seriously sort things beforehand).

Unfortunately this destroys my nefarious Indy-a-night plan for the week, since we don’t have room to sit on the couch or see the TV.

This is most likely my last blog post from this apartment. We’re not done packing, and we’ll probably be at it until ski o’clock (tomorrow will be time for coffee & adrenaline). But I’m turning off the computers and packing up all the cables, power strips, etc. except for the DSL modem and the wireless access point, just in case we need to check something in the morning.

We went over to pick up our keys for the new apartment today. Much less paperwork than the place we’re at right now. Took a few items over — bags of stuff, boxes w/o lids, things that we didn’t want to risk falling over in the moving truck.

It turns out they just put in a new wireless network, but I couldn’t get the laptop to connect. It doesn’t really matter — we’d have to put wireless cards in the desktops as well, and lose the ability to safely share files among the computers. And I doubt they’d be happy about me grabbing the latest Fedora Linux via BitTorrent. So, no Internet access until AT&T shows up on Sunday morning.

Finished off as much of the stuff in the refrigerator & freezer as we could, & put the rest in a pair of coolers, while the freezer defrosts.

This past weekend would have been great weather for moving. Not too warm, not too cold. Monday was nice and cool, but too drizzly. I’ve noticed they expect it to get hotter each day this week…

And now the updated forecast is out and they’re anticipating 90 degrees for Saturday. Gee, isn’t that just perfect moving weather?

Could be worse — they’re predicting 97 for Friday, when we’ll be frantically trying to put the rest of our life into boxes in a place with crappy air conditioning. I liked the earlier prediction of 84 better.

Of course, Sunday, the day after we move everything, drops down to 76.

*sigh*

All utilities have been arranged for transfer or setup at the new apartment. Disturbed to find that the basics, like electricity and gas, now want a credit check before they’ll set up service (supposedly they’ll insist on a deposit if you have bad credit or don’t submit to the check)… but AT&T is perfectly happy to set up phone, internet, and TV service, for considerably more than the monthly electric bill, without insisting on anything up front.

Now that I think about it, gas & electricity might be required to give you some leeway once you have service, on the grounds that if it’s 20 degrees and you lose your heating, or 110 and you lose your air conditioner, it might actually be a life-threatening emergency.

Whereas if you don’t pay AT&T, and they shut off your internet access, it only seems life-threatening!