We're Here!

... but as you can see, we're still not unpacked! I'm blogging from my hubby's laptop, so I haven't checked my email yet!

So, we had originally confirmed a 17' truck with U-Haul to be picked up on Sunday morning. Saturday, after I'm done with the wedding, I listen to my voicemail and hear, "I'm sorry, but we don't have a truck for you. You can try to reschedule for Monday, or cancel your reservation." WHAT!? How is it that you can confirm a truck a week in advance and then suddenly they don't have one for you? What's the point of even reserving one if things can still change at the last minute?? We asked them if they could locate another truck for us within their company and they were entirely unhelpful. We already hired a set of movers to help us load at 3 pm on Sunday in Michigan, we already paid for our hotel in Terre Haute on priceline for Sunday evening, and we already booked movers to help us unload on Monday.. so we needed a truck on Sunday! As Stephen Colbert would say, U-Haul "is dead to me."

Luckily, Budget Truck came through for us Sunday morning at the very last minute. Apparently for every 5 moving vans that leave Michigan, only 2 come back, so they didn't have anything we could take one-way, which meant the truck had to get back to Michigan somehow, and we would have to pay local charges (day fee + per mile fee). The Budget guy cut us a break and told us that a "business" rental is 1/3rd the cost on the per-mile-fee and only $5 more per day. Thank goodness!! He also only had a 24' truck available, which was way more than we needed but ultimately, the cost actually ended up at around the same rate as the one-way U-Haul! sweeeeeeet. We had our usual Sunday breakfast together and picked up the truck. The guys from E-Move loaded the truck in about 2.5 hours and we were on our way.

We decided to go I-75 S to I-70 W and the ride went pretty smoothly with only a tiny bit of construction in Indianapolis. After $250 in gas, we were finally in Terre Haute. But wait... the fun doesn't stop there folks. So we get to Terre Haute and we try to confirm the movers that we had hired on this end through E-Move. Monday morning comes and none of our phone calls are returned from the movers. One of the phone numbers listed is disconnected. Great. We had to unload the truck as scheduled because my father was driving down in my car to take the Budget truck back to Michigan on Monday night... there's no time to see if these people were just going to show up. I called Lowe's to see if they had any local references (we didn't have a phone book yet), and the girl on the phone gave me the number for a local mover. I called them and they couldn't do it on such short notice, so I asked them for another number.... they couldn't do it on such short notice, so I asked for another number... this pattern continues until I have every known and unkown listing for moving help. The only company able to help us at the last minute was Labor Ready. We weren't able to get in touch with a person, so we had to leave a message hoping someone would call us back. Once we found out where the local office was, we went in person to see what we could work out. We actually ended up not going through the company, but just paying a few guys who were at the office looking for work that day. Thank goodness!!! The guys were awesome, everything was unloaded in time, and to make a long story short, my dad made it here and back safely as well.



At this point we have a lot of boxes to unpack, and somehow all of this stuff has to fit in half the amount of space we had when we aquired a lot of it. I think I'm just going to throw a few boxes away without even looking in them... out of sight, out of mind! OK, I lie... I wouldn't really do that, but it's very tempting. It was so nice when we had a garage where we could store those "just for fun" items like camping equipment, party supplies, sport equipment, etc. Sometimes it's good to downsize... it can really force you into being more organized and provide an incentive to ditch the items you don't really need or use. (Alex finally got rid of his electronics stuff so now it looks like I'll be ditching a lot of old photos and photo albums of people I don't really talk to anymore.) That's what's going on with me right now.... I'll try to get back to your emails as soon as I can find my computer.... hmmmmm.... I wonder where that box is.....