Personal Odds and Ends

Just a few things that have come up lately that you may or may not be interested in …

• We are thinking of switching credit card companies and before applying for a new one I thought we should check our credit report. As much as we should know our current score I just wanted to make sure there were no mistakes on the report itself. We used annualcreditreport.com which allows you one report from each of the three major bureaus, once a year for free. Of course I couldn’t pull up H’s for one reason or another so I filled out a form and sent it off to Equifax (it’s happened before, not worried). However mine came back saying I had close to $750,000 of outstanding debt! They listed our primary mortgage on my report three times, our auto loan three times and our HELCO three times. I called their customer service line and the guy on the other line assured me things were only listed once. When I told him I showed it being listed three times he said I must have made a mistake when I downloaded the information from the website. Excuse me? I made a mistake when I hit the save button? Nice try buddy, and I know your real name isn’t “Andy” either with that thick accent of yours. Anyhow, a new report was sent to me yesterday and everything appears correct. Finally.
• We are listed with a new Realtor, I may have mentioned that. There have been a few visits in the last week and one more today. We can’t do anything except sit back and wait but we would love to have this over and done with.
• Carter got a hair cut on Tuesday. They kind of messed up his head, taking more off than they should have but it was the first time he was there and they didn’t know any better. When he got shaved back in the winter his head had more hair than his body so at least it is evened out now. Overall it’s nice to have him squeaky clean and the hair out of his eyes. I do find that he looks at us more lately, almost as if he forgot what we looked like.
• H’s contact lenses have been bothering her, probably because you are supposed to wear them only for two weeks and she stretches that out into two months (what a trooper!). She called the insurance company and can’t get in to see someone until October as per her health plan. They directed her toward some online companies for an order but they are too expensive and she can’t wait that long. A quick call to her eye doctor back in Chicago and they confirmed she can’t see anyone until October, but did fax her prescription. After we spent $200 on lenses last year we noticed you could buy them at Sam’s Club cheaper so we are heading there this afternoon to see if we can pick up a few. H just called and the person on the other end said they are ‘disbursing lenses from 1-6 pm today’. Hmmmm, that is an interesting way to put it so this could be interesting.
• It’s hot here! I mean 100 degree farenheight hot! This might get old quickly and it better not be like this all summer long. Especially since the central air seems to kicking in every 10 minutes and we can’t afford to be that comfortable.
• Remember when the moving company lost our shelves and damaged our couch? We’ve had the paperwork to submit for more than two months now but I have to get estimates on repairing the couch. Every place I call around here will only reupholster, and they won’t do a repair. The places I have been told to call that may do repairs don’t speak English all that well. So I will either submit the claim forgetting about the couch or just saying it’s damaged and I can’t get estimates and we will have to replace it.
• When we moved in the owner had a palm tree in one corner of the unit. It looked really nice actually, and you see it all the time when you sneak a peek into other people’s units. Well of course the thing was dying and there was no way to save it. It sat dead in the corner for two weeks until the ‘branches’ started drooping down and hitting you when you sat on the couch so we finally threw it out. We plan to replace it with a lamp I think, but do you know how expensive a nice floor lamp is?!?!

Moving Woes Continue

So after looking in all of our boxes and searching our place up and down we know that the shelves to our bookcases never arrived. In addition, there is a good sized tear in our of our cushions from the move as well.

I tried for three days last week to get someone at the moving company to call us back. When I finally did I was given the run-around for a while and asked why I was calling. When I told the guy on the other end that I had to file a claim he was very positive and said he would send me the paperwork via e-mail. At this point I am thinking this might not be as bad as I think it is.

Wrong.

All the guy sent me was a generic e-mail that said “… Hey, sorry we lost your stuff … Call this number and you can file a claim … Thanks for your business … Blah blah blah …”. At this point I am slightly annoyed.

So I call the claim office which is a third party and they take some information and fax us some paperwork. I have to fill out a ton of information, everything from what stickers they used during the move, my copy of the moving documents, when it was delivered and picked up, and all kinds of other stuff. For all of that I am thinking out loud that the moving company, the people that lost and damaged my stuff, could send that. But no problem … I also have to dig up receipts for our couch and bookcases, take pictures, and get an estimate on what it would cost to fix the couch. Then I have to send all that information, along with all the documents the movers left and they will determine what we are entitled to.

I think this is going to be an uphill battle.

Movers and Have Come and Gone, and So Is Some of Our Stuff

Two guys pulled up to our building yesterday in a transport truck, or what I believe Americans refer to as an 18-wheeler. Not a ton of English spoken during the move but the guys were nice enough.

For three hours they schlep our worldly possessions upstairs to the top floor, down two long hallways and into our place. Here is a brief rundown on what is missing and what is damaged:

• Shelves for our bookcases: We have two Pottery Barn bookcases like this, and each of them has three movable shelves. Well those shelves are missing. I am almost positive that they were wrapped in a moving blanket back in Chicago. And I think that because all of our wood furniture was wrapped, including two other shelves for our entertainment unit.
• Clock radio: It kills me not knowing what time it is when I wake up during the night or in the morning. Not that we have anything to put said radio on (we didn’t have room for a night stand in our last place) but I would live with it on the floor during the interim. Anyhow, I haven’t come across it yet.
• Picture of my house in Ontario: Someone in my family came across a very old picture of the house I grew up in. The photo has been around for a number of years and I love it - it shows horses parked outside, dirt sidewalks, people in uncomfortable outfits, just a cool photo. My wife had a copy made and put it in a nice frame for Christmas this year. Haven’t seen this yet - it was in the original box.
• Damage: A bamboo cutting board set from Crate and Barrel got nicked up. One of the cushions on our couch had a small tear in it before we left, now that tear is huge. The paper backing on a framed poster has a rip in it.

