When we were finally ready to bring our stuff down, we called the moving company we'd used to move up to the Bay Area. It turns out that our little storage unit we chose is in such a location that the large moving trucks can't get down there. The plan was that they'd have to charge us a nice little chunk of change to put all our stuff in a small truck, drive it to a big truck, re-load it in the big truck, drive it down to Southern California, load it into a different small truck, and bring it to our apartment. That sentence tired me out just writing it! I called another moving company and he said they'd have to do the same thing. It's called a shuttle service. So, a note to any of you considering relocation/storage/etc: Be very careful which storage unit you use, if you plan to use movers to get it somewhere else eventually.

So, we agreed to the above, and they gave us a span of three days in which they'd come pick up our stuff. The idea is the I was supposed to receive a call "closer to those dates" to know which of the three days will be the actual moving day. I was originally planning to fly up north to take care of this, so when they told me the week of Orientation was the soonest they could move it, we asked to push the date back. They said okay, and pushed it back two weeks. I found out that that was the week of my midterm, so I asked Misti if she might be able to help me out on any of those days. As it turns out, she could, which was a huge relief. She switched up her work schedule to free up one day and work in the evening the other two days. Awesome!

Well the moving company didn't call about which day they'd be coming - Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. I called the office girl on Monday to find out. "You should be hearing from the driver sometime this week." So I called her again on Tuesday. "I'm sure he has your number. He'll be calling you." I STILL hadn't heard anything, so I called her again Wednesday. "I imagine he'll be calling you or Misti or both of you sometime today."

Cut to Thursday morning at 8:45am. I finally do get a phone call, but not from the driver. From the storage unit office. "There are some movers here... Do they have the right unit?"

I called Misti, who jumped in her car to run down there, and called the storage unit place back to let them know how far away Misti lived. He told me that when he told the movers they'd have to wait for Misti, they said to him, "That's okay, I get paid by the hour anyway."

I was pretty annoyed at that, but tried to just let it go. Misti called me later to let me know it all went smoothly and that the guys were nice. So that was good.

Meanwhile, before they ever got there, there was also some confusion about the storage unit key that I'd overnighted to Misti. That resolved itself pretty quickly though, and Misti was able to retrieve it from the post office, thank god. Another thing was that Misti and I had confused each other with which days I needed and which days she had taken off. Thankfully, that worked out just fine, too.

Then there was some confusion about the payment. The guys told Misti to let us know to have cash ready. Well. Fine. Except... NOT. Because we'd had Office Girl fax us a form, filled out a bunch of credit card info and faxed it back to her. I called Office Girl and left a serious, "Business Meg" voice message on her voicemail. She called me back immediately and said, "No, we have your card info, do not pay them."

Joe relayed that to the movers yesterday and apparently the guy was all, "Wellll, I guess I'll trust you. But, heh, I know where you live."

Uhh, yeah. I'm not amused. I'm kind of pissed off, in fact. Why can't the office and movers communicate?!

This morning, a few minutes after we were expecting the movers to arrive, I got a phone call from the guy (on his cell phone that had atrocious reception) to let me know he was just now getting the little truck. For those playing at home, that means he still has to load it all inside the little truck, THEN drive over here. He's an hour and a half from us. So, we'll see him sometime later today, then? I hope?

I cannot... CANNOT... wait for this all to just be OVER already. I want our stuff in our living room, and our credit card charged an amount something close to the estimate. Then it will be over. And then I can sleep. In a BED.

[Air mattress, it's been a fun two months, but our time together has come to an end... No, no. Don't. Please. It's better this way. You can hang out in the closet until we need you again? That's something, right?]

It'll be good to see our stuff again, at least. That's for sure.