Moving Day

This weekend I finally started getting some relief from my neck pain. The steroid pack finally kicked in. Unfortunately, just as I was beginning to tolerate the pain from my herniated disc, it was time for me to move (again). Ugh. My fifth move in 13 months. I gotta stop doing this.

I started at 10:30am, five good-looking mover guys showed up two hours early at 11am, and we were finished up at 6:30pm. The Gerswhin is pretty strict about move-ins. You have to schedule it with them for a certain time of day, and you can't use the front door for anything bigger than you can carry in your arms. So we had to talk them into letting us in early. Since Microsoft wouldn't coordinate or pay to move my stuff from corporate housing, the movers made an extra "stop" to get my 17 boxes from temp housing. We piled it all up on dollies and walked it across the street in one trip. I tipped them each $20 up front for the extra move.

After 8 hours of hard work, with a crew of five awesome United Vanlines guys, 99% of all my stuff is finally where it belongs. Me, I'm back at the Longacre tonight (corporate housing) because I'm too tired to even make up the bed in the new place. I need to rest. Martin and I will be much more comfortable sleeping in the Longacre tonight.

So now most of my possessions are piled up in a 770-sf apartment. Yay! It doesn't quite feel like a relief yet because I still have a ton of unpacking to do. I am shocked that I only have 20 pieces of furniture. I used to have a lot more! And it all barely fits in the apartment.

There is virtually no bedroom floor space. The king bed and three dressers take up most of the room. Arthur (the handsome New Yorker mover guy who also helped me move into the Longacre in November) had to turn the night stand sideways just to make it fit!

It was an extremely cold day. The sun was out, but the temperature never hit the 30-degree mark. Tommy (the cute upbeat driver) had to park his 28-ft truck in a bus zone on 8th Ave. because there was a pink moving truck parked in the perfect spot across from the back entrance on 49th St. We were hoping they'd leave so we could take that spot. Tommy told me he'd probably get a $120 ticket parked there on the main artery. Sure enough, while I was upstairs letting the other guys in, a cop came by and threatened to write a ticket. Tommy was able to talk him out of it. Whew!

Last week, four of them got $90 tickets for not wearing seatbelts in the truck. Sheesh. Cops here are famous for pulling trucks over for various citations. I learned a lot about NY police and DOT today. They are pretty strict and will cite you for just about anything--including dirty winodws/mirrors, jay-walking, etc. Those guys have a quota to meet.

I stayed on the truck the rest of the time with Tommy, helping him sort stuff for storage and working the checklist. It wasn't long before Vinny (the sweet teddy-bear mover guy) told us a cop was writing us a ticket. Tommy laughed as if it was inevitable. (He does 80% of his moves in the city, so he must be used to the tickets. Geez--how are people supposed to move in Manhattan? There's nowhere to park!)

I said, "Noooooooo! Lets' just tell him we were waiting for the pink truck to move!" I jumped off the truck, and Vinny and I went over to talk to the cop. (Tommy told us to give it up because the guy had already started writing.) I wasn't giving up! I was practically begging this cop not to finish writing the ticket. I was like, "Oh, PLEASE don't write him a ticket, he's moving me, so this is all my fault..." and, "Please? This comes out of his own pocket. Please, it's just so unfair."

By now Tommy had joined us. This cop was pretty cool--and he appeared to be quite amused at our antics. He grinned so much that I thought for sure he'd cave. I went on, "Wow--how much is it? Can you discount it, at least?" Nothing doing. I watched as he checked off the $115 box for parking in a bus zone. Tommy told him good naturedly to be sure to put the ticket on the windshield in plain view so we wouldn't get another.

