Back in Greensboro
We've been back in Greensboro for about three weeks now - it was a bit of an adventure getting here but we're glad to be back and settled back into our old house.
Moving always sucks but it seemed worse somehow this time because we were back to doing it ourselves - we didn't HAVE to move for Leslie's job so her company didn't pay for it. When we moved down to Atlanta they had movers come in and pack everything up for us, load the truck, drive it down and unpack so it was easy as pie. This time we were on our own, so we did our own packing and driving - the compromise was to hire people to load and unload the truck.
It went smoothly for the most part except that it took a lot longer to get ready to leave Atlanta than I thought. We thought we'd be able to leave right after lunch, having gotten the place cleaned up for renters after the truck was loaded. But it's amazing how there's always more stuff to load and pack, and by the time the house was finally empty there was not a single square inch of unused space in that truck or in either one of the cars. We were lucky not to have to leave a dog or two behind.
We sort of abandoned the idea of cleaning the house ourselves, figuring it'd be worth it to just pay someone to do it later, but even so it was after 5pm when everything was loaded and it was time to go, with about a 6.5 hour drive ahead of us. All we had to do was drive one of the cars up onto the car carrier behind the truck and go, but nothing is ever that easy. First I had to figure out how to back up the big truck and car carrier in the townhouse complex driveway to get it pointed the right direction (the carrier always seems to go the wrong way when you're backing up). That took 20 minutes or so, and then when I tried to drive the car up the ramp onto the carrier, we realized we had packed it so full of stuff that it was weighed down too far, so it was bottoming out and couldn't get up the ramp. Ugh.
It was starting to get dark and I had absolutely no idea how we'd get the problem solved in the dark, but Leslie figured it out in the nick of time. The builders had left a bunch of old construction materials lying around and so we used some old boards to extend the ramp and make it shallower - it worked, but we'd already unloaded the whole car to try to get it up there and so it was after six by the time we actually got out of there. We got to Greensboro around 2 in the morning.
It's been cold since we've been here, but that's OK since we've been able to use the time to get settled back in. The renters treated the place pretty well (though they still owe us some rent) but even moving back into someplace we've lived before it takes forever to get boxes sorted out and find a place for everything - moreso since we moved from a 2,000 square foot townhouse to a 1,200 square foot house, so I've spent a lot of time putting up shelves. The dogs are glad to be here, though, since now they've got their back yard back.
So now we're back in one of our home sweet homes, hopefully for a while. We had a good Thanksgiving in Asheville and Leslie's folks will probably be here for Christmas, and then in mid-January we're going to go to Costa Rica for a week for some whitewater rafting and volcano-hopping, so it looks like a good winter ahead.
Moving always sucks but it seemed worse somehow this time because we were back to doing it ourselves - we didn't HAVE to move for Leslie's job so her company didn't pay for it. When we moved down to Atlanta they had movers come in and pack everything up for us, load the truck, drive it down and unpack so it was easy as pie. This time we were on our own, so we did our own packing and driving - the compromise was to hire people to load and unload the truck.
It went smoothly for the most part except that it took a lot longer to get ready to leave Atlanta than I thought. We thought we'd be able to leave right after lunch, having gotten the place cleaned up for renters after the truck was loaded. But it's amazing how there's always more stuff to load and pack, and by the time the house was finally empty there was not a single square inch of unused space in that truck or in either one of the cars. We were lucky not to have to leave a dog or two behind.
We sort of abandoned the idea of cleaning the house ourselves, figuring it'd be worth it to just pay someone to do it later, but even so it was after 5pm when everything was loaded and it was time to go, with about a 6.5 hour drive ahead of us. All we had to do was drive one of the cars up onto the car carrier behind the truck and go, but nothing is ever that easy. First I had to figure out how to back up the big truck and car carrier in the townhouse complex driveway to get it pointed the right direction (the carrier always seems to go the wrong way when you're backing up). That took 20 minutes or so, and then when I tried to drive the car up the ramp onto the carrier, we realized we had packed it so full of stuff that it was weighed down too far, so it was bottoming out and couldn't get up the ramp. Ugh.
It was starting to get dark and I had absolutely no idea how we'd get the problem solved in the dark, but Leslie figured it out in the nick of time. The builders had left a bunch of old construction materials lying around and so we used some old boards to extend the ramp and make it shallower - it worked, but we'd already unloaded the whole car to try to get it up there and so it was after six by the time we actually got out of there. We got to Greensboro around 2 in the morning.
It's been cold since we've been here, but that's OK since we've been able to use the time to get settled back in. The renters treated the place pretty well (though they still owe us some rent) but even moving back into someplace we've lived before it takes forever to get boxes sorted out and find a place for everything - moreso since we moved from a 2,000 square foot townhouse to a 1,200 square foot house, so I've spent a lot of time putting up shelves. The dogs are glad to be here, though, since now they've got their back yard back.
So now we're back in one of our home sweet homes, hopefully for a while. We had a good Thanksgiving in Asheville and Leslie's folks will probably be here for Christmas, and then in mid-January we're going to go to Costa Rica for a week for some whitewater rafting and volcano-hopping, so it looks like a good winter ahead.
posted by Matt | 10:12 PM
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