September

As you can probably guess, it's been a very busy month and some days since my last post. The biggest event was, of course, The Move. In the end, everything worked out and we got all our stuff unpacked and have since settled in quite nicely to the new place. But the actual move? Oh my Lord, was that an epic tale of disaster upon disaster!

In the perfect world in my head, where everything happens as it should, the plan for the move was straightforward and rather simple for a moving plan:

1) Pick up the moving truck at 5:00pm on Monday, August 31st.
2) Drive it to my apartment, where Yuval will meet me with his parents' Honda Fit.
3) Together, we move all my stuff out of my apartment and give the empty space a good scrub down.
4) Drive both vehicles to his parents' house, where he has all of his stuff, and stay the night.
5) Wake up bright and early on September 1st and move his stuff and the remaining furniture into the truck.
6) Drive to our new apartment along with some members of his family who have consented to help.
7) Spend a few hours hauling things up the stairs and the elevator and deposit them without regard to furniture arrangement for the moment.
8) Have one of us return the truck while the other stays at the apartment for the cable guy who is supposed to come between 2pm and 5pm.
9) Reunite at the apartment, shower, and sit for a bit.
10) Go out to a big celebratory dinner and be happy it's all over.

Of course, this being the single busiest move-in time of the year in Boston combined with the fact that I am a McGinley (a people consistently plagued by situations that cause us to throw our hands in the air and shout "Why me, Lord?!"), nothing went according to plan. Let's examine how things actually turned out, shall we?

1) I arrive at the truck pick-up center at 5:10pm only to find it closed and no truck in sight. Hysterical, I anguish over how in the hell we're going to find another truck on August 31st in Boston (answer: we aren't).
2) Make several whimpering phone calls to my mom (for support) and Budget Rental (for WTFing). Apparently, even though my confirmation said 5pm, Budget had it in their system for 4pm. And they have no way of getting a hold of the guy who owns this particular auto shop/Budget truck rental place. And the best they can do is call their "inventory guy" and see if there's another truck available anywhere within 50 miles of Boston. And this may take up to 6 hours. And he is really sorry.
3) Follow Mom's advice and call a cab to take me back to my apartment, since there is no public transportation anywhere near this suburban area. Call Yuval, crying, to apologize for screwing up and let him know I'm on my way in a taxi and we have no truck. He says he'll call Budget to see if we can change the reservation to just tomorrow, since we were technically renting it for 24 hours. I revel in this example of calm, cool, collected logic.
4) Meet back at my apartment in Newton. Yuval has successfully changed our reservation to the earliest possible time (8:30am) tomorrow, so if my landlady lets me stay just the night we can get my stuff out tomorrow morning. Except my landlady will not let me stay because the new tenant is moving in at 8:00am tomorrow and I HAVE to be out tonight. This leaves only one option: make multiple runs in the Fit to the Shavit house and back to cart all my stuff out of the apartment (including furniture).
5) We begin the arduous task of cramming an entire apartment into one car. I end up leaving a lot of stuff on the curb that I hadn't planned on leaving (TV, desk, one of my bookcases, etc.). The whole process takes about 5 hours, including a yummy but brief dinner with the Shavits and a vigorous cleaning of the apartment. Somehow we make it back to his parents' house in one piece and collapse into bed around 1:30am.
6) Wake up at 8:00am and arrive at the same Budget truck rental place as yesterday by 8:30am. It is immediately evident that there are NO moving trucks in the vicinity of this building. We talk to the owner/manager, and he says that his Budget inventory man was supposed to deliver all the trucks yesterday but didn't. We are the 3rd reservation that morning without a truck. He didn't have a truck for me yesterday anyway even if I had gotten there right at 5:00pm. He has no way of knowing when the trucks will arrive as his inventory man has not called him back. The best we can do is call Budget ourselves to complain, let them know we're waiting, and wait for the trucks along with the 2 other disappointed reservations.
7) This all being too much, we head to the nearest Dunkin' Donuts to get breakfast and figure out a plan. The trip there and back to the dealer takes about 20 minutes.
8) We decide to just postpone the move until we can get a truck. Yuval leaves his number with the manager who says he'll call as soon as the trucks arrive, which could be that day or 2 days from now. On our way out, he suggests we try the Enterprise up the road. It's a long shot, but they do have huge cargo vans that are good for moving. We decide to give it a shot.
9) The Enterprise has 2 cargo vans sitting in their lot. Careful not to get our hopes up, we ask if either of them is available. The salesman starts smiling and says he just got off the phone with a woman who canceled her cargo van reservation. It's ours for the day, mileage included, and comes out cheaper (even with full insurance) than the Budget truck would have been. We drive the van back to the Shavit house in victory and begin loading it up with the help of Yuval's sister Tamar.
10) It takes 2 trips, and we scratch the van making a tight turn around the corner of the building (good thing we got that insurance!), but we succeed. All of our belongings are now in the new apartment. Since none of us had had anything since that morning, we all three head to Anna's in Davis Square for burrito deliciousness and an early dinner (at 5:30pm). I'm so happy I pay for Tamar as well as Yuval and myself. We part ways, and Yuval and I work on asssembling furniture and making the apartment more navigable. He leaves to play hockey at 10:00pm, and I continue building Ikea furniture and putting things away until he returns around 1:00am. After setting up the bed and showering, we both collapse into sleep around 2:00am.

Victory at last!

And now our apartment is fully outfitted and decorated. We even had Yuval's family over for dinner on Sunday night, and we chowed on homemade pizza and were presented with a housewarming gift of an ice cream maker, a scooper, and 8 nice bowls to serve it in. If you're curious about what the place looks like, well, you should watch my little tour video:



I've also joined a fabulous gym for which I am paying way more than I ever thought I would for a gym. But I get a personal trainer and have a new regimen to follow, and following it I am. And now I'm preparing for a weekend in NYC with my mom, shopping and seeing shows.

All in all, life is going really well after the pitfalls and shortcomings of The Move.

Read
Fly on the Wall by E. Lockhart
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman
Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Seen
The Cove
Ponyo
The Last Unicorn
Shawshank Redemption