After weeks of buildup, packing, unpacking, taking boxes to the townhouse, stress, exhaustion, etc., moving day arrived yesterday at 8 o’clock in the way of 2 big honkin’ trucks and 5 strapping young men from Campbell moving.
They wasted no time in getting moving and were amazingly efficient at their duties. All the furniture was wrapped in blankets, secured with tape and then hauled out to the truck to be expertly arranged. Melanie and I were amazed.
The main floor was done around 10 and the difficult part, the downstairs area with the tools was completed around noon. I had gone to got us a sandwich from Santini’s around 11 and we had literally just finished eating when they said they were about ready to leave and we needed to do a walk around. There were a couple of things left, but they had done an amazing job.
Getting in the car, I needed to get to the townhouse before them to get Jessica out of the garage. They had gone to get lunch, and were at the house shortly before 1.
One of the issues of the new townhouse is the close proximity to neighbors and such. So, one of the trucks parked in the street next adjacent to a townhouse across the street, while one backed up behind our townhouse, unfortunately blocking the driveway of the neighbors. I looked and they weren’t home, so they at least weren’t trapped in their house.
The first order of business was moving all the boxes and stuff we had been bringing to the townhouse over the previous weeks since we signed the lease for the townhouse. The guys gave us a funny look when they saw it, but that quickly dissipated as they began hauling boxes up the flights of stairs.
Once done, the unloading of the truck began. And it went on, and on, and on and I thought it would never end. A bit of panic began to arise as I started wondering, “Will all this stuff fit”? But the unloading continued at a frenzied pace. Finally about 3:30 the first truck was done. This truck had most of the tools from the shop, and when it was empty the garage was a disaster. Oh, well, keep on movin’ in.
The second truck was moved into the place of the first truck as it was moved, and the unloading continued at the same frantic pace. Most of this was furniture and stuff, and so it came into the house. And came, and came. Lots of boxes were intersprinkled in with the furniture and Melanie had done a spectacular job labelling everything so we really didn’t have to get involved. This stuff was appreciably larger than the stuff in the first truck, but that made getting it up the stairs, sometimes 2 flights the issue.
I’ll give the movers credit. They didn’t blink. The bed in Master bedroom was assembled as we were using the bedroom suite from the previous tenant. We will see how that plays out as time progresses. It’s nice looking stuff, but very cheap. They put the Sleep Number bed together, but we couldn’t find the remote to test it. Once the remote was found, the bed gave a communications error and refused to do anything. Oh, well let that go until later.
Anyway all the furniture moved in with a few changes from the plan. We decided to put Meghan’s desk upstairs with the Futon to act as Melanie’s office. It’s a small room, but the pieces fit, and it made more sense than our plan of putting it in the dining room, which in hindsight would have been unsightly.
Time was winding down and at about 5:30 they said they were done. Yay! The truck was moved, and I backed Melanie’s car up and got them to unload that while they were here, because to be honest we were beat. The movers packed up all their equipment, picked up all the expended wrapping and stuff, we attended to payment details, and as a last gesture, I gave then $300 to split amongst the 5 of them. They were all most thankful, jumped into the truck and they were gone.
I moved stuff around in the garage to move Jessica back in the garage and came upstairs to get the keys, which were nowhere to be found. After scrambling around for what seemed like and eternity, Melanie announced that I had put the keys in her purse. Great. As I was walking down the street to get the convertible, a neighbor was teaching is son to ride a bike and their garage door was open. Suddenly I felt much better about the state of our garage as his was chock-a-block and there was no getting any cars in there.
The SUV’s were put in the driveway, the garage door closed and I came upstairs. The first order of business was getting the internet working. I had plugged the Amplifi into the circuit and it had connectivity, but no data. Verizon’s documentation was amazingly unhelpful in this process with only thing being go to actify.verizon.com. So I got Melanie’s phone, as she is the account holder, and after about 15 times of entering a plethora of information, I got this screen with a bar spinning for a longish period of time, and then all of a sudden I heard my tablet announce mail! Shortly after, the website announced it was activated.
Using that accomplishment, I ordered dinner from Mama Tigre to be delivered by DoorDash. Melanie got a Burrito Gordo, and I got Lamb Birria, with delivery expected in an hour around 7:30.
This hurdle leapt, the next challenge was the Sleep Number bed. When I looked at the control boxes earlier, something didn’t look right, but I had didn’t know what at the time. No I had time to look at the boxes and still nothing. Both controllers had been found and neither worked, and the phone app said the bed was offline. I flipped the plugs into the wall receptacle, and the lights for the controller came on, but I no longer had power to the bed actuator. Then the light (get it) came on. This townhouse is full of switched wall outlets. I went to the bank of three switched on the wall and turned them all on, and voila! It worked. Okay. I need to get a power strip to plug both og them into an unstitched outlet.
I decided to take a break and got a cryptic e-mail asking how my food was. H’mm, so I went downstairs and the DoorDash guy had just left the food and not rung the bell. Anyway, we sat down for dinner at 7:30. The food was very good, and plentiful to the point that we saved the guacamole for later.
The last job of the day was to unpack enough to go to bed. Finishing that I took a shower and we were in bed by 9.
So here we are. I’m going to go get breakfast after this, and then this afternoon we are headed to the house to do a final cleanup. Meghan is going to meet us there to see the house.
Until next time.