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As I noted in my previous post, we are currently in the process of downsizing our living space so as to save for a house. My daughter has been moved out for two years now and not only do we not need quite so much space, the rent was a huge stretch. The new house is quite a bit smaller but it should be perfectly adequate for our needs, including occasional visits from my adult children who live out of state (one is an artist living in Rhode Island and one is a sophomore CS student in Maine).
We're pretty thrifty people, and generally won't pay someone else to do a job that we could conceivably do ourselves. So no moving company for us. In fact, not moving van either. My SO drives an SUV and I drive a pickup truck (I know, how American, but we're also rural and it makes sense for our lifestyle) so we've just been running loads out every day before work all month long. We had some larger furniture as wel as a piano, however, and also wanted to time it so that we could get all of the beds, the washer and dryer, and the home network all moved on the same day. The network wound up being a two day affair, as I'll explain below.
Anyway, Chrystal's brothers had our backs. Kenny came through with a moving dolly for the appliances, some extra ratchet straps and some extra muscle when it came time to move the piano. Her brother Ritchie offered the use of his flatbed trailer. So we were set to go Wednesday.
In addition to my hosting several public services my stepson does his schooling online, so it was important to have as short a disruption as possible. Our local ISP was actually pretty accomodating. They had the connection live at the new house as soon as it was shut off at the old house. So far so good.
I picked the trailer up Tuesday night, and that's when the fun began. Ritchie hasn't actually used this trailer himself in quite some time, so he neglected to renew the plates this year. Back in May, to be exact. So I was going to be pulling a rather large commercially registered trailer with the registration lapsed by five months. Mice had chewed the wiring earlier this year, and the third brother, Brian, said he fixed it when he used the trailer to move his toolbox (he's an officially retired master mechanic). Well, the brake lights and turn signals were working just fine, but no running lights. Brian apparently only pulled it during the day. I, on the other hand, was pulling it from Ritchie's house to our old house ate 8pm, in the dark, in sloppy rain conditions, without running lights. So doubly illegal. I was shitting my pants the entire drive, but really had no choice. I texted my long time friend Tony to fill him in on the situation and he immediately perked up.."Oh, hang on I'm listening. This sounds like the beginning of a great Nathan story!". He and our other friends apparently started a pool about whether I was going to make it through the next couple of days without police involvement.
The ride home actually went off without incident. My sphincter is, however, still clenched.
Yeah. Kenny was to meet us at 4:30 to move the piano, followed by our weekly family dinner at their dad's place. I figured we could run two loads in one day then. We'd get the appliances and most of the furniture over there ourselves in the morning, leaving only the piano and sofa for the afternoon. Loading up went fine. Fine, that is, if you enjoy about 40 farenheit and a steady drizzle. We had to tarp everything as we loaded. And of course I don't actually own any tarps. But hey, we had a bunch of used garden plastic from our makeshift greenhouse, so we just repruposed it.
Unloading started out all right, but went straight to hell when we got to the appliances. Laundry hookups in the new house are in the basement. This house was built circa 1940. Some people will already have some inkling of what I was now up against. The side door of the house opens up to a small landing, with three steps up into the kitchen stright in from the door, and a short narrow stairway to the left going down to the basement. The landing is approximately the exact size of our washing machine. Meaning I could get the washer in over the step onto the landing using the appliance dolly and then promptly had to remove the machine from the dolly, set the dolly in the kitchen, turn the machine (by lifting it by myself high enough to clear the first step up to the kitchen) and then attempt to get it back onto the dolly after sliding the machine halfway off the landing while Chrystal held it to keep it from tipping.
Next problem. Those steps going down to the basement were pretty much the same width as the washing machine. With the railing the starcase is about three inches too narrow. So we had to take the railing off. And I left my power tools at the old house. Chrystal, who was trapped in the basement while I performed the previous manouvers, had to unscrew all nine mounting screws using a screwdriver. Being an old house, not every screw matches. True to form, 7 of the 9 screws were a sensible 2" length, with two random replacements that were both heavier gauge and also 5" long. She has arthritis in her hands, too. Not great. But it did get done.
We thought we were now good to go..
The clothes dryer is the same profile as the washing machine. Since the railing was already off we figured we'd be OK. We would have been, if it weren't for the outlet pipe sticking out from the back. After muscling it into place and discovering it wouldn't go down the steps I then had to muscle it back out of the house and chop a quarter inch off of the outlet pipe with an angle grinder, which luckily HAD already been moved. Got it into the basement, and then I promptly realized that we have a four prong plug on this dryer while the outlet in the basement is the old style three prong. GREAT! i'm sure I have a spare dryer pigtail in a box somewhere from when we move the previous time, but I just really wasn't in the mood at this point. And besides, it was now about ten past four, and time to go meet Kenny to move the piano.
The piano move went off without a hitch, other than the fact that we were moving a piano with two guys. That's two less than I'd like to have ideally, and I'm about twice the age that anyone should attempt this sort of thing at anyway. All I can say is that it hurts. Seriously, folks, that was horrific. Luckily family dinner was a much needed pizza and fried chicken. We all pigged out, had a short nap and then went back to the new house to spend our first night there as a family. I figured I'd try to get the network up before bed.
So as a last insult before bed, I traced the wire coming in from the wall into a heating duct which I knew opened up to a register in the living room, right where all of the elctronics were set to go. Coming back up from the basement, I looked in the register and found the wire. With the connector cut off. F.U.C.K. I also discovered that the third switch by the front door, for which which we had yet to discover it's purpose, turns the outlet I was planning to plug ALL of the networking equipment into on and off. Great, so I'll be taping that outlet in the on position. Don't want to be shutting off the router and modem when groping in the dark for a light switch.
Anyway, getting the network back up last night was not to be. I do own a cable crimper, but it was in my toolbox back at the old house, which I wasn't planning to move until today, after the contractor was due to install the garage door. So first thing this morning we went to Lowe's, picked up some connectors and another crimper, and then came back to set all of it up. On the plus side, I like the new style compression connectors and tool. It's a vast improvement over the old crimp on coax connectors.
Just as I was finished setting up all of the hardware, we noticed that our ISP had dropped off a modem for us after we had informed them that we had our own and just needed the service transferred. Reminding me that, of course, you just can't trust those assholes.
So yeah, it's been fun.
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