moved

Hey to all my wonderful, devoted, adoring readers (that’s how I see you in my mind, let me live the fantasy)! Been busy getting moved. Finally, step one to ending the Summer of Suck is complete – moving away from home. What was only supposed to be a temporary stop at my aunt’s crib turned into an entire summer of dealing with my crazy family. Patience is a virtue but I’ve never been the virtuous type so, ya know, I was bugging there. On to the next chapter…

I’ve moved to Brooklyn, Bed Stuy to be exact. Got me a roomie. While I was living alone in Philly, I had two roommates over in Japan (and two this summer if you count my aunt and uncle). So I can deal with the roommate situation again, especially because I’m sort of new to the area. I had lived in Brooklyn before, East Flatbush, but only for a short period of time. That has nothing to do with anything right now though, because I have no idea where I am really. So if you’re in the area and want to put me on to some stuff (or want to get wasted), let me know!

The move itself was possibly the worst move I’ve ever undertaken, and I’ve moved a lot (from NY to Chapel Hill to Carrboro to NYC to Cary to Raleigh to Philly to Tokyo to NY to BK). It all started with renting the truck. I reserved a 10ft truck which was totally sufficient but when I got to the office, they only had 16ft trucks available. Ok, not only was there more room in the back, but the thing was taller and significantly bigger. See specs here. Whatever though, bigger is sometimes better and I was getting the bigger truck for the price of the smaller one. Lesson #1: Trucks are not like Value Meals. It is not always a better deal to go for the bigger option. So I’ve got my buddy Ihsan with me and we pull out of the rental lot heading toward my storage unit all set to load up and drive to BK. I swear, not three minutes away from the lot, before I even get a good radio station on, I hear this loud ass crackBOOM! OMG! I turn to the right and there’s no mirror on the passenger side! I have somehow knocked off the damn mirror! Driving ahead of me, Ihsan must have seen what happened and I saw him signal a side street for pulling over. After determining what happened and taking a few deep breaths, Ihsan walked back a couple of blocks to retrieve the mirror. The plastic mirror casing thing was intact, but the glass was all gone. It’s important that I mention that I am a good driver. I have driven a 10ft truck about three different times in my life with no incident whatsoever. So you can imagine how I felt at this point.

Sheepishly, we returned to the office where the woman looked at us quizzically like, “What?” I explained what happened and we set about to filling out an accident report. Long story short (too late for that, huh), I got a new truck. Oh, let me say that I had paid for one of the insurance options… the one with a $500 deductible. For $10 more, I could have gotten the $0 deductible and had to pay nada. But really, who thinks something like this is going to happen? The rental lady said that they’d have to send the truck to a shop and depending on how much Budget was billed, they’d pass the cost on to me, up to $500. Grrrrrreat. Lesson #2: Always get the insurance. Better lesson: Get the full insurance. You never know.

Ok, take two. New truck, still a 16 footer, we head to the storage unit and begin clearing it out. Knowing there were some items that just were not going to fit in my space that I didn’t particularly care for anyway, I planned on leaving them at the dumpster less than 10ft away from my unit. Sike. Dude at Public Storage said we couldn’t leave anything there. Oh really? How come when you don’t pay your bill and they need to clear out your unit for you, THEY can put shit in the dumpster but when you move out on your own, you can’t dump there? It’s the same stuff! Ugh. So Ihsan and I had to put the “discards” in the truck and drive them up to NY.

Can I say that driving that 16 foot truck is much different than one just 6 feet smaller? After my first incident, I was especially anxious driving it. Not so much on the PA or NJ turnpikes, but when we got up in the city, the expressway was so narrow. Then I had to drive through BK, following directions and dealing with NYC drivers aka assholes. By the time I got out of the truck, I was pretty rattled. The driving drama is not over but let’s keep it chronological. So we get to the apt and two more friends arrive to participate in the torture that is moving my stuff up three flights of narrow brownstone stairs. We get all of the boxes up, my sofa, a huge bookcase, my mammoth television and a queen mattress. What we could not get upstairs, however, was my queen boxspring. I tried for TWO days to get that boxspring up. It’s the biggest mystery ever since previous tenants (incl my current roomie) have had queen boxsprings up here. No matter what we did we couldn’t get it up. They say folks with a lot of book smarts sometimes lack common sense. I think we illustrated that pretty well with that boxspring since the combined brainpower of very bright people (including a guy who is single-handedly remodeling his house) couldn’t budge the damn thing. So I got rid of it. I’ll just have to revisit this issue later.

Ok, last leg of this long ass saga. I had to take the truck back on Monday and the drop off location was out in Brownsville. First, as with any rental, I had to refill the gas up to full. Remembering a gas station I saw on Atlantic Ave, I set out to find it, only to realize I had driven right past it. I was totally distracted by the giant ass truck I was driving among all the crazy drivers, double parked delivery trucks and garbage men. Instead of looking at my phone for directions while driving, I decided to be smart and pull over to get my bearings. I spotted a nice clear area the size of a fucking landing strip in which to pull over and get back on track. As I slid the truck over to the curb I heard the loudest BANG and felt the truck rock. My first instict was to look to the mirror, which was fine. Like I said, the space was huge so I know I didn’t hit a car. I see two old men outside looking up so I pop out of the driver’s side and look up and over the cab. OMG. The top of the truck came face to fucking face with a tree branch. There was a big old dent. FUCK! I’m so pissed because I’m already in to Budget for at least $500 for the mirror only two days earlier. I have no idea how much this will cost me since no matter what level of insurance you buy, the top of the truck is NEVER covered. Not at all. This is going to be a full out of pocket expense. FUCK! Lesson #3: Watch out for tree branches. I didn’t get all the way out of the car to check the damage, but the old men on the street said something like, “maybe they won’t notice. I wouldn’t tell them about it if they don’t notice.” Ok genuises. We’ll see.

I make it to the rental drop off spot and turn in the keys. Oh, I forgot to mention that there was still the matter of those discard items. Some of the stuff I was able to give away but I had 3 items left in the truck. I was hoping that the drop off place would have somewhere I could get rid of it all. Nope. Dude said they wouldn’t take it. UGH! Solution: I called to some dude with a doo rag, gold fronts and powdered donut on his face (no lie) to see if he wanted to make a quick $20. Of course he was down. He lugged the stuff out of the truck and took it off to a dumpster somewhere. Dude ended up asking for my phone number. Had I flirted a bit, I prob could’ve gotten the job done for free. Lesson #4: Start at $0 and work your way up if need be. Now that I was out of the truck, I could take in the total damage from the branch. Ho-LEE shit. There was a friggin HOLE in the truck! the upper side portion of the truck was dented in, with a hole. The top corner was dented as well. The lady at the receiving office had to take pictures and I filled out another accident report. Again, I don’t know how much this will cost. Again, I’ll have to wait until the truck is repaired and Budget is billed which could be about a month. The agent said there might be a bit of wiggle room since all of the damage is not on the top but on the side (depending on what Budget considers the “top”) and the fact that I originally requested a smaller truck. I don’t know about that, but I’ll utilize my lawyerly skills of negotiation and fast talk to see what I can do.

I’m glad that I’m done moving. I’ve just been unpacking for the past couple of days with more ahead. On top of that, I have my school work and other things to take care of.

Overall Lesson: Hire professional movers.