Pardon the BASEketball quote, but that really sums up my last 5 days. Awhile back, I was told I needed to find a place of my own. My roommate decided he wanted to live on his own which neatly coincided with my own wishes to live roommate-free. On Craigslist, I found a great place in Norfolk overlooking downtown. Rent was low and included everything but phone, TV and internet. So that’s the good part of the story. Aside from a few beams of fortune, it’s all downhill from here.
I moved into my new place on June 8. A few weeks before, I called up Cavalier Telephone to set up DSL and phone services to the place. This went very smoothly. 10 days later, I found out it had gone smoothly because the rep I spoke to didn’t get anything but my name and address correct. My modem was sent to the wrong address (returned by FedEx), and Verizon scheduled to start my service about 2 weeks early.
Back at my old place, as I was getting the last stuff moved out, I was trying to email and call my roommate to discuss plans to clean the place in hopes of getting my deposit back (money I intend to put towards furniture). I could not get a response, so I wrote off the $600 deposit.
A week before the actual moving day, I find out that my dad forgot he had a wedding to attend in Raleigh and was leaving town on the 8th. 1 helper down. Then I found out Janel’s roommate was going to be in NoVA that weekend to work out his plans to move up there in July. 2 helpers down. Finally, I found out that another friend was out of town all week leading up to the move. He was supposed to return Friday and said he would try his best to come by and help. Ultimately, he had to stay over until Sunday. 3 helpers down. Lastly, I forgot to give another friend a heads-up earlier in the week, so he had to work, but said he would come over if he got out early enough. 4 helpers down. This left another friend of mine and his brother. This would have been fine as Janel’s roommate did manage to grab a hand truck from work, and I had a dolly from work. This would have made the move go pretty quickly. Unfortunately, I found out the day before the move that one of the brothers thought the move was in the morning and could only help for an hour or so. Still, not that big a deal. I don’t have much furniture and the only piece I have a hard time moving is my mattress. Where’s Janel in all of this? She has to work all weekend for what I think must be one of the creepiest kid’s shows around – live-action My Little Pony.
So moving day arrives. I can’t really afford to lose any more helpers. Fortunately, Dad was able to help me load the truck. Oh, about the truck. It’s a good thing I bought the insurance because on the way to Janel’s (where I stored my stuff for the 2 weeks between moving out of my old place an into the new on) I smacked the passenger side mirror against something on the side of the road near the Norfolk Zoo. Loud bang, glass everywhere, blah, blah, blah. Good start to the day.
Dad and I loaded the truck in a little over an hour. After that, I waited around until 2pm. My new place has an odd policy regulating use of the freight elevator. It’s only available in 4-hour blocks between 10 am and 6 pm from Monday-Friday. It’s available on Saturday for deliveries. Well, I thought it would be easier for the people helping me (who were no longer helping me) to take off early so I was slotted for 2pm-6pm. While I was waiting for 2pm to roll around, I took a load over in my car. After that, I watched the ships roll in for Harborfest and snapped some pictures that I’ll post later.
At about 1pm, I went over to get the U-haul from Janel’s and head over to my new place. On the way there, I got a call from the front desk asking if I was planning on actually using the freight elevator I had booked. They said someone else needed to use it quickly. Since I wouldn’t be there for another 15 minutes or so, I gave them the go-ahead. Upon arriving, I learned the other person was moving out of his place, and it would not be “real quick”. According to him, the elevator had been double booked. Not good since I had someone coming by to help me with the heaviest furniture and I only had this guy for an hour or so. Fortunately, I was able to take over the freight elevator to get my bed moved up. The guy moving out even helped!
Once the bed was moved, my friend stayed a little longer and we got all the furniture moved in. Things were looking up, and I was seeing a light at the end of this tunnel. Once his brother showed up, we would get this knocked out quickly. Once his brother showed up, that is. Problem is, he never did. His brother had to spend the day at a dealership getting his car fixed. I know from experience that this, too, sucks and felt bad for him. Not that bad because while dealerships are very boring, they’re not as bad as moving a truckload of stuff in 100+ heat index. Anyway, he couldn’t make it, but he did wind up getting $8K knocked off a brand new Altima, so good for him!
All of this left me moving all my ’stuff’ in on my own. In the heat. In two hours. Which I did fairly uneventfully. About the only bad thing was a bruise on my ankle from trying to open the door to the building. I drank lots of water and sweat most of it right back out. I learned that indoor soccer shoes are terrible for moving. This was confirmed by the burning and aching in the balls of my feet every step I took towards the end of the day. One more little aggravation while I was moving boxes came in the form of a page from work. I forgot to mention I was on call during the move.
Upon finishing, I sat down on the only chair I had (below) and rested. It was then that I realized I didn’t have a ride back to Janel’s place to get my car after dropping off the truck. Naturally, this being a Friday and Harborfest weekend no less, nobody was available. Janel would be getting off work at 7, and the truck had to be returned by 6. Fortunately, the U-Haul place is about a quarter-mile from my new place. So, I went to drop off the truck. First, I had to put gas in it.
