We're Here (sort of)

Debbie came and picked me up on Thursday and we made it back to Sanford in one piece (always a doubtful proposition on Death Highway, otherwise known as I-4). I spent Friday tossing everything into bins and doing a deep clean, with a short break to take all the equipment back to Brighthouse and shutting off our account.

[Interesting aside: Even though we have Brighthouse in Zephyrhills, it isn't the same Brighthouse we had in Sanford, so we couldn't use their move-your-service service. We had to get service installed here, then shut off service in Sanford. Because of the whole living-in-two-places-at-once thing, it actually worked out to our advantage, but I thought it rather strange when I called Brighthouse and they couldn't find any trace of our account.]

Saturday, we picked up the truck at 9am, started hauling everything out around 10am, rolled out of Sanford with a full truck by 2pm, made the 2 1/2-hour drive to Zephyrhills and had the truck empty and ready to return by 7pm. Sunday morning, we ditched the truck, drove back to Sanford to finish cleaning and turn in the keys, made it back here and collapsed in front of the TV. Monday morning was all about getting internet access working for both computers, then installing all the hardware and software that Debbie needed to be able to log into work Tuesday morning. We spent the afternoon at the bank, then the DMV to change our addresses, then Staples to buy a good chair and chair mat for Debbie's office. We wanted to pick up a file cabinet, but the Zephyrhills Staples doesn't carry large items in inventory: you pick what you want from the display models, then order it online and have it delivered to your house. Good idea if you don't have a way to transport something like a four-drawer file cabinet, but it means we have to wait a bit for the new file cabinet.

The trailer is completely full of bins and we're not real sure where most of it will end up. The only storage areas and closets we have are full and the entire Florida room is packed with more stuff. Some of the big items will be going on Craigslist later this month, but we simply have no idea where the rest is going to go. One thing is absolutely certain; we are not renting another storage unit. The space we have is the space we have and we need to learn to live in it and stop clinging to things. I know, I know; radical idea for someone living in the biggest hording culture in human history. We'll just have to be freaks.

And to keep from getting bored, we're heading back up to Michigan for the Wiklanski reunion this weekend. It will be a nice break from all things moving and unpacking. The problem is that all the work will still be sitting here when we get back. Ah well.

Another of today's fun little adventures involves trying to get our address updated with all the various places that insist on clogging up our mailbox. You would think that such a simple task wouldn't be that hard. You would of course, be wrong. If I hear one more person tell me that I connected to the wrong department, then either "accidentally" disconnect me when they transfer me, or give me a non-working phone number to call, I'm going to start blowing things up. And don't even get me started on the crappy coding on business and government web sites. These complete morons can't even get the basics right, as in here's a place to type an 8-digit number, but it only accepts five digits. Again, any place I worked back in the bad ol' days of COBOL and 24 lines of 80 green characters on a black screen, putting something like that into production was a firing offense.

Well, I need to get back at it.