A Moving Story...

Well, we're in our new house. And most of our stuff is here too. More on that later. First, I'm going to bitch about the cabee company.

Just over a month ago when it became apparent that we were definately getting this house and we had a firm move date, I began calling the utility companies to schedule having our services activated. I called the Fort Worth Water Department, SBC, TXU and others. The last that I called was Charter Communications to get our cable hook-up scheduled. Now, when I called these other companies they all told me that there was still an active customer living at the address I was scheduling to move to. But after I explained that they were moving out and I was moving in, they had no problem scheduling the switch. The cable company was a different story. They claimed that they couldn't even schedule my connection until the person moving out had scheduled his dosconnection otherwise the system would disconnect him immediately. That's right. They're computer would see that someone else was scheduled to get new service at that address a month down the road and therefore disconnect the service that's still there because it hasn't been scheduled to be disconnected. The only thing they could reccomend was that I keep calling back to see when the other guy scheduled his disconnect (I had no direct contact with the seller). He finally scheduled to have it turned off the week we were closing on the house. So I scheduled to have it turned back on the next week. Now understand this... I didn't tell them I wanted it immediately or that they had to cram it into the middle of an installer's schedule for the next day. I gave them a whole week before it needed to be done. We scheduled it for the next Tuesday.

They could only tell me that the installer would be there "sometime Tuesday." But that was no big deal either since I'd already planned on being at the new house all that day anyway to work on the house getting it ready for our move. However, 8pm rolled around and no cable guy. So I called them and they said that the installer was stalled on another job and wouldn't be able to get out there that night. So we rescheduled for Friday morning. Friday afternoon rolls around and still no installer. So I call them back. This time they have absolutely no record that the installation had been resceduled from Tuesday to Friday. They could see in the records that the installation time had been missed but no indication that it had been rescheduled.

By this time I was hot! Terri was supposed to start back to work on Monday and was supposed to use the cable connection to access her work until they got her iDSL set up. So they promised me the sun and moon and an instalation on Saturday. Guess what? That's right! No installer showed up on Saturday either! After AGAIN explaining that my wife needed this connection for her work the only thing they could offer was to reschedule for Monday. So when he asked if morning or afternoon would be better. I told them to go ahead and schedule it for the morning. That way when they're not there by noon I can go ahead and call in and bitch at them again. Now guess what? I've just called in to confirm the appointment this morning and they say that it's not even scheduled for this morning!

Work Work Work Work Water?

Did quite a bit of work preparing the new house today. Most of it seemed to involve pulling a steam cleaner around the house. Oops! Sorry, it's not a steam cleaner, it's a "water extractor" as the guy at home depot made very clear to me. Whatever! As long as it gets the carpets clean.

My parents and my brother and his family also came out to see the new house. They were suitably impressed (or at least said they were). My brother did comment that all the way over he was saying to himself, "please don't let it be a shit hole." Thanks for the vote of confidence, Kevin!

Later tonight, we had to go back and put the trash bins out on the curb because I forgot that Monday is trash day at the new house. So we took the opportunity to take a van load of stuff over that we don't really want the movers to handle. On the way back, Terri had given Dee a sippy cup to drink out of with some water in it. The great thing about sippy cups is that they're pretty much spil-proof. About half-way back home I noticed some unusual noises coming from Dee and the sippy cup but since Terri was sitting in the back with her, I didn't really pay it much attention. Then Terri said to Dee, "do you want some more?" I thought this was very unusual as I don't recall EVER seeing her empty a sippy cup. But Terri confirmed that the lid was still on tight so she gave her some more water. Then she noticed what Dee had been doing. Apparently she'd decided that she needed to circumvent the "spill-proof" feature of the cup by sucking the water out then spitting it out down her front. She was soaked from neck to toe and there wasn't really anything we could do about it till we got home. Of course Terri took the water away from her and that made her mad. Then she started getting unconfortable becasuse she was wet and cold. Needless to say, it was quite a fun ride back across Fort Worth.

We are Home Owners

We closed on the house wednesday. Everything went very smoothly and we were done by 10:30am. The seller is supposed to be completely out of the house sometime today and we can go start getting it ready for move in tomorrow.

We've got about 80% of our house packed now so we shouldn't have any problem getting everything boxed and ready to go before the movers show up.

Tomorrow we Buy

Tomorrow we close on the new house. I'll be glad to get that over with. I've still got a lot of packing to do, but the movers won't be here until next week so I should have plenty of time.

Long Time No Blog

OK, so I haven't posted anything in a week. So what?

I'm still packing... and packing... and packing...

We close on the new house on Wednsesday. Woo Hoo!

I've got the back of the truck filled with a load of scrap lumber from the garage. Any time I'd do some kind of woodworking project I'd just toss the leftover wood into a pile between a temp wall and the garage door. I hadn't realized how much crap had accumulated in there! Anyway, I'll be running that to the city dump today so they can mulch it or whatever it is they do with lumber there.

Still packing

Got most of the garage cleaned up this weekend. Made two trips to the dump and two trips to Goodwill. I've still got way too much crap!

So that's pretty much what I do now. I pack. Then I pack some more. Then, just for a change or pace, I pack some more.

Moblog setup

I set up a Moblog on Buzznet. You can see the latest image on the left of this page (if it's working correctly). Or you can go directly to atheistcult.buzznet.com.

For those who don't know, a Moblog allows you to send pictures right from your camera phone into the blog for people to see and comment on.

Reading and Selling

Dee was reading one of her books to us last night. OK, maybe 'reading' is a bit of a stretch, but she was turning the pages, pointing at the pictures and vocalizing like mommy and daddy do when we read to her. OK, so she's done this before, but I thought it was cute and was having a 'daddy moment.'

Also put a bunch of stuff on ebay last night. Go HERE and bid on my stuff! (Jim, have a beer or two first!)

Dee stuff and Books

Dee understands a lot more language than I was giving her credit for. She likes giving mommy and daddy hugs and kisses. And she's got a stuffed dolphin that makes chittering noises when you squeeze it. She was playing with it yesterday and I was on the floor with her. I asked her if she could give the dolphin a hug and she immediately curled herself around it and gave it a good tight squeeze. It was so cute!

She's also really babbling up a storm too. You can really tell that she's trying to communicate with us, but doesn't have the vocabulary to be able to articulate her thoughts yet.

Also spent some time packing up part of the master bedroom. We've got a ton of books. We packed up about 20 boxes of books from the study and about another 12 from the bedroom. There are still books in the living room and I'm pretty sure there are books in the garage and attic as well. I'm wondering if I can apply for some kind of tax-exempt status as a branch of the Fort Worth Library.

T-minus 16 days till we close on the house.