friday (24 sep 2004): i did a bit of work in the morning until amanda came by at around 1230 to take me to get the moving truck. i rented a budget truck because i have heard too many bad things about uhaul (and have experience uhaul badness myself).
we got a 15 foot truck which was supposedly good for 3-4 room apartments. it was huger than i thought it would be. they had a funny graphic on the side that said something like “rule #52: don’t pack dogs and cats in the same box”. i wanted to take a picture of it, but the digital camera was packed somewhere.
amanda ran back off to the hospital while i gingerly drove the truck back to the apartment. i found it quite harrowing to drive it through the narrow twisty residential areas of north buffalo, but there really was not any good way to go. due to the configuration of cars on the roads near the apartment, i had to take a circuitous route in order to get into the driveway. during my initial approach, i could not make the left turn, so i had to figure out another way. it felt like playing one of those java/activex web puzzle games on the internet as it�s not like one can make a 3point turn in a vehicle that size.
i was going to park it in the back parking lot, but that proved impossible without taking out any of the various power/cable/phone lines as another person did so to use a few weeks ago. there was one place where it would have been possible, but i was unable to find the person to move the car. i ended up parking it in the lawn in front of the apartment building. after it was parked, i thought of the possibility of crushing our sewage lines (it was an old building after all), but it was too late then. oh, well.
i wanted to do more work, but realized i had to start moving immediately or we would run out of time and/or would have to put some really unpleasant hours in. i ended up getting most of our boxes (hauling those book boxes down the stairs and into the truck was pretty tiring) and assorted other random stuff in before amanda got home. at that point, amanda commenced packing more boxes (primarily kitchen and bathroom stuff at this point), while i brought more stuff down and disassembled furniture.
erika came over and brought us pizza for dinner, but she did not stay long because we obviously had much work to do. after amanda helped me bring more furniture down, i started really arranging stuff in the truck and tying stuff down so that it would not more about during the trip.
we started running out of gas some after it got dark. we wanted to get the truck packed on friday so that we would not have to pack, drive, and unpack all in one day, but that was more of a goal to strive for, however unlikely. regardless, we packed it in for the night. we bought up some old mattresses from the basement to sleep on since we had packed all of our futons and frames. lainie dropped by after her shift (she had to extract a bug from someone’s ear! that was her excitement).
saturday: we got a fairly early at 8am and kept on packing and moving. most of the furniture had already been taken down; we just had to move our two office desks. after much grunting and furniture moving tricks, we managed to get them through all the doorways and stairs without taking them apart.
most of the stuff left was the final odds and ends that did not really go in boxes or was too fragile to put in the truck. we were worried that it would start raining and that would really suck, but we finally got everything packed at around 1pm. carlos was going to help us do some packing but managed to stay away buying groceries until we were almost finished. we talked a bit with jeff, our landlord, who came to sign a lease with a new tenant in another unit, and then were off. i drove the truck while amanda ran interference behind me (or in front as the situation required) in the subaru.
driving down to ithaca was not so bad. getting through the construction in buffalo was a bit hairy, but all one really has to do is avoid hitting stationary objects and remember that you have a much larger stopping distance. everyone else should just get the hell out of your way since they should realize that you really can’t see stuff around you. the thruway itself was pretty relaxing; the only unfortunate thing was that the truck had no acceleration and could not really go above 55mph without the benefit of a hill.
i actually got passed by another budget truck on the way. the occupants slowed down and waved at me. they had a smaller 10ft truck that was pretty lightly packed and was obviously more frisky that mine (i talked with them a bit when we both stopped at the next rest area).
i had to park in the truck section of the rest area which amused me. btw — did you know that moving trucks have to stop at weigh stations? i did not. of course, there weren’t any on our route.
