It’s been three years since our last apartment move, and I’d forgotten exactly how stressful and exhausting moving can be. Since we had plenty of advance notice, I’d dutifully tried to prepare for the move by throwing useless crap out, hauling two full carloads of old clothes, books, computer parts, etc down to Goodwill, and generally trying to get things sorted, organized, and pared down. But then the movers arrive. They take all your stuff and put it in boxes. Then they take everything you own, pile it up in your new living room, and leave. You’re left there with a huge pile of boxes, trying to put your life back together again. And you find yourself wondering, “Where the hell did all this stuff come from?”
I was originally going to make an analogy of moving as a tidal wave sweeping through your life, but in light of the various major natural disasters the past 12 months, and the fact that our tidal wave is a wave of stuff those people no longer have, it seemed a bit insensititve. Despite all my complaining, this is a much nicer apartment than the last one we were in. That’s a positive change.
Things generally went according to plan except that Comcast totally screwed up. We’d made an appointment for them to come to the new place the afternoon of moving day to get us set up with cable and Internet service, but somehow that changed to them coming to the place we were moving out of, just as we were preparing to leave. It took two phone calls and several customer service escalations, one threat to cancel everything and switch to DishTV and DSL, and a lot of other back and forth, to get the botched appointment rescheduled for Friday afternoon. They’d wanted to reschedule us for Tuesday, and that just wasn’t going to happen. We could certainly have waited a few more days for TV, but not having Internet access for that long was a horror devoutly to be avoided.
Having no TV or Internet access while the Libby indictments were coming down was disappointing. I got to listen to most of the Fitzgerald press conference on the radio, but that was it. Comcast showed up a few hours later, but I didn’t get the PC set up until late last night. So I missed the huge wave of spin, analysis, speculation, etc the blogosphere generated in my absence. And I still have a lot of work to get done, so I expect to miss most of the next wave, too. Just about everyone is running with the story. I’d link to some of the best bits on other blogs but I’m too tired. I have other stuff to deal with right now.
I want a functioning kitchen so I can make myself a morning cup of coffee. I want to get all the boxes off my tables so I can eat a meal somewhere other than on the floor (although the new carpeting here is nice). I’ve still got another 20 or more boxes to unpack. I need to go buy some new lamps, because there’s no overhead lighting fixtures in most of the rooms and carrying the one lamp we do own around from room to room is a pain. I have a heaping pile of laundry to do, and I need to figure out where in San Mateo I can get a roll of quarters. And none of that is going to get done if I sit on my butt blogging.
By the way, the kitties didn’t enjoy the move much but are starting to settle in. I’d post some pix but I can’t find the cable connecting my camera to the computer. Maybe Sunday.