The good thing was we could stay parked there now that we had a ticket! I had to go upstairs and check furniture placement to see if my third swivel chair would fit. I wasn't gone 15 minutes. When I came back, a different cop had written Tommy another ticket! This cop said that the first ticket was no good because the cop who'd written it didn't put an address on it. Unbeknownst to us, the smiley cop had actually let us off the hook by invalidating the ticket. Very cool. But Tommy ended up with a ticket anyway. Drat. I hope it doesn't come out of his pocket. I said, "Bill Gates should pay!" :)

After unloading everything, we left around 3:30 to head to storage in Queens. I road with Art and Tommy in the truck. I had a nice map w/directions that I'd made using Microsoft Streets and Trips, showing the trip to be 3.6 miles. (One of the drivers had remarked earlier, "Three miles--and it'll take us three hours to get there.") I don't need to explain why. Traffic in NY is like nothing you've ever seen before. It's total chaos. Seattle traffic was bad, but it hardly compares to NYC.

We were about halfway there, on the 59th Street bridge when I noticed on the map that the software program indicated the trip would take 7 minutes. Seven minutes! That's pretty funny. I showed that to the guys, and Art remarked, "Yeah somebody in Redmond wrote that." Too funny.

It took us about 35-40 minutes to get there. We looked at a 5x8x10' storage unit and were all in agreement that "Sure, we can get everything in there." At $115/month for this unit, I was hoping not to go up to the next size. The rest of the guys unloaded the truck while Art packed stuff into the tiny room and I checked items off the list. (Dang, I never did get the fifth guy's name. He was very friendly, too!)

This took a while and some creativity, but Art is a pro. It came down to a final five items. They kept rearranging stuff to make it fit. If it wasn't for the little rocking chair, we would've made it no problem. After several attempts to get a standing fan and small table base in, Tommy finally sent those items back to the truck with Kenny (the very pleasant blue-eyed mover guy), instructing him to take them apart and bring 'em back. I told him we could just throw the fan away, but he was determined to make everyhing fit. That left us with a queen-sized comforter that we would have to somehow squeeze in. They decided to just flatten it against the front of the pile and close the door on it.

Vinny applied his whole 6'3" frame and 300 pounds to squeeze the air out of the comforter bag. It was hysterical. For about 15 minutes he stood there with his back plastered up against the comforter bag (see photo above) while Kenny performed "surgery" on the two items. Talk about dedication to the job! Sure enough, everything fit without a single square foot to spare. I was impressed. I snapped a lock on the door, and we were done! I tipped them each another $40. Believe me, the $300 tip was worth it. They earned every penny. And yet somehow it just didn't seem like enough.

I guess I won't be going to storage to retrieve one of my fancy dresses to wear out. So much for arranging the bins and boxes so that I could later get to stuff I might need--like Christmas decorations. Ha! That ain't gonna happen. I am not opening that storage room door again until I move from NY. Fine by me. It makes for a simpler life (and no extra trips to Queens - gad).

Once again, United movers did a great job moving me, and with fantastic attitudes. (I have a rule about using only United or Mayflower.) This was such a great bunch of guys to work with that they actually made the day "fun," despite the fact that it was freezing cold and they had to go out of their way (i.e., out of Manhattan in horrible traffic) to get my goods to storage. Not to mention, they made the extra trip to move my temp housing items. I never heard one single curse word out of any of them. (Hey, and this is New York!!) They worked really hard, were professional, and were considerate enough to stack all the boxes neatly in my new apartment, with labels on the outside.

To top that all off, they'd orginally told me I'd have to take a cab home from storage. Later, Tommy told me he'd drop me at 2nd and Lexington. I said, "No problem, I'll just take the subway." But when we left storage at 5:40pm, Tommy had decided he was going to take me all the way home. After a fun cross-town ride with Tommy and Art, talking about baseball, football, the city skyline, the DOT, Tommy's poor vision, and other stuff, they dropped me off at 50th and 8th. I came home and took a Percoset and a muscle relaxer.

Time to lie down and veg in front of the TV. My head hurts! I sure wish I had some cookies.... I already moved my snacks across the street!