We don’t yet have all the boxes empty so I am not sure if there is anything else. I do know that we have some serious storage issues. Back in Chicago our condo had a huge closet in the basement, and before that the apartment we rented came with a cage in the mezzanine for our extra stuff. Only one closet here, and no storage in the building. Not quite sure what our solution is going to be.

I will try and empty all the boxes from the main floor of our move before calling the company that moved us.

Ugh, another tough day or getting settled in.

Our ‘Stuff’ Arrives Today

The call came in yesterday … “We are heading down from San Francisco and will be at your place at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning. See you then!”.

Our stuff is arriving.

That’s right.

Good-bye paper plates hello real dishes.

No more cutting buns with plastic knives, from now on I will use the real thing.

No more blowing up the bed before heading to sleep every night. From now on I will simply pull back the covers and enjoy the comfort of my over-priced mattress.

Good-bye plastic cups, hello real glasses.

In all honesty, it hasn’t been that bad. Sure I haven’t had a great nights sleep since we have been here and eating out is getting a little old but overall we have faired quite well. It will just be nice to have our own stuff here and finally settle in once and for all.

The only hiccup I see in the process is storage space. We had a cage included when we rented our first place in downtown Chicago. When we moved to our condo we got a HUGE sotrage closet in the basement.

Now we have nothing.

If we want extra storage space we have to rent it and I think it might be an option we pick up. For the time being our Christmas decorations and rollerblades will sit in their boxes near the front door.

Hopefully nothing was damaged in the move, especially the television. It was tough watching the NCAA national championship last night on the tiny little 15″ tv but it did the job.

I tipped the movers $20 a piece in Chicago and gave them all the pop and water they could handle. Should I tip more today? They are moving the stuff quite a greater distance since you have to travel down two looooong hallways to get to our unit.

Good Moring LA!

Greetings from beautiful downtown Los Angeles!

Well we are here, in our new home city of L.A. … We arrived out front of our building yesterday shortly before 4  p.m. and waited forty minutes or so for the gentleman we are renting from to show up. After some paperwork and small talk we unloaded the car and began to settle in.

We are not quite sure when our furniture is supposed to arrive. I have a call into the moving company to find out. The sooner the better of course, but for the time being we could be living on our new air mattress and two fold-up chairs.

The condo is great, a little bigger than what we orginally recall. It does need a good cleaning though, just from people walking through and windows being open. Everthing is brand new though and I spent the better part of last night taking tags off of appliances and getting things set-up.

We did hit the grocery store last night, just picking up a few things for dinner but nothing else. I need to make a trip today to buy what we need.

H begins work today and it will be good for her to be back in the office. She has been working out of the car the last few days which has been hectic to say the least. As excited as she is there are some natural nerves as well, and she mentioned that they would go away come today when she had an actual place of employment to go to.

I have a million things to do today, including:

• Find a Target and buy some additional cleaning supplies
• Head to the grocery store and pick up some esscential food items
• Do some banking online through our old account
• Find a branch of our new bank and get some things set up
• Clean the condo
• Look into the local DMV and make arrangements for changing our car ownership, and licenses
• Set up insurance, both car and renters

There are some other things as well but if I get that far today I would be happy.

So we arrived - the time change is throwing us off a little but we are excited and ready to receive visitors!

We’re Going to California …. Tomorrow

Well I first want to apologize for the lack of news/posts but things have just been so crazy the last two days. Secondly, I am sorry for the long post you are about to read but I think it covers everything from the last two days or so.

• Monday: Much of the day was spent organizing what ’stuff’ I thought should stay in the car with us. Early in the evening both H and I went to Ditka’s with my former colleague. We had a great time and it is a real shame that I was not more aware of this great resteraunt earlier. We arrived home around 8 or so, after a stop at Dairy Queen, and did a little more organizing. H was in bed by ten but I was around until 2:30 a.m. or so taking apart the computer and things like that. (that is one of the reasons we have not posted - no computer at home, and H’s work computer was being swapped out).
• Tuesday: Movers arrive at 8 a.m. … Mover gone by 10:30 a.m. … It was quite strange to be honest. They came. They packed. They left. I can say that they did a great job putting our stuff together and packed anything in sight, including the rags I had made to clean the condo with. With the movers out the door it was time to prepare the condo as best I could. After two general cleanings which involved a vacuum and Swiffers I got to the baseboards, windows and window sills, the caulk in the bathroom and what seemed like a million other things. H was home by 6:00 or so and we packed up three-quarters of our stuff and headed to her parents. Spent most of the night talking with her family before heading to bed.
• Today: Back into the city by 9:30 a.m. and the touch-ups began. We did a little painting, something got spilled behind the washer/dryer and the unit had to be pulled out (solid hour there). We emptied the fridge, loaded the car with the rest of our stuff and said good-bye to our place. Stopped at a pet store to get Carter a seat-belt (more on that another day) and then into H’s work. Picked up her new laptop and saw a few people. Took our cable box back to Comcast and paid the remainder of our bill. Then we were on a hunt for a GPS unit and we got a great deal on the Navigon 7100 (more on this another day too!). Back out to the burbs, dinner and more conversation and now here we are.

Now that we have a laptop we will post from the road. Stay tuned for our journey to California.

Here we go!