Yay! We're Here!

Well mostly here anyway. The actual car drive here was not bad. The cats were drugged and happy or at least too buzzed to care at any rate. We unloaded the cars and even had help from family bringing up house plants and clothes for the next few days. They were also armed with an air mattress and a bottle of champagne to welcome us home. Hooray! We made it!

Fast forward a week and a half and you might think we are getting quite settled in and unpacking. Well that's where thinking gets you. Our stuff is still MIA. Our original window was the 3rd-13th of July for delivery. When we called last Wednesday (the 8th) to ask where our stuff was we found ourselves on the end of a very disturbing conversation. Well Rob did anyway, I was driving to NJ for a business trip. It went something like this:

Rob: Hi I am trying to get a status update on where our stuff is and when it will get here.
Mover Person 1: Oh, you want to talk to MOVER LADY, we only packed your stuff, they are coordinating the move.
Rob: Oh ok, thanks.

New phone call to MOVER LADY:
ROB: Hi mover people. So I was told stuff should show up between the 3rd and the 13th. Can you be any more specific now that it's the 8th?
MOVER LADY: Oh, do you have a destination for us yet?
ROB: [a bit confused]: Um, yes, we wrote it down on every piece of paper the movers asked us to sign. Also we've been telling you for weeks.
MOVER LADY: Oh, well, can you tell us again? I didn't know and it never occurred to me that I should actually ask you for that crucial piece of information. I somehow assumed you would anticipate my failure to talk to anyone else or to even make any attempts to "coordinate" this "move". I'm only the "Move Coordinator" after all.
ROB: Well that was a surprisingly frank yet oblivious admission of incompetence.
MOVER LADY: I try. Oh, and good news, your stuff is leaving Atlanta today!
ROB: It's been a week and a day since you loaded it on the truck
MOVER LADY: I *know*! Aren't we swift? It usually takes three to four weeks to make these shipments and you may be getting it as soon as two weeks after you left!!! I think it's the new feed they're giving the mules.
ROB: So we aren't getting our stuff in the 3rd-13th window then?
MOVER LADY: Goodness no. Since it's leaving Georgia today it will probably be another 4 to 10 days before it arrives.
ROB: So the original "last possible day" is now (roughly) our "earliest possible day"?
MOVER LADY: Yes. No. I don't know. I'm not so good at math.
ROB: Did you used to work for Comcast?

So needless to say, we have no idea where our stuff is. I called CARTUS, the super coordinator of all of this that hired MOVER LADY and company to express my frustration. Today I was supposed to be called by 4pm by the van line which did not happen so I called CARTUS back and they are doing whatever they do. At this point, I don't care when it gets here, well I do, but I just want to know what date to expect it. Right now it has been, "should be tomorrow", for a week and a half because no one told us what was going on. If I knew two weeks ago it wouldn't get here until 7/15, I would have been fine with that, but it's been like hanging a carrot in front of a mule. Just a little more....

We will have a party when our stuff gets here. Until then, here's to camp chairs, card tables, the laptop (aka entertainment center), and the air mattress.

Celebrity Death Match

There have been a lot of celebrities that has passed this week. First it was Ed McMahan, which hey, that's sad, but he was older and it wasn't that unexpected. Then Farrah passed on which we all knew was coming, but still, we mourn. Of course about 12 hours later Michael Jackson decided he wanted to join the big party in the sky and so he went to. That was probably the most shocking of all the people who passed on this week. Sure he was weird, but he didn't have any kind of publicized health problems he was battling with (aside from plastic poisoning) and he was only 50. Plus, he was the King of Pop so that's always an immortality booster there.

But the last straw came today with the passing of Billy Mays. :( You may remember my post a while back about how he was my hero. That man could sell you anything. He could have sold you rodent repellent that equated to stinky socks that we left in a black bag, baked to perfection in a trunk of a car in 100 degree heat for a month and you would have thought you were getting a fantastic deal. I think I speak for all of us when I say, there will never be another Billy Mays.

With all of these deaths, it kind of makes you wonder if the world is finally throwing down the gauntlet on the apocalypse. Here's hoping that's not the case, but just a weird series of events. I have a lot more living left to do and no where in my plans is there an apocalypse to live through.

Tell Me What I Can Help You With

One of my biggest frustrations with moving is all the time you spend on the phone. You need to call people to disconnect everything at your old place, call everyone to change your address, and then call more people set up all your service at your new place. I am sure you can do some of it online, but that's almost as bad. You need to set up online accounts which each place and remember all those passwords and navigate through the murky waters. It's just time consuming no matter how you do it.

Most of them go pretty quickly and I get to talk to a human and it takes about oh, less than 5 minutes per transaction. However, when I get the Decepticon (the autonomous computer system) on the other end of the phone, my blood pressure goes up at least 50 points and it's bound to take twice as long. The stupid Decepticon wants to show how smart it is because it can understand English so when you talk to it, it goes off to process what you say and then repeats everything back to you. Well, let me tell you I am not impressed. Maybe that's why the Decepticon hung up on me twice. Or maybe it's because of all the muttering/swearing I do when it doesn't understand what I want. I will never know. I hate those systems.

Here's a little trade secret though, just keep pushing zero at the first "tell me what I can help you with", it will claim it doesn't understand you until it finally gives up and you can go talk to a human. Now who's being deceptive? Mwuhahaha....

