2 posts tagged “moving”
Casey's new job is paying for our move - thank goodness! Last year when most of our friends were moving to their nice new houses and fancy jobs, I learned that you could pay for people to come to your house and not simply move your stuff, but actually pack it for you! To me, this is like the greatest thing ever! So whenever Casey went on a job interview, I nagged him to remember to ask if they covered moving expenses. He did good for me. The hospital has a contract with a local moving company, so we didn't even have to figure out which company to use or worry about paying the bill and getting reimbursed later and all those details.
I was very happy when our contact with the moving company confirmed that they would pack our stuff for us. And I was overly delighted when she said that they would have unpackers to help us unpack our stuff. Unpackers! I did't know that existed! I was super excited about the unpackers for the longest time until last week when I was reading through the fine print in the moving brochure. It states that "we provide labor to assist you with getting items out of the boxes. We do not place these items into their designated areas...you do that. We do take away all the paper and boxes." My enthusiasm for the unpackers suddenly waned. Wow, they help take stuff out of boxes - I have a 4-year-old who can do that for me. I need help putting it away, not getting it out of a box. Elsewhere in the packet they mention that people who are packing themselves can buy used boxes for $2 each. So basically their unpacking services is just a means of getting used boxes to resell? I'm hoping that I find the unpacking service much more valuable than I can currently perceive and that on Friday I'll eat my words and think that unpacking is just as great as packing. We'll see...
I haven't done much to get the house ready for packing. Casey thinks that the packing crew with freak out when they come tomorrow morning, but I figure that's their job and they probably deal with cluttered houses everyday. I'm sure getting a nice clean,de-cluttered house to pack up is a breath of fresh air for them (and they won't be getting that fresh air tomorrow).
Apologies for my lackadaisical blog lately. There has been so much I've wanted to blog about - my niece's roller-rink birthday party, my birthday, Obama-Clinton-McCain excitement, cute things that Coulson and Charlie do, and some random thoughts on everyday life.
But, alas, my online time has mostly been consumed with house hunting. Yes, Casey has accepted a job! The location is kinda complicated. The ER Dept in Winston (where he completed his residency) also manages an ER about an hour away in a mostly rural area. The majority of Casey's shifts will be out there, with a small few shifts at the dept. in Winston and some administrative ultrasound stuff in Winston. Ideally, we hope that he will eventually be able to transfer all of his shifts to Winston in about 2 years. So, although the scenery is nice out in the rural foothills, I wasn't too keen on setting up house out there, especially if it's a temporary position, so we're looking for homes near Winston with easy access to the highway for Casey's extended commute.
House hunting is fun, but tiring. We're making our realtor work hard for us - We're a bit particular about what we're looking for and we have a few months, but it would also be nice to find the right place quickly and be done with it. In the meantime, we're seeing a lot of fabulous homes in horrible locations or blah homes in great locations.
I especially love going into homes and figuring out "the story" behind the family living there. Some are just standard families growing up - pictures of cute toddlers downstairs, but upstairs the rooms obviously belong to teenagers. Or the house with only men's clothing and a somewhat used teenage room - that must the divorced father who gets his son every other weekend. My personal favorite - One house had pictures of kids rooms online, but when we saw it, the beds were removed and only a few toys remained. But the house still looked fully lived in. I imagine they got divorced, but he is still living there with the new trophy wife while they look for a place they can call their own. Meanwhile, she already started moving out the kids to her new place, not as big as their old home, but they can try to be happy together in their new life. Or maybe there was an evil step-father who shipped the kids off to boarding school! But the house was gorgeous and out of our price range (I thought it would be fun to see anyway) - Do you think they would consider an offer $75,000 below their asking price?
POST SCRIPT: I forgot to include the most telling evidence in the house with only men's clothing - A pool table in the dining room! It looked nice though, he did a fine job blending it in with the decor.
