Last night I moved out of my apartment. I had some great helpers, and they were so efficient that they packed things like my phone charger, my belts, and the keys to the new house. I have no idea where any of these things are in the jumble that is my personal property.
Luckily, we still don’t know when we’re going to be moving in to the new place* so we have lots of time (or not) to find these things.
Anyway, I went to pick up the truck at Uhaul last night, and it was a beast. It was dented and scratched all over, and I didn’t buy the insurance so I made the Uhaul guy come out and look at the truck and acknowledge via signature that it was in perfect condition for a demolition derby.
I got on the road and immediately noticed that the steering was jacked up. The steering wheel could be turned between 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock without any significant change in direction. However, once the wheel reached the 10 or 2 position it would immediately jerk the truck in that direction. I spent the entire time driving the truck like a pinball, bouncing between the borders of my lane, imagining that I looked like I was driving in one of those old movies where they project the road behind the actor and the actor mindlessly guides the steering wheel of the fake car.
Once I pulled up to my apartment we started loading things right away. There were some nasty clouds on the horizon and they were heading our way. We made quick work of the boxes and started moving art and furniture as fast as we could. We had to pause for a few minutes when the downpour started downpouring, but once it had passed we easily moved the rest through the afterbirth of the thunderstorm.
Once we got on the road I flipped on the windshield wipers and headed for our destination. After the wipers had been on for about 30 seconds they stopped working. I flipped out. I couldn’t drive in the rain without any wipers! God damnit you Uhaul bastards! They started working again a few minutes later, and after that I spent the entire trip willing the wipers to work whenever they would freeze in the middle of my field of vision.
Once we got to ACWF’s parents’ house, where we were going to store everything until the second move, we started unloading. Once we got a few boxes off the truck we noticed that they were wet. A few boxes later and it was clear that some of the boxes had definitely gotten soaked. The mattress and the couch also got wet.
I was pissed. Why the fuck would I pay for this retarded fucking truck to keep my shit dry when I could have packed everything in a few pickup trucks and gotten the same soaking result. Fucking whores.
Once I finally got to my parents’ house I was ready for bed. I went to sleep around 12 or so, and woke up at 8am so I could let the BGE guy come in and turn off the power. BGE said he would be there between 8am and 12pm. Kmart and I spent the morning packing the last of our stuff (mostly cleaning supplies for me. Clothes and stuff for him.) and cleaning the apartment. Once the BGE guy got there at 9:30, we were almost done, so we wrapped up the last of the stuff to move, cleaned our tracks and started to head out.
As we were grabbing the giant 8000 btu AC unit out of the window the apartment tried to take a little chunk of Kmart. He was being all bleedy, so I had to do the rest of the cleaning and all the heavy lifting.
We finally got everything outside and I got the last set of keys from Kmart. I took them over to the rental office and explained the BGE situation. They weren’t too happy. Apparently they own the house and they have a contract with BGE to just roll the power over to the next renter and bill the previous renter with an estimate or final meter reading. Now the new renters will have to pay $100 bucks to turn the power back on today because BGE didn’t tell me that they weren’t supposed to turn the power off in the first place. Fuckers.
But it’s almost over now, and at least all my problems aren’t the types of problems that plague third world nations. In a way, I’m lucky to have these problems.
No excuse me while I get Uhaul to give me a fucking refund.
*We had an agreement where the seller could rent the house back from us but not pay any rent while doing so. We did this to make our contract more appealing. It worked. At first she said she’d be out by the 5th. Then at settlement she said she’d be out by the 1st. We just want to know when she’s going to be out so we can rent a moving truck.
