I Have Returned

Well, we moved again. From the middle of July up until a couple of weekends ago, we've been constantly busy either getting the house ready to sell or slowly moving into the new one. So with life getting back to normal it's time to get back to the blog. But first, just a few random observations of rude and/or weird people:

If you're going to tell a lie, make sure your lie is plausible. Case in point: we were trying to order carpet for the new house and have it installed before we moved all of our furniture in. Carpet guy took measurements and said he'd send us a quote the next day. Three days later, we still hadn't heard from him. St. Pauli Girl finally called him.

"Oh I tried to call your husband," said the carpet guy. "There was no answer and his voice mailbox was full."

Hmmm, well, let's assume for a moment that I don't delete voicemails after I listen to them. The problem is I get maybe three phone calls a year. If I let them all roll to voicemail, it would take at least ten years to fill up the mailbox. And that's assuming a lot of evangelicals are calling me to leave voicemail sermons about saving my soul. Luckily, we found a different carpet installer who did 90% of the job and then just disappeared. But that's another story.

A few weeks ago, we were leaving the grocery store. I saw a woman empty her cart full of bags into the trunk of her car. Then she simply pushed the cart behind the car next to hers, and drove away.

I almost always return my shopping cart to a corral in the parking lot unless it's raining/snowing or it's ridiculously inconvenient. But if not, I would always make sure I don't block a parking spot and try to anchor it somehow so it doesn't roll away. I'm trying to think of what circumstances would cause me to just park it behind another car.

Hmmmm.... if the car had a bumper sticker that said "I Love ISIS".... if the car belonged to my arch-nemesis from grade school .... if the car had "Venemous Snakes on Board" sign in the back window... if the car was a giant jacked up pick-up truck blocking my view of traffic.... if the car was partially parked in my space. No, I would either do a lot worse or nothing at all in those situations. I think it's safe to say that if you park a shopping cart behind another car, you are just a jerk.

Last week, St. Pauli Girl and I were out of town and stopped in the hotel bar for a nightcap. As we entered, the waiter said, "And what brings you here?"

"Brandy," St. Pauli Girl said getting right to the point.

"Oh, and you're staying here?"

"Do you have brandy?" St. Pauli Girl asked. "Do you have E&J Brandy?"

"Um, let me check." The waiter stepped away.

"I think you two are on a different tangent," I said. "I think he meant what brings us into town?"

The waiter came back to our table. "Yes, we do have that brandy," he said as he started writing in his pad. "And sir, what would you like?"

"I'll have a brandy as well."

"Great. Spicy or non-spicy?"

For those few readers of this blog who are unfamiliar with alcohol, as far as I know, brandy does not come spicy. It's generally just served straight up from the bottle (unless you ask for something with it). But the young kids these days, who knows?

"Non," I answered with a straight face.

The waiter disappeared for several minutes in fact, much longer than it should take to pour a couple of brandies in a practically empty bar. Finally, the bartender came over to our table.

"Did you want your Bloody Mary spicy or non-spicy?" she asked St. Pauli Girl.

We finally got the drinks straightened out and relaxed for awhile. When we finished, the waiter came back.

"Would you like anything else?"

"No, I think we're all set," I said.

The waiter started laughing, practically cackling.

"We're ready for the check," I said to make myself clear.

"Yeah," he said and kept laughing as he walked away.

"Was that funny? Are we that drunk?" I asked St. Pauli Girl.

"No, but maybe he is."

Moving Tales Part II

(Note: For best results, scroll down and read Moving Tales Part I first.)

There’s a bookcase that’s been in my family since at least 1975. I think it goes back even further, but I might be confusing it with another bookcase. I can’t remember exactly what this one looked like before it received its current paint job. It’s not an heirloom, nor was it expensive as far as I know; in fact, it looks like something you might buy at Ikea, circa 1975, for $8.

It didn’t really become memorable until my older brother was allowed to decorate his bedroom. He chose a décor of purple and silver accessorized with a purple candle on a black four-foot-tall stand, purple walls, a lava lamp, and aromas of incense. The bookcase was purple with metallic silver lining on the shelves. (Think Barney with foil accents.) My brother had always planned on being a lawyer with a vague notion of running for political office someday. Of course, secret photos of this bedroom would ruin a politician (as opposed to posing nude in Cosmopolitan). But all in all, this was a typical teenager’s room in 1975.

