Moving In

You all know my love of corporate housing. Remember how about 2 weeks ago one of the buildings in our complex caught fire? My mom arrived last Tuesday night to help wrangle Parker during the move and as I rolled down the car window to enter the code to get into the gate, I remarked "It smells just like it did the night there was a fire." We parked, drug her suitcase up the stairs and had been inside about 5 minutes when I heard sirens. It was like deja vu as I ran over to the window and sure enough, fire trucks were trying to get into the complex. I say trying because they could not get past the security gates. How's that for safe? Mom & I ran outside to see where the trucks were going this time only to find they were right in front of our building. The smell of smoke was so strong (and the residents so jarred by the recent fire) that someone called it in without actually seeing a fire. We spent the next 45 minutes outside while the firemen walked around trying to determine where/if there was a fire. The smell of smoke was strongest at our building and the once across from it. In the end, there apparently was no fire as the firemen left without speaking to anyone. I did hear one of their radio conversations asking someone to call a neighboring city to see if they had a large fire and we were just getting the downdraft of the smoke smell. Needless to say, none of us slept well that night. I kept waking up, sniffing the air, to be sure we didn't have to evacuate immediately. It was the last straw about corporate housing, to say the least.

The actual closing was uneventful, if long. We had some last minute panic because our "national" bank has no offices within 4 hours of here and they would not wire our money without us filling out a form in person. The closing company graciously accepted a personal check instead, otherwise I don't know what we would have done. We actually got the house Wednesday night, though the movers weren't scheduled to get here until Friday.

Friday arrived and thankfully there was no rain. It took 12 full hours to get the move complete, which included unloading the truck, setting up beds and furniture that had been dismantled, as well as all unpacking. By unpacking what they really mean is that they unload the boxes, unwrap everything, then set all your stuff on the floor of the appropriate room. So while it doesn't look pretty, it saved me a lot of time, as well as got rid of the majority of the boxes and wrapping paper so I didn't have to deal with it. Now if there was only a magic genie to find places for all our junk to go. I am getting rid of a ton of stuff that I no longer have the desire to find room for, but we still have an obscene amount of belongings that I swear multiply like Gremlins when it is stuck in storage for too long.

We've already had to change our new home number. Remember the car dealer who pissed me off a couple weeks ago? Ironically it turns out our new number was one digit off from their number and we were getting multiple wrong numbers for them a day. (Totally off track, but can't people dial right? Is everyone fat fingered or what? Geez!) After getting two calls first thing yesterday morning I called the phone company and requested the change, which apparently they will do for free if it's for a reason like that. Good to know.

The dogs have been the bane of my existence since we've been here. Walking them on leashes every day in the apartment was such a gigantic pain, not to mention they didn't have room to run and frolic as they were used to. I did all the work ahead of time so our new fence could be installed on Monday, which was total genius on my part. The fence guys showed up late and we had to leave before they started. When we got home I gazed in wonder at the new fence for it was a thing of beauty. Then I noticed it was the wrong color. DOH! It was black, which was totally acceptable, but not the bronze color that I was so excited about because it near perfectly matched the shutters on our house. I called our salesman and left a message, while in the meantime R and I debated how much we were going to ask as a discount for the mistake. I really wanted the bronze fence and while the black fence is perfectly functional, it is not what we wanted. The sales guy called yesterday to apologize, say it was his fault, and offered $300 off. Um, really? R originally was thinking a 10% discount, then changed his mind and went to 25% because if you ordered a car and it came in the wrong color, you wouldn't take it, right? The fence is a serious investment for us at just over $6k, so while $300 is nice, it isn't nearly enough. To top it off, the guys didn't even come back yesterday to finish installing the gates. Ergh! I'm letting R handle this part because for now I am just plain tired of dealing with all this crap.

Pictures to come soon, I promise!