Uhaul and the surliest man alive.
With the majority of the stuff we want to take with on a boat somewhere, we are left with the stuff we want to keep but can't bring with, the stuff we want to sell and the stuff that will have to be given away or worse, thrown out.
Today is moving day, although it seems every day has been moving day for the last few months. Jen and I have taken a bit of time off work to focus on this aspect of going to New Zealand and to tell you the truth, it would be easier to just go to work for 2 weeks and throw everything else in the trash. We would financially be in about the same position. The downside to this approach is that it isn't very environmentally conscientious and there is definitely an inefficiency to the whole approach from a "value" stand point even though not necessarily from a time or money stand point. What I mean by this is that it is really hard to give away stuff that you paid a LOT for even though it is very hard to resell now. You just kind of feel cheated and feel that wow, I paid $250 for that laptop docking station and some guy is haggling over whether to give me $10 or $9 for it and also asking for a free battery, monitor stand, CD drive, Floppy Drive and anything else he can get his hands on. Very depressing, but when you think about it in the sense of, wow I will pay $500 to store this over the next few years and I can give it away for free, I am saving money. Once you wrap your head around the, if it doesn't fit in storage idea, then everything else looks like a huge weight both mentally and financially.
Today started with us agreeing to deliver a futon to someone for the privilege of selling it for $40. It seems like all we have done is chase after people to pick up free stuff or cheap stuff so things won't end up in the landfill. We have sold a lot of stuff also, but only one or two things yielded what we thought they were worth.
I had to go rent a cargo van at U-Haul and that set my day into a downward tail spin. I have sworn never to use U-Haul EVER again, but sadly, I caved. We finally found a great storage place IN San Francisco that is cheaper than all the rest. It's http://www.kennedystorage.com/ and I heard about it from http://www.metafilter.com/ - we got a rate of $40 a month for their only size box of 5 x 7 x 7.5 They are not one of these fancy 24 hour places and you can only get your stuff Mon-Friday and one Saturday a month and they charge for lots of in-outs, but if you want just no-frills long term storage, it looks like the best place in the Bay Area.
So back to U-Haul, we needed the cargo van for the futon delivery and moving all of our stuff into storage. I get to U-Haul and some surly woman is being rude to the customers in front of me, she then proceeds to take a 20 minute phone customer before me even though I was there in line before the phone rang. Some other guy sits down and stares into space for 10 minutes while the customers previously in front of me come back. They reserved a cargo van I guess and she asked if they wanted a truck instead. Thinking they would get one of those big fancy truck with more room, they probably figured, why not. What they got was a pickup-truck and a huge scolding after being asked what they wanted about 10 times in a high irritation voice. I think they didn't speak good English and were starting to get frightened by this mad woman.
Finally, the guy at the other desk decides to wake up from his cat nap and offer to help me. He did an OK job and was fairly thorough even going so far as to point out that I should check the mileage and fuel so I don't get overcharged. He forced me to take a $10 insurance rider because I couldn't prove my own insurance. Then he charged me like $250 as a deposit, an estimated 50 miles of mileage at $.79 and $7 for a furniture dolly, and $10 for another dolly. My $19.95 cargo van was now up to like $100 not counting the security deposits.
I was getting a little worried, but I figured it was all estimated only. He asked me to swipe my card and told me my Pay Pal (debit/credit) card with a MasterCard logo wouldn't work most likely. I tried and it asked for a PIN which I didn't really want to give. I swiped another card and the machine seemed to just mock me with a flashing advertisement. I shrugged and looked to the guy for help but he was pointedly ignoring me. I swiped another card, told him I don't think it was working. He just kind of stared at me, I swiped the original card again and after all that he mumbled something and the transaction some how went forward from there. I still don't know what card this is all on or what was wrong. I had to check a ton of stuff off on the machine to agree to crazy terms, and then sign a bunch of stuff. I was told to go outside and inspect a van that was being brought down.