Raptor Fu Fu Strikes Again

Since both myself and the VP who dubbed me Raptor Fu Fu are both leaving, I thought it would be appropriate to give him a going away present to remember all the Fu Fu by. Left over Halloween sequins, beads, and feathers plus tweezers and super glue made it all possible. It was appreciated and greeted with a hearty laugh from the VP and the entire room full of people that he opened it in front of. :)


Teaser - I have pictures and stories from Savannah as well, but probably won't be uploaded for a while. It was a good trip though!

Kitties Visit the Vet

In getting ready for our move, I decided it would be a good idea to try and get some tranquillizers for my cats this time around. When I moved from DC, Dory meowed for 7 out of the 10 hour drive. It felt like I was killing the poor thing. I did everything I could to make them more calm to no avail. This time around we wanted to have some ammo. :)

They went to the vet today and Rob helped lug their fat butts in. They took them to be weighed and Dory came in at 14.8 pounds and Sparky came in a 21.9 pounds. The house sitting service was right, they are mountain lions!! We got a little one on one time with the vet to ask some questions about general cat problems we have been having or things we wanted to know.

Question one - how to get my kitties to loose some freaken weight. Turns out they need a prescription to get some high fiber food that should help them shed a pound or two. That would be nice! I have the magic piece of paper, so when this food runs out, it's diet time!

Question two - Sparky bites, why? Apparently he just wants to play. Lovely. We are supposed to ignore this and hopefully he will stop.

Question three - Dory bites her nails, why? The vet said, "That's weird. In vet school they can tell us what dogs do and why, but when we get to cats, they have little explanation for a lot of their behaviors." Awesome. :P

Question four - We are moving to a complex with berber carpeting, what do you suggest for them to not get caught on the carpet? She suggested something called Soft Paws. It's like fake nails for kitties. I want to get pink ones for Dory and blue ones for Sparky. :) It should also help them not scratch the furniture anymore.

Also, I was able to play with this cool tool they had laying about called the FURminator. At first I thought it was some vet tool to run through their fur and check for fleas, but turns out, it's just to brush your pet with. The idea is that the tool grabs all the loose hairs that other brushes leave behind and I can tell you this thing works! The demos on their website are pretty much accurate with how much fur comes out. I had a mound when the vet came back and I was like, "Ummm, where can I put this small new cat?" She raved about it and I know why. I want one!

Overall it was a very educational trip AND we got the kitty tranquillizers. :) As the vet put it, they won't knock the kitty out, but just take the edge off, like having a few glasses of wine. Sweet. :)

House Hunting

I spent this past weekend in lovely upstate NY house hunting. What an adventure! It's been over 10 years since I have lived in the Syracuse area and I have never had to look for an apartment while I was there (thanks Dad!). So this was a little weird for me. I knew the area, but never ever thought about rentals until now.

I set out with a list in hand and thought I had found some sure fire winners based on what I had seen on the web. Let me tell you, I was so dead wrong. I don't know who they are paying to doctor/edit their photos, but they must be shelling out some dough. These places looked nothing like what I saw online! I guess this goes to show you how important a house hunting trip really is. If I had gone by web only, we would have had a living room that's the size of our current dining room and a dining room the size of our kitchen even though this place boasted more square footage!

After a VERY disappointing start on Friday I was set to find some real steals on Saturday! I even had a few homes picked out that I felt like had to be winners. Sadly, this was not to be the case. The homes I had chosen (which btw, it's not easy finding homes to rent) were basically either in a ghetto or next to one (like 3 houses down). I was about ready to scream. Thankfully, I had an ace in the hole.

When my sister and I got out of the car at this complex, all we could hear was birds and the breeze. This place was actually built in the last 10 years instead of oh, say 30 years ago (with zero updates since). So hooray! It's not a town home like we wanted, BUT my kitties do get a balcony again and I know they will love that. It's 25 minutes from work and 20 from my sister and parents. So we are decently centrally located. That and we are in a safer and MUCH nicer place. It was a tiring search, but the hard work paid off!

Crazy June

Returning from vacation and getting back into the swing of things took just about all week. I think I relaxed so much on vacation it was especially hard to care about going back to work or doing homework. I think mentally, I was still out to lunch.

Despite my reluctance to do any work last week, I did make progress on the move. I talked to the real person at the relocation office that would authorize my travel and get things going (defined dates, details, etc). These are things that keep me sane. I don't like the - don't worry it will happen. I know it will happen, I want dates. I am a planner, I need to plan! And this conversation was holding up all other plans.

This month has a whirlwind of last minute adventures starting next weekend (well starting Thursday) with a house hunting trip. The following weekend Rob and I are going to Savannah. I will kick myself if I don't go before I move back north. The weekend after that is bound to be full of good bye parties, sorting for movers and general last minute mayhem. Then the last week they pack us up and I am on my way north! I start in my new location on July 6th.

Moving does bring on interesting resource management problems like trying to manage food consumption. We are planning all of our remaining meals to use up what is left in the freezer and in the pantry. We are also trying to finish as many liquid containers as possible before making the move because the movers won't take them. Cleaning windows 6 times is a good use of Windex right?

There are so many other details that go along with moving that I am sure I will be busy all month long. The nice part is that I am done with classes starting Monday for two weeks so I can focus on the move more than the homework for a little while. What I am really trying to say is that blog posts may be more sporadic over the next month until we are settled into the new home. :) Here's to chaos!