Sun Moon Stars Girl )-(

Welcome to my little place to vent…

Saturday we got up early. I was cranky because my throat was killing me, and I was massively tired still. We headed out towards the stages, stopping to pick up some munchies in town, and to get my called-in prescription. At first, things did not quite work out - I tried calling my doctor’s office, but it wasn’t open yet. The Rite-Aid opened early, but the pharmacy didn’t open until 9. The woman took her sweet time getting it open, and I found out that the prescription had not been called in at all. Again, I didn’t know what to do.

I retried calling the doctor’s office once we got on the road. I was informed that I would have to stop in a clinic and be seen before I could be prescribed anything. I was hysterical because I knew first of all that we didn’t have time to stop and find a place, if we even could find a place that was open besides the emergency room (where it would take a billion years to be seen and cost about the same amount of money), and who the heck knew where the nearest hospital even was. I decided to suck it up and just be seen by the urgent care clinic in MA tomorrow.

In the meantime we booked it to the stage road. Kris knew the roads, and James provided the navigation necessary for us to get there quickly. We arrived just after the bus had left, but it didn’t matter since we were asked to be rally marshals for the spectators. I was thrilled that our group was well-known and trusted enough to be given such a huge responsibility.

After the stage was run both forwards and reverse (and dealing with some annoying “we’re better than you” spectators), we packed it in, and the group headed out in our own respective directions. Kris and I headed south to visit his family one last time. After relating my story of illness, they suggested I try again. I got the nicest doctor on the phone (finally), and she was willing to call in a prescription - but all the darn pharmacies were closed! We eventually worked it out so she left it to be filled the next morning.
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We left Thursday night to attend the Maine Forest Rally. I had a fun time in the car learning how to use our “Road Trip USA” car setup with the laptop, playing with the GPS monitoring and the mp3 player. I’m so glad James made reservations for a motel because I wasn’t feeling well and Kris and I were able to get a separate room.

Well, I thought a good night’s rest would help me feel better. Kris even let me sleep longer while the rest of the gang came up with a game plan for the day and picked up some drinks and munchies. Unfortunately, when they came back for me, I had some bad news. “I think I have strep.” It felt like there was an orange in my sore throat, but only on one side. I had the EMT of the group (Brian) check me out, and he said, “Yup, it’s strep.”

With this in mind, I had no idea what my next step should be. Kris, as usual, was able to step me logically through a plan. We got the number for the in-town pharmacy, and the number for my doctor’s office. I called the doctor, and explained that I was pretty sure I had strep. They took my number, and the pharmacy number, and I thought they would just call me in a prescription, or call back if there was a problem. Although my phone was on, it was analog roaming up in the woods, and I shut it off after we left for a spectator area. I figured by that time they would have returned my call if they were going to.

We (Matt Kennedy, me behind Matt, Kelly, James, Brian, Kris) had a great time watching a bridge crossing from the riverbed(Sean’s pic). Afterwards we met up with Sean’s parents for dinner.

They almost got us.

Kris had told me the night before, “If they don’t wake me up with a phone call tomorrow morning…” I was hoping the movers would call as I headed off for work. Kris said he would call with every update, joking that he would text message me with every box number they had currently packed. “Number 568″ - brrring! I had a busy day scheduled, or I wouldn’t have even gone to work.

Kris called at a quarter of ten, and thankfully he had a back-up plan for the move when he told me he had bad news about the moving company. We’d started to get suspicious the night before, when Kris asked me where the 818 area code was. “NJ, NY maybe? I’m not sure, but I definitely recognize it,” I told him. When we talked about it later, it made sense. “Tine, that’s a California area code!” I knew I’d recognized it. Oops.

I’ll refer to his site on what transpired with him in the morning, and most of how he told me how we were almost scammed by Roadrunner Moving and Storage. I got so nervous I was shaking, but as always he was reassuring. “Here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to get a van from U-Haul, move our stuff into storage, and then we have a whole month to find another moving company.” I said I would finish up at work, talk to catch up with my boss, and head out.

When I got back to my apartment, Kris told me the whole story. Yeah, the movers screwed us. Sort of. He told me all about the confusion caused by the fact that there are several companies with the same name - Road Runner Moving and Storage, and also about the scam a lot of companies are running. Basically, they give you a great quote and are helpful on the phone. Then the day of the move they delay you by hours, days, weeks, until you have NO OPTION but to go with them. They take your stuff, handle it roughly, and then hold it hostage until you pay them the crazy inflated price they have now put on your personal belongings. Our plan turned quickly to the “you pack it, they move it,” type of movers.

