A new blog...

I've been sporadically posting blog entries on MySpace, but since I am about to embark on a huge life change, I thought it would be appropriate to start a "real" blog. Plus Stella started a "real" blog and I aspire to be as cool as she is with the written word. This, of course, will never happen, but I hope to have fun trying. Her blog is open only to friends (since she is a teacher and thus a public figure of sorts), but i am sure she would welcome you among her readers if you asked her nicely.

Much of this process of moving has been fraught with stress, but yesterday was particularly intense. It started as a great day - Stella & I took her son Jeffrey to the Tigers game (where, unfortunately, they beat my hometown Cleveland Indians). Though we saw only a light drizzle just after the game, apparently a big storm blew through Ann Arbor - enough to break off a huge part of a tree in Stella's back yard. It took down an electrical line into her neighbor's house and the phone line into hers. All this while it's on the market. Great timing.

But to add to the stress of that, we also learned that the moving company we hired for our move to Berkeley is somewhat less than reputable, and we had already given them over $800 in deposits. We happened to look them up online and found various forums about moving with complaint after complaint about the company. Everyone reporting about them had been charged significantly more than originally told and were threatened to have their belongings held unless they paid. When finally delivered (often up to a month late), things were broken, missing or severely water damaged. Their moving license was revoked in their home state of Illinois so they could only do long distance moves, there was a class action lawsuit against them, and hundreds of complaints with the Better Business Bureau. At this point we knew we had to pursue other options, but booking a moving company this late in the game can be impossible. Fortunately, it appears that we got the deposit back, although I'll believe it when i actually see the refund posted.

So now our options are:

1) rent a truck ourselves and drive it there.
2) hire a reputable moving company and hope they can squeeze us in last minute

I'm not crazy about driving a 26 foot truck to California with us and two cats in the cabin.
Fortunately we found a well reviewed Ann Arbor company that can do it. It will likely cost between $6000-$8000, depending on the actual weight of our combined crap, but it's likely much better in the long run than what the original movers (Best Price Moving & Storage) would have put us through. They are coming monday to estimate the cost for our stuff, and hopefully then we can set a moving date fairly close to our original one. We're thinking sometime around July 22.

In other news, I once again have a signed sales contract on my house. The first one fell through after the inspection. I believe it inspected fine for a house of this age and price range, but those first-time buyers with no buying agent were spooked enough to back out. I'm hoping things go better this time. Still not sure when the inspection is, but I hope it's soon. Should this fall through, Shannon & Nikki are waiting in the wings to rent my house.

Tomorrow will be a day of boxing up as much stuff as I can - mostly books, cds & clothes for now.