A moving tale

Well, I survived the move. Phwew. It didn't go exactly as planned...

So remember the slightly shady situation regarding our moving truck reservation? It got stranger. We called and called and called the place in Woodland that we were renting it from to make sure that it was there before we drove over to pick it up. Nobody answered. There wasn't even voice mail. It was very bizarre. On to plan B.

Plan B involved hauling all of our stuff to a friend's garage with countless trips in our own cars. Fortunately, Ben had traded his sedan for a friend's pickup, so we were able to move the big furniture too.

About half way into plan B, we received a message from a Uhaul in Sacramento asking us what the deal was and why we hadn't picked up the truck we'd reserved. Um, excuse me? They're asking us what the deal is? What about the fact that the truck was in a completely different city from the one we'd reserved it in and the fact that no one had ever informed us of its new location. We were pretty disgusted with Uhaul at that point, so Ben made sure that they wouldn't charge us for the reservation and we continued to make do with our little fleet of personal vehicles.

So far so good. All of our stuff was safe and sound in someone's garage. We'd cleaned our old apartment and everything looked good. But things were yet to deviate still more from the plan.

We were supposed to be able to move into our new place at 6 Friday evening. I wasn't really looking forward to this since I was still exhausted and sore from moving everything out on Thursday, but it was nice to have the prospect of a home to go to. Only, things didn't really work out that way. At least, not right away. The new complex's carpet cleaner had broken so they weren't able to finish cleaning the units on time. Ours didn't get cleaned until 6, which is the exact time we were supposed to be able to start moving in to it. But we were not about to start bringing our stuff onto the soaking wet carpets.

We snuck in to our apartment-to-be anyway, just to check it out. Oh man, the carpets were TERRIBLE. They were so badly stained. There were dark stains everywhere, but my personal favorite was the huge red spot in the middle of the living room.

Fortunately Ben is not as passive as I am, and complained. It really was unreasonable for them to present the apartment to us in that condition. It's a pretty expensive complex by Davis standards, and the only reason they're able to charge the rates that they do is that it's a relatively new complex and it has the reputation of being the best place to live in Davis. There are other places in Davis with larger rooms and better amenities (like your own washer and dryer) with equal or even lower rent. We were absolutely not going to pay a premium for nasty carpets. The management seemed to understand this, and were actually very accomodating. They replaced the carpets and had the unit cleaned Saturday morning, and put us up in a hotel Friday night. They also gave us each $50 grocery store gift cards to thank us for being so "easy to deal with". Wow, you can get a lot when you stand up for yourself!

Yesterday afternoon we were finally able to move all our stuff in. We were able to increase our fleet to 2 pickups and one Prius. You won't believe how much stuff I can fit in that Prius. They have the reputation of not having much cargo space, but I sure proved that wrong yesterday. Mathematicians would learn a thing or two about close-packing from how much stuff I loaded into Steggie!

I'm glad it worked out. I'm actually glad for the carpet fiasco. I would not have been able to move much Friday evening. I was just too exhausted. Being able to get a good night's sleep and do all the moving during the daytime was much much better. It was also a lot calmer on Saturday. The apartment office and parking lot were a zoo Friday evening. The underlying problem is that EVERYONE in Davis moves on September 1. For whatever reason, students don't tend to stay in one place for more than a year, so there's an incredible turnover in the apartments. This necessitates that large numbers of units need to be cleaned and prepared for new residents in a very short time, ensuring that none of them are really going to be up to snuff and guaranteeing that if something goes wrong, like a broken-down carpet cleaner, a disaster ensues.

But now I'm all moved in, and mostly done with unpacking my room. The cats seem to be adjusting fine to the new apartment too. Everything's hunky-dory. Now if only I weren't covered in bruises...