I remembered calling a company like this a few months earlier, but I had not held on to the info because we had so many variables - no idea how much stuff we had, not sure what we were going to take or not, what size apartment we would be getting, etc. Now that we were completely packed up, ready to go we had a firm idea of exactly how much space we would need. So I gave them a call.

A representative from Door-to-Door Storage called me back very quickly. He found my name in the system (yay!), and transferred me to Dawn, the woman I’d spoken with previously from their moving subsidiary, City-to-City. She was extremely helpful, answering all our questions, and send us out a stack of paperwork right then, which clearly defined the whole arrangement. She was able to give us the price I’d been quoted previously. “That’s your reward for calling in April.” I can’t thank her enough for all her help, which seriously reduced the stress I felt to get the moving thing sorted out.

During the time I was talking to Dawn, Kris called and emailed recruits to help us out. I was pleasantly amazed and grateful to all the people who so unselfishly came to our rescue. We headed out to pay for the storage place (and here’s where I note how helpful and nice the woman Peggy at State of the Art Storage was) and to pickup the van. Right away two of the boys starting moving stuff, as I took the important job of checking off all the boxes on the list, and arranging things in an easy place for them to grab. I may not have moved much of it down the stairs, but I certainly touched everything that left the apartment. Of course we also had beer and pizza for the crowd.

I’m going to give the same “HUGE THANK YOU” that Kris did to Brian, James, Sean, and Ian. Those guys worked their butts off to get our stuff out of the Manchvegas apartment, across town, and ‘tetris’d’ into storage. We didn’t get back to my place in Hudson until 1 AM, and I’m completely exhausted today, but so relieved. Our stuff is out of the apartment, we’re able to use some of the stuff we thought would have to leave on the moving truck (like the TV and A/C), and the new movers are all set to go. I’m going to fax the paperwork in ASAP.
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We got up pretty early so we could finish packing before the movers arrived. We had everything packed by 1:30, and started the cleaning process to pass some time. We moved a bunch of the boxes from Kris’s room and closet out to the living room, and everything we were taking with us into Andrew’s old room. My parents called around 3, asked how it went, and I told them, oh they aren’t here yet, but Kris is calling them. While still on the phone with my ‘rents, Kris got a call from the driver, saying something about being pulled over by the state police because they had to inspect the contents of the truck. “How long is it going to take?” “We’re not sure, we’ll call you back.”

I knew they wouldn’t be up for at least two more hours, so we had a little more time. We relaxed a bit, but couldn’t do much, thinking they would be there by 6 or so. We did a bit more cleaning. We patched the holes in the wall. We vacuumed more. We took the bikes out for a spin, which was a lot of fun. Side note: Now that I�m learning how everything works with shifting gears in a car, I understand how and when to shift gears on the bicycle. I never really did that before.

At 6:30 we called again. “What’s going on?” “Oh, we have an oil leak or something, and we have to do some maintenance on the truck.” “Ok, well, how long is that going to take?” “Well, we might not be able to make it tonight.” “We’d really like to move out tonight.” “Ok, call back in two hours.”
I almost felt like we were in Mexico - ‘W-Shady Movers…’

Kris and I were now at a loss of what to do. We were getting hungry, so we headed out for some food. When we got back, we called again. “We’re not going to be able to make it tonight. We’ll be there tomorrow morning.” Argh, so what do we do now? Should I just go back to MA, and have Kris stay there? Should we go back together? Should we both stay? In the end, Kris left an “I’m not happy with your service” message, we brought everything down to my car, and left together, but in our separate cars.

We slept in a little, since we knew the movers were coming on Sunday at 9 AM, and Andrew and Sabrina weren’t coming to move their stuff out until the afternoon. We managed to move most of our stuff out of their way before they arrived with Sabrina’s brother, Ken. Apparently they got screwed by U-Haul despite their reservation, left without a storage area, and had to get a truck from Budget instead. At least it worked out and they were still able to move. Sean and Kelly showed up to give them an extra hand, while Kris and I moved in everything from my car, and up from his little storage area in the basement. We also vacuumed as much as we could, and brought out a bunch of trash.