I go outside and wait a bit, trying to fend off the Mexicans looking for hauling work. Finally the most SURLY person I have ever met came over and just glared at me. I said I had a cargo van, showed him my stuff, and he pretty much glared some more, muttered something almost unintelligible, and then game me more mean looks and I tried to rephrase what I was asking for. Ultimately, I don't think ANY real communication happened between us other than him just sending vibes of how shitty his life was, or maybe he was on downers or pot, not sure. He finally disappears, and comes back 10 minutes later with a cargo van. It has music blaring and the AC jacked on High, he jumps out, glares at me some more. I tell him I am going to check for damage and such and he just glares. I get in and turn off the radio, turn off the AC. Check the mileage and fuel. I ask him if it takes diesel or unleaded. He glares back at me (notice a trend here), he mutters something and walks away. I figure he is "checking" and he comes back and doesn't say anything about it. I figure, ok, I have had enough of this guy and I want to get out of here. I look at the full body of the vehicle and see nothing "majorly" wrong and hope they won't hold the millions of little scratches against me. I show him that the gas says 3/4 tank instead of full and that they misrepresented the mileage by 100s of miles (which had I left the lot would have cost me like hundreds of dollars in gas and mileage). He stares daggers, sends some animosity my way, grunts a little, then pencils a few things on a sheet of paper. I bolt out of there hoping to get on with my day.
I turn the corner and hear a horrible grinding noise that seemed to come and go. I am wondering if the muffler is ragging or something, but it goes away some times. Also the right mirror was slapped against the van and wouldn't electronically open. I hope if I return it as is, they won't blame me.
I go home, load up the futon, ignore the grinding, drop off the futon a few miles away and while turning a corner some women point out that I have a nasty flat tire... I check and sure enough I have a full flat the whole time. The van didn't wobble at all and the surly asshole didn't notice it and I was too intimidated to check the tires while trying to check the body closely. I wait for like 2 hours for roadside assistance (provided by U-haul for free and handled by their call center and a third party local mechanic, so it was much more pleasant).
Finally, I have to call everyone to push back storage appointments, the rental return time, my friend who is helping me move on his birthday (Thanks Alex!). We finally get back to the house and load up super fast and efficiently. Finally the day is starting to go a bit better. We move stuff into storage, but get lost finding the place a few times, but finally get there, load in fairly fast. At this point I haven't eaten in a long time and get a bit hypoglycemic and Jen and I stop for an emergency Coke (I usually avoid crappy foods and beverages but I was in desperate straights here). We then bring the U-haul back and guess who I get at the desk. My surly. He is a tiny bit more talkative but he keeps nodding off for a microsecond here and there and he has this I am REALLY dumb, really on DRUGS or REALLY lazy. I think all three. He even had the nerve to mutter "We take tips" like 6 times while checking me out and even picked up and shook a little tip can he had mad with a smiley face. I swear, where did they find these people. I wanted to just tear into this guy and verbally rip his head off, but I guess I am too nice or too much of a wimp. He tries to charge me for 17 miles even though it was 16 miles. He was able to subtract 2440.5 from 2456.5 on his own, although a tad slow.
Anyways, I was glad to get out of there, get a burrito with Alex and Jen and get home for ... you guessed it more packing, selling and giving stuff away.
The person scheduled to pickup the TV from our ad on http://www.craigslist.com/ flaked of course and we decide to do the BIG POST of FREE STUFF - COME AND GET IT OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE!!!! Jen against my better judgment put in a small blurb that if you Text message her about something that you are willing to come get in person tonight only you can come by, NO CALLS + NO FLAKES. She got a few calls, some flaky text messages, but one cute couple in medical school texted that they were poor and wanted a lot of stuff. They came over and took a ton of small stuff that is hard to sell or get rid of and it was fun talking to them, so that was kind of bizarre and interesting.
Tomorrow is our last day here, so time to get some sleep.
Matthew + Jen
Today is moving day, although it seems every day has been moving day for the last few months. Jen and I have taken a bit of time off work to focus on this aspect of going to New Zealand and to tell you the truth, it would be easier to just go to work for 2 weeks and throw everything else in the trash. We would financially be in about the same position. The downside to this approach is that it isn't very environmentally conscientious and there is definitely an inefficiency to the whole approach from a "value" stand point even though not necessarily from a time or money stand point. What I mean by this is that it is really hard to give away stuff that you paid a LOT for even though it is very hard to resell now. You just kind of feel cheated and feel that wow, I paid $250 for that laptop docking station and some guy is haggling over whether to give me $10 or $9 for it and also asking for a free battery, monitor stand, CD drive, Floppy Drive and anything else he can get his hands on. Very depressing, but when you think about it in the sense of, wow I will pay $500 to store this over the next few years and I can give it away for free, I am saving money. Once you wrap your head around the, if it doesn't fit in storage idea, then everything else looks like