When I rented the truck, the guy said it had a full tank, and i need to refill it before returning it. No problem as I was only planning on putting about 15-20 miles on the thing. When all was done, I put 13 miles on the truck. Filling it up should have been a breeze. The first two stations I tried were either out of regular unleaded or out of gas entirely. When I got to the third one, it wouldn’t take my credit card at the pump. You see, large annoyances are nothing compared to little stuff like this. After dropping off the card and starting the pump, I leaned against the truck and closed my eyes, waiting for the pump to click off. Only, it didn’t click off. I put 12 gallons in the thing before I stopped it. Either the truck gets just over 1 mile/gallon or it wasn’t full like the guy said. Upon returning it, I would once again be screwed by U-Haul. They don’t reimburse for fuel despite the fact that they lied to me that morning. Anyway, not exactly the ‘pants-on’ manner of getting screwed, but I felt screwed nonetheless. I paid an extra $35 for having driven 13 miles.
Walking back to my place, burning feet and all, I was still trying to figure out how to get back to Janel’s. When I got to my front door, I realized I had left my keys in the truck. Oh joy, another quarter-mile walk! Half way to the U-Suck place, I decided to call a cab to take me back to Janel’s. So, I got my keys, a bottle of Propel and a bag of Fritos and waited for the cab. I got back to Janel’s and rested on her roommate’s massage chair. When she got home, I was on my back on the floor watching Scrubs.
Saturday morning, I hooked up my new modem to test my internet connection. Nothing. No surprise. Why would it work as expected? Not much else had, why would this be any different? I called Cavalier who told me there was something wrong with my line and that Verizon would be out Monday to fix it before 7pm. Wow! Sometime before 7pm. I thought the cable and satellite companies were bad with their 4-hour service windows. “Sometime before 7pm” certainly takes the cake. Anyway, 7pm came and went on Monday with no change in service, and no surprise on my part.
The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful. I had taken Friday through Monday off to move in. Monday morning, I had to go to court to take care of a ticket. Back in April, I flew up to New York for a job interview that didn’t work out. The night before leaving, I was pulled over for driving with expired tags. Easy to fix right? Renew the registration, show the judge and it’s dismissed, right? Well, it probably wouldn’t have been dismissed in my case because the Man hates me, but that’s another story. This one’s long enough. Anyway, Sunday night I go down to my car to check the ticket for the time I was supposed to be in court. It said, “June 4 at 8:30 am”. Yeah, June 4. Not 11, like I had thought for the past month and a half, but 4. Something that should have been so easy to fix was now not fixable. Good for me. $130-something-or-other-I-don’t-care-anymore later and I have new points for stupidity on my license!
I was happy to go to bed Monday night and put the past 4 days behind me. My plan was to wake up and move forward. Move past the absolute shit weekend I had just put up with. I got to bed early, slept great and didn’t even once touch the snooze button when the alarm woke me to Cake’s “Carbon Monoxide“. I was actually feeling good about the day when I saw this:
Seriously, was this necessary? After the weekend I had, did I really need this? For what is Karma so intent on repeatedly bitch-slapping me?
To the S.O.B. who busted out my window:
I hope this was worth the $29 iPod FM Transmitter/charger you took. You should know it’s the only thing of any value. I’m sure you’ll notice the leather-ish book you stole from my glove box only has my maintenance schedule, owner’s (that would be me) and radio manuals for my 1997 VW Jetta. Good luck with those. I have to say I’m not terribly happy you also got my registration considering my recent issues with the City of Virginia Beach that I outlined above. Either way, I needed to change my address anyway.
While I am not vindictive enough to wish a slow painful death on you, I do hope someone breaks into your house to rob you. I hope you frighten them when you catch them in the act. I hope they have a crowbar or tire iron, much like the one you probably stole to use on my window, and I hope they use it to put you in a hospital for a long time before making off with your undoubtedly stolen iPod. I’m sure I and my law-abiding brethren are already paying for your life in unnecessary welfare checks, so the added emergency room charges won’t hit us that hard.
You can probably guess that, as a thief, you are scum in my eyes. No better than a murderer or rapist. You are a parasite on the teet of society, and I hope one day you realize with soul-crushing clarity that you are worth less than dirt to those around you, and I hope this realization comes when it’s too late to do anything about it. I hope you realize you have wasted your life in the pursuit of cheap exhilarations like the $29 haul you just took from me. I hope it was worth it.
-Me, the guy you violated some time between 9pm last night and 5:30am this morning.
The iPhone arrived! It’s either a sign of the apocalypse or the second coming, take your pick. I don’t know why but I’m just not all up in a bunch over the thing. As far as I can tell, there are four things it can do that my really old Treo can’t: visual voicemail, multi-touch display, auto sensing vertical/widescreen screen orientation and YouTube. The visual voicemail is about the only really useful thing in that list, and it’s very cool. The multi-touch display is nice, but it’s only useful when you’re working with an interface designed around it. My Treo doesn’t really need it. The widescreen display is beautiful and makes the iPhone a nice media player. My Treo has a square screen – no real need for the auto sensing stuff. YouTube, while nice, isn’t exactly a deal breaker since I can put YouTube videos on my iPod as well as my Treo. The iPhone lets you browse the site, which is nice, but that’s not where the real power lies. You can upload your own videos to YouTube and show them to people on your iPhone – which is extremely handy. While that’s handy, I can put personal videos on my Treo via my expansion cards (which the iPhone doesn’t support).