Through the years, as we six kids moved from bedroom to basement and back again, or moved out and got on with our lives, the bookcase traveled as well. The last place I remember it occupying at my parents’ house was my younger brother’s room where it was painted blue but retained the shiny silver shelves. Some years later, I finally graduated college, was thrust out into the real world, and moved into the big city. My parents helped me move. Actually, they totally moved me for reasons I won’t get into. They loaded the u-haul themselves then drove it to my new apartment in the big city where I awaited. So I’m going to speculate that, as my dad finished loading the truck, he saw the opportunity to get rid of a few things he and my mom no longer wanted.

And that’s how I inherited the silver and blue bookcase.

But for a poor, struggling professional whose net worth was about $1.99, the bookcase came in handy. I had books and CDs and stuff that needed to be put somewhere easily accessible. So, simple as it was, it was much appreciated throughout my bachelorhood. I was more interested in function than color-coordinated décor. Alas, the long winding road led me to Texas and St. Pauli Girl. When I moved in, we put all of my non-vital belongings in the garage. Daily, St. Pauli Girl perused my stuff and mentally noted which things to get rid of. Somehow, someway, the bookcase always made the cut as I always needed some shelving to store books that I never read or referenced. Finally, at our last house, she’d had enough, and the bookcase was banished to the backyard shed where it was employed to host tools, paint, and other hardware which we seldom used.

Finally, in March 2009, it was time for another move. This move would be 400 miles (which still didn’t even come close to the border of Texas). Even though Rip-Cat was eliminated from our Rolodex, I knew St. Pauli Girl would still call them. Luckily, they didn’t do long distance moves. We ended up hiring one of those big name, professional moving companies. The day of the move, everything went smooth, and I personally ensured they had loaded everything. “This is great,” I thought. “Movers that actually move everything.”

Three days later, we arrived at our present house. The movers did a great job and put everything where we asked. This house was smaller than our previous house, so they unloaded a lot of furniture into the detached garage. We didn’t go through the inventory list, as we weren’t too concerned about anything missing. (In twenty years, my net worth had probably only risen to $4.99.)

Two or three months later we decided to clean up and organize the garage where all of our extra stuff was crammed into a narrow space. Slowly, we worked our way through the boxes. Near the end of our long day, I noticed a stack of blue splintered wood taped together laying on the floor. I pulled it apart, scratching my head trying to figure out what it was. The old blue bookcase! It had been shattered into about six large, flat pieces. Someone had ripped the wood apart, then wrapped it all together in one neat package. The movers?

I wondered if it was the result of anger on the movers’ part. Perhaps one of them was an interior designer on the side, and the silver and blue bookcase insulted his profession? Or maybe they all resented that we had so much junk, so they carried the poor misfit bookcase to the alley and smashed it into bits with highflying karate kicks?

But then it dawned on me. Since the bookcase was in the tool shed, it was probably one of the last items loaded. It probably didn’t quite fit. So, since these guys were professionals, they destroyed it to make it fit rather than leave it behind Rip-Cat style. Then, upon arrival at the new house, they casually unloaded the kit of broken shelves and hid it between other items of stored furniture hoping it wouldn’t be discovered until long after their departure. (Long after we’d signed off on the contract.)

It still bugs me. Couldn’t they have just showed it to me and said, “Sorry dawg, it just couldn’t handle the trip.” No big deal. We wouldn’t have cared if some cheap old shelves were the only casualty of the move. The bookcase was worth maybe 75 cents. But no, they had to sneak the shattered pieces in and hope we wouldn’t call the moving company and complain. After two or three days (or months, in our case), who’s to say who destroyed it?

I imagine they sit around at other jobs and talk about that ugly blue bookcase:

“Man, we sure got away with that one.”

“Dude, that was genius, taping the pieces together like we had actually taken it apart.”

“That thing should have been in the dump forty years ago.”

“We sure showed it who was boss!”

Silver and blue bookcase:
RIP March 9, 2009.

(Note: we suspect the time of death was actually between March 6 and March 9).

Moving Tales Part I

I well remember the first time real movers actually moved me. My stuff, I mean. I was being transferred within my company to a distant city, so my employer picked up my moving expenses. The day of the move, I woke up, let the movers in, then sat and watched them. I didn’t even have to pack one box. Granted, I was 29 and lived in a one-bedroom apartment with old milk crates as bookshelves. In fact, I could tell the movers intentionally moved slow to drag the day out and get in a good six hours of work. Regardless, it was so painless I decided I would never move by myself again.