Later on in the evening, we rushed like crazy to get the rest of “177″ packed. I didn’t realize just how much Kris still needed to pack (in our little list he was only on box 028, while I’d packed up to 565 or so) until that night. I tried to help where I could, but I wanted to do one room and Kris was insistent on doing another. In the end it worked out.

We also got a call during the afternoon from the moving company, which both reassured us, and made us question things at the same time. They said instead they would be there at 2 PM, because they had a stop to make in Melrose first. Is there actually a Melrose, MA? Oh well, whatever, they called, this is great.

Thank goodness they were coming later. We stayed up until 3 AM packing. I was so tired I passed out once my head hit the pillow. Had they been coming at 9 AM, we definitely would have been up all night until they got there.

Of course this is post-dated.

Day 1 of exhausting moving weekend…

This was the last weekend we had. Kris came down on Friday while I was at work, and got the air conditioning going. Somehow he managed to get my one little ac to cool off my entire apartment (save for the bathroom, and of course my apartment IS small). I had managed to pack a lot of stuff during the week, basically because I knew I had to, but I didn’t get as much done as I should have - it was gruesomely hot the entire week.

We decided to drive up late Friday night after “Stargate Friday” on the SciFi channel, both because it was NASCAR weekend and because we knew we had a lot of packing and cleaning to do at his apartment. So, with Kris’s help I managed to pack everything else I needed to into boxes and then into the car. (Looking at that pic makes me think about how much easier this whole moving thing would be if this kind of technology actually existed in real life, if it was also transportable. It’d take like half an hour to move!)

I felt really bad because every time I thought I was done filling new boxes, I found another one Kris needed to put in the car, or filled an additional box. “Just this one and that one,” I said about five times. I don�t know how he did it, but my car was packed to the gills. (I really thought we were going to have to take both cars.) It was so full you couldn’t see out the back window. I had a box between my legs, one on my lap, and one on the section between the two front seats. Kris was driving with the seat so far forward the steering wheel was in his crotch.

We were pleased we didn’t hit any traffic on the way up, and when we got there we were so exhausted we only brought in what we could carry - my overnight bag and two boxes.

I met Ian at his place for a second night out practicing my driving skills. He needed gas, so I directed him to a place on my commute not too far away with “cheap” gas (because these days $1.84 is cheap). I figured we should go the rest of the way to work, since we were so close already, and at the end of my commute there’s a fun road.

When we got to the driveway, we switched seats, and had an extended conversation about downshifting. Kris wants me to learn the double-clutch heel-toe downshift, which is rather complicated and will definately take a LOT of practice. Ian and I decided for the time being it would just be easier to learn the fundamentals of driving in traffic while mastering upshifting first.

During our conversation a security guard from work pulls up alongside the CRX. “How are you doing?” he askes in that “what the heck are you doing here” tone. “Good,” I replied. “I work here, and I’m just driving home.” No other questions, “Have a good evening.” He didn’t ask to see my ID, and truly, if anyone wanted to break into the Center, it would be rather easy. The security gate is one of those swingbar things that the CRX probably could have driven right under.

Anyway - I drove back. I drove in traffic, I upshifted, downshifted, started on a hill, you name it. I didn’t stall it…until I was pulling into a parking space back at Ian’s apartment complex. Felt pretty stupid, but I figure I still have a lot of mistakes to make. It’s so hard to relearn things like driving, but I’m definitely gaining confidence. I can’t wait to surprise Kris and take him out in one of his cars with total confidence.

Comments on the pic above: Again, the Blista Compact, but from the back, which I feel is the more recognizable side…note how the car tag says “CPX,” and not “CRX” - pretty tricky there guys! I also love the NY license plate, and the skid marks on the pavement.

I just got back from my first lesson of driving a standard transmission. Well, ok, it wasn’t my very first time out. Ray took me out in the Camaro last summer, and Kris has made me drive both the WRX and ze Neon a couple times each. But it was my first lesson with my friend Ian.

I couldn’t be happier with how the evening went. I’m by no means an expert, even with the “several” times I’ve been out “driving.” Both previous teachers had gone through the basics (Ray made me do everything from stalling the car to simple parking lot maneuvers; Kris has brought me through to “advanced” techniques - hill starts, trying to teach me how to properly downshift) but they also had pretty tough cars for a beginner to really practice on.

