What A Perfect Move-In Day Looks Like
This is a personal post about how smoothly our move-in went.
If you've been following my Oregon Trail Chronicles updates on Twitter or have read some of my posts about this move-in process, you'll know that getting the keys to our new house in the wonderful city of Portland has been less than smooth. It was apparently time for us to re-learn some patience, acceptance, and appreciation for what things are normally like for us.
We got the keys to the house on Thursday afternoon and were finally able to go into our house. We stayed at Loree's Thursday night and prepared for our move-in on Friday. We already had all the pieces locked on and were just ready to see it through.
It turns out that Friday was a perfect move-in day. So perfect, in fact, that I've got to tell you about how it went. Here goes:
5:00am - Charlie wakes up earlier than normal just because an awesome day is ahead of him. He does the morning ritual and starts reading.
5:27am - Angela finally decides that she's not going to be able to go back to sleep in the bed since Charlie woke her up at 5am. (Charlie forgot to get socks before he snuck out of the room and had to come back in - it was the second entrance that woke her up.) She curls up on the couch thinking she'd get some sleep there until...
5:45am - Angela gives up on the idea of getting back to sleep entirely and decides that she'll go get us some breakfast and good coffee. A long day awaits. (Keep in mind how everything has worked out for us thus far. She assumed there would be no change.)
6:15am - Angela and Charlie eat breakfast and have a last-minute huddle for how the day will go. Angela will go to the house and start cleaning and preparing to receive the appliances, trailer, movers, and telecommunications people. She'll pick Charlie up at 12ish, and he'll stay at Loree's and do biz ops. The furry demons will do their normal job of sleeping, eating, and passing the day away at Loree's house since it's a lot easier to move without cats under foot.
7am - Angela leaves for the house.
9:45am - ABF drops off our trailer with all of our stuff in it. (U-Pack is the way to go for moves like this. Just sayin'.)
10:15am - Our appliances arrive and the servicemen start installing our refrigerator, washer, and dryer. They leave 45 minutes later.
11:30am - Charlie begins packing up the biz infrastructure in Loree's office and prepares it to move to the house.
11:50am - Angela arrives at Loree's. We start packing biz infrastructure into vehicle.
12:05pm - We leave Loree's, grab some lunch from Subway, and head to the house. Bonus: We got free cookies from Subway since it was Free Cookie Friday - score!
12:45pm - We arrive at our house to find that our movers were there 15 minutes early. (We scheduled them for 1pm). We open the trailer, show them where all the rooms were, and they start going to town. We eat lunch.
1:15pm - One of our neighbors comes over to introduce herself. She's super nice and we talk for little bit; turns out she's done some world travel, was involved in the Peace Corps, and is a recycling and composting queen. When we explain what we do and who we are, she actually gets it. We are instantly smitten and she invites us to dinner with her partner Gene at 7pm.
2:45pm - The cable guy shows up. Charlie shows him where equipment will go, and the cable guy gets busy installing our cable, internet, and phone.
3:25pm - The movers remove the last item from the trailer. We happily pay them $110 - it was by far the best $110 we've spent in a long time. Angela calls ABF to tell them to come pick up the trailer.
4:30pm - We finish the second half of the subway sandwiches. Charlie learns that Angela hadn't planned on staying overnight at our home and pouts for a minute until he sees the wisdom in her plan.
5pm - The cable guy finishes up. He took it on himself to do some special rewiring to make sure that our Internet connection had a dedicated line so it could receive a better signal. He also voluntarily rewired Charlie's office phone jack to be a dual phone and fax hub.
6:10pm - ABF arrives and takes their trailer away. It's unusual for them to drop it and pick it up in 8 hours, but Angela did a great job of communicating and coordinating with them.
6:55pm - Charlie finished getting biz infrastructure in place. The Idea Forge isn't all the way set up - and it won't be for a while - but it's better than what Charlie's had since we left our old house.
7pm - We walk next door to eat with Meredith and Gene. Meredith prepared a fantastic meal, and as we talked, we learned that they are also avid outdoorspeople. Gene is a conservation carpenter and has done some work restoring expedition cabins in the Antartic, as well as done a lot of timber construction in Canada; like me, he's also involved in a number of entrepreneurial endeavors, and, by the way, is a gregarious chap, too. Meredith takes us on a tour of her home and Gene has built a lot of custom storage and solutions for it; we ask him if he's hirable, and yes, he is. We were already going to be looking for a carpenter/handyman, so this is a win-win for all of us. (This, folks, is why we moved to Portlands - it's all about the weirdos.)
9:30pm - Leave for Loree's to bed down so we can get up and finish prepping the house before we move the furry demons in.
Endstate: 80% of our stuff is in the right room, our full appliance suite is set up and working optimally, the business infrastructure is in place, and we met our first new neighborhood friends. We accomplished what normally takes about a week in one day. That's how we're used to things running for us, but what can I say? We're both strategists, logisticians, and doers. (And we were also blessed to have our right new neighbor come greet us.)
Our knack for doing this type of stuff is precisely why this move has been so frustrating to us - we couldn't do anything but wait for others to do their job correctly. And by others, I don't mean the wonderful Loree or our loan agent, Tim; they're both like us, so we've all been frustrated by the pre-move-in experience. Every time we were delayed a day or three, Angela had to reset the entire delivery/installation engine that we'd locked on and I had to adjust business plans for that amount of time. It's good to finally have our home so we can do what we do.
A couple of other things that made the day extra awesome was getting to talk and catch up with Cath and Pam in the morning - those two always add some beauty and joy to the day. And did I mention it was Free Cookie Friday at Subway?