And I didn’t. Two years later, I hired movers to move my furniture across town. Fast forward to my moving in with St. Pauli Girl. We rented a house for a year before purchasing one roughly ten minutes away. We moved what we could in our cars and hired a “discount” company she had used in the past to move the furniture. We’ll call that company Rip-Cat.

I went to work the day of the move and enjoyed another stress-free move. Afterwards, I stopped at the old house only to find a pile of blankets and a big easy chair in the living room. “Hmmm, guess they’ll be coming back for that,” I thought. But no. I went back to the new house where St. Pauli Girl informed me that the chair wouldn’t fit on the moving truck, so the movers just left it behind. “But they’re movers,” I said. “They’re supposed to move our stuff. All of it.” We never did get the chair (it was old and in bad shape anyway) but were assessed $50 by the landlord for its removal.

A year later, we moved again. With great reluctance, I let St. Pauli Girl hire Rip-Cat again mostly because they were really cheap. Now this one was partially my fault. It was the first time I had sold a house, and no one bothered to explain that when you close the deal, you’re expected to have moved out at that point. I figured we could move when it was convenient. But it’s not like we waited a month; we moved out the day after closing because that’s when our new house was available. Anyway, at 10:00 a.m., Rip-Cat still hadn’t shown up. Meanwhile, the buyer’s realtor knocked on the door and wanted to know if we intended to vacate the house. Rip-Cat finally arrived just before the buyer’s friends arrived in pickup trucks with her furniture. So we were moving out at the exact time they were moving in. To make things easier, St. Pauli Girl and I moved all of our stuff to the garage while the Rip-Cat movers loaded it on the truck We still had a half-garage full of stuff when Rip-Cat announced that the truck was full, and they were pulling out. “But you’re movers,” I said again. “You’re supposed to move all of our stuff.” But there was no time to argue. I had to make 3 or 4 trips in my car to clear out the garage.

Two years later, time to move again. This time we were moving to a town 120 miles away. “This time we will call real movers,” I told St. Pauli Girl. “Real movers actually come to your house, look at all your stuff, know ahead of time what they are supposed to move, quote you a price, and know immediately how big a truck they need and how many movers it will take.”

Real movers are also outrageously expensive. So . . . St. Pauli Girl called Rip-Cat. In their defense, this time a guy actually came out and looked over everything. And then quoted us an unbelievably low price. Despite my misgivings, my wallet overruled me.

The day of the move, we waited and waited. Finally, we called Rip-Cat, and they assured us they were on their way. The movers showed up at 1:00 p.m. fresh from moving someone’s piano across town. “Um, you do realize we are moving 120 miles from here?” we asked the movers.

“What? That’s impossible,” said the lead mover, flipping through his notebook.

“I’m quite certain where we are moving to,” I replied.

“Man, Gary did it to us again.” The lead mover called Gary, his boss. I listened to him cuss back and forth before he finally hung up and rubbed his forehead. “If we knew we were leaving town, we’d have brought the good truck. I’m not sure this one will make it.”

They finally jumped into action. And of course we helped-- otherwise it would have been midnight before we got to our new house. At about 5:00, the truck was getting full. The movers said that’s all they could do. “But, but, but, there’s the grill, the smoker and half a garage full of stuff. You’re movers! You’re supposed to move all our stuff. Gary did an inventory a week ago!”

St. Pauli Girl took charge of the situation and started loading more stuff on the truck herself. We probably crammed in another 400 pounds before she decided that’s all the truck could handle. Not too bad; we could get the rest in our cars on another trip.

The caravan headed south and arrived at our new house about 8:00. One mover stood in the back of the truck throwing down stuff to the other mover, St. Pauli Girl, her two kids, one of their friends and myself. I’ve never worked so hard in my life—and paid for it. We got the truck unloaded in just under two hours. Then I had to talk to Gary on the phone.

“You know the price I quoted you was for a cross-town move,” he said. “Two hours and 120 miles away is going to be a little more expensive.”

“But, but, but, you came and looked at our stuff, and we told you where we were moving to. You wrote stuff down.” His daughter had just had a baby that day, he explained. He might have forgotten the details.

But the new price was still pretty good, so I simply said “fine.”

“And don’t worry about the guys,” Gary said. “I told them to take their time coming back, and I’d pick up their dinner tab.”

Rip-Cat was finally eliminated from our Rolodex. We decided we couldn’t afford even their cheap rates. And I’ll bet anything those movers are still trying to get Gary to reimburse them for their fast food dinner.