I knew Ian’s car would be easier to drive - he’d told me this when we were all on the lake ice racing last winter - since it’s not AWD, or a turbo, or rally-prepped. It’s a CRX (see the GTA Vice City pic above of the Blista Compact), the only bad part being the bright giallo colour, which could possibly make the embarrassed beginner (ie ME) stand out even more in traffic. He’s also a good teacher, for me, because unlike Kris and Ray, he’s only been driving standard himself for about a year now. This means tips like “Clutch out with your whole leg at your knee, not your ankle” are things Ian still remembers to point out, vs. the whole process already ingrained in both Kris and Ray.

I think Ian was pretty impressed when we started out in the bank parking lot. I didn’t stall the car immediately right then and there (I told you I wasn’t a total n00b), and decided to let me drive down the street, which ended on Rt. 85 right at a horrible intersection. It’s one where everyone takes a “Massachusetts left” into the middle of the road during rush hour, and no one on 85 wants to left them in. Being on the flipside now myself, I was terrified that someone was going to run me off the road, especially since I was driving someone else’s car.

Well, I made it across 85 to the Mickey D’s, and decided to show Ian how close I was to home. I stalled the car coming out of the parking lot, but somehow made it through the rotary without having to stop. When we got to my apartment I pretty much decided I’d had enough for my first night out, and since I still have a bajillion things to pack, we said good night. I can’t thank Ian enough for being nice enough to take me out and help me learn to drive.

On Friday I got home from work - “There’s a van in my parking lot!” It seemed like Kris’s hard work on the van had paid off, since he had made it down to my apartment. After a quick lunch we got to work loading stuff into the van. I had a hard time lugging the larger pieces out with Kris, but we did it. We got the van loaded with all my big furniture and a bunch of boxes - with only a few small bruises.

On Saturday we packed up my car with some smaller pieces and more boxes I had pushed myself to get packed the night before. Both vehicles were packed pretty full. We left early, making good time up 495. Out of nowhere, traffic was completely stopped. I lost Kris (and the van) behind a handful of trucks that passed me, and unfortunately couldn’t get the damn radio to tell me what was causing all the traffic. We had just passed Rt. 3 and the traffic seemed to be letting up when it all stopped again. Kris decided to turn around. Instead, we pulled off the highway and drove to a gas station.

“You’re leaking something,” a woman had informed Kris as he headed for the exit. When we got to the gas station Kris figured out the van had yet another problem - it was leaking gasoline… on the exhaust. About a minute passes before Kris just says to me, “Get out your AAA card.” And so enters the back-up plan.

AAA came to the rescue, obviously delaying our trip a little, but the important part was that we’d moved all my furniture and big boxes to Kris’s apartment. We realized we should have just pushed the van down the street, called AAA, and had them tow it the whole way.

It was exhausting, moving all my stuff up from the van. But I’m happy. Everything is coming together. The movers will be coming next weekend, and I won’t have to move any of that heavy stuff. I know I wouldn’t be able to carry the bed down the stairs anyway. Now Kris’s apartment is totally full. It looks really weird with my futon behind the couch. There wasn’t a lot of room to sit and watch Rally Argentina Sunday night, but at least we were still able to.

Now I have to finish packing all my stuff from my apartment into boxes. It shouldn’t be too hard - I’ve got all week to finish.
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We spent most of Sunday sleeping to recover from the day of running around at Six Flags. Later on I finished packing several boxes, since I’m feeling the pressure of our upcoming move. We took down the ceiling covering I’ve had hanging since I moved in last year. Amazingly, my bedroom now looks huge. I hope I remember this lesson I’ve learned, and something they always say on “Trading Spaces” - don’t make the ceiling dark, because it makes the room seem smaller, closed in.

I am really worried that I won’t have enough time to pack. I know I keep telling people that, but honestly, I am. I’m busy, between yoga, kickboxing, and belly dancing. I am at work all day long, and obviously I can’t pack things in my apartment while I am there. I get home and I’m exhausted, with barely enough energy to make dinner for myself. Despite all of this, I do think I’ve made significant progress. In the last two months, I’ve still maintained all my normal activities, with Kris all weekend, and managed to pack 30 or so boxes. I’ve cleaned out several cabinets and drawers, half my closets, and I’m in the middle of packing about four or five boxes right now.

It’s coming down to the wire now - less than two weeks to get everything completely packed. Kris wants me to be done by the end of this week, so we can move the rest of my packed items when we move my furniture in the van next weekend. Of course, this means Kris had to get the van working. I think he’s got that going pretty good so far, but he’s not done with that yet either. I just know I’ve got to stop worrying about it, make some decisions, and get it the heck done.