amanda and i plotted some strategy at the rest area on our route back to brooktondale. we decided to get off the thruway at waterloo instead of geneva because the truck route is under construction, and i was unsure of where it had gotten rerouted (and the route i would take in a car had many low hanging cables). she had to get gas and was to just catch up with me later, but she got way in front of me instead and had to slow up and wait… even with the lead time, i could not get the truck out of the rest area fast enough.
once off the thruway, the drive was uneventful. i managed to keep a respectable speed down the curvy state highways and did not annoy too many people behind me.
once in ithaca, amanda had to stop to go the bathroom, so i continued on to brooktondale. it finally started to rain a mere four miles from the house. i finally got there at around 5pm. amanda ended up arriving right after me as she could not locate a bathroom easily, and she ran immediately into the house.
we briefly considered some unpacking strategies, moved some stuff around in the house, put all the plants outside, and waited for the rain to let up. once we started unpacking, we must have gotten everything out in less than two hours (our neighbor ben helped for about half-an-hour, too. not having to move up and down stairs and being able to use the moving dolly helped enormously. we left two futons in the truck to be moved tomorrow morning since it was wet outside, and we did not want to get them any dirtier than they already were.
we did find out that the truck itself had a leak in it; it was not too bad, tho, and did not damage anything of ours.
we had a decadent dinner at madeline’s downtown and the returned home and passed out.
sunday: we got up, removed the futons, and returned the truck to the drop off location in ithaca. conveniently, there was a gas station right across from the place. there were many people renting and returning trucks; i was surprised that there was that much activity. the guy there kept badgering the person in front of us about getting insurance and whatnot (which i did myself since i knew my auto insurance did not cover it), but the renter was not buying his spiel.
another guy who had also rented a 15foot truck returned his right after us. he said that it was “definitely too much truck for him,” and he appreciated the gas station across the street for its location and because “there was lots of room to maneuver”. funny.
driving the truck was not do bad, though i did find it stressful mainly because you just have to accept that you can’t see everything and that other people will (hopefully) do the right thing. the 10ft ones i had driven before were still pretty car/van like, but the 15ft one was really required different driving techniques.
after dropping the truck off, we stopped at wegmans for bfast/lunch and to buy some supplies. we headed back to the house to start unpacking and organizing things.
at the house, amanda got overwhelmed by all the stuff we had, so we decided to go back to buffalo. piglet was happy to see us; she was probably freaked out because we had removed everything from the apartment and left her! we did a bit more organizing and cleaning but not all that much. there was not a lot of stuff left in the apartment after all. lainie came over and yakked with us for a while. we went to bed early.
monday: i theoretically had today off, but i had to spend some a couple of hours writing a performance review for a coworker. amanda actually caught me dozing in bed after she had left for lecture early in the morning and had come back for something or other around 10am. oops. anyways, after finishing a bit of work, i started cleaning, vacuuming, steam cleaning some carpets, canceling utilities, calling various people, yadda yadda yadda. amanda came home later and joined in the fun.
we had dinner at the lone star fajita grill and came home and watched lost in translation on her notebook computer. actually, i went to target to get some plastic bins to move the fish first.
tuesday: amanda went off to neurology again, while i packed up the fish. it was pretty painful get the tanks down into the car, even with practically all the water out of them. i had a bad moment when i was extracting our upsidedown catfish; there was only one and all everything was out of the tank! it turned out that he was in our decorative plastic stump that i had checked maybe thirty minutes earlier and emptied out. he had survived in a negligible amount of water and was not very pleased (tho he should have been after i had found him). the upsidedown catfish are now both very very huge (3.5-4 inches long and 1+ inch wide) which is very impressive since you never see them in the daylight, and we got them when they were little things.
anyways, the fish survived the trip for now. i deposited three the goldfish into his old 10gallon tank that i had previously set up and the rest of the fish into the 30gallon tank. the arrangement is probably temporary as we are still considering what to do with them (and our plethora of fish tanks).
now, i am at work and will try to get some more stuff done before heading back to the house for some organizing.