Thursday, July 24, 2008

Reverse Entropy

In the week since my last post, we have almost completely succeeded in moving into the new house; we still have a few items like a lamp, a fan, cleaning supplies, and my wedding dress at the old apartment, and have a few more cleaning duties to fulfill over there before we can turn in our keys. The move was...a qualified success. We moved almost all of our boxes over on Saturday without any hitches, thanks to the help of our wonderful friends and family, but the furniture didn't fare quite as well on Tuesday. The professional crew we hired consisted of three twenty-one-year-olds apparently on summer job duty; the "crew chief" had only been on the job for three weeks, and it showed. We ended up with a broken computer desk that's probably unsalvageable, a La-Z-Boy recliner with half of the handle snapped off, a nightstand with a chunk taken out of the top, a glass-top dining room table with a two-inch-chip missing from the corner, numerous gouges and scrapes on various doorframes and walls, a cracked baluster at the top of our staircase, and broken trim and a hole in the screen on the back door. Unfortunately, we discovered most of it after we tipped them and they left; the moving company received a prompt call, but we're not expecting to get much from the insurance claim. They're a bit notorious about not paying out on damaged goods. Add this to the fact that their moving truck lacked several pieces of important equipment (like a furniture dolly) and we had to sit for a half hour while they jumpstarted the van, whose battery had died...yeah, we didn't end up with a terribly favorable opinion of the company overall. I'm hoping this is the last move we make in a long time, but if it isn't, then we might go back to the U-Haul method in the future. :-P

But despite all of that, we are home, and I'm happy about that. We're slowly unpacking--progress on that should improve greatly once we're done cleaning the apartment--and the house is beginning to take shape. The neighbors we've met have been very friendly so far, and we've already discovered some more interesting features in the house. Even though the last few days have been tough, things are looking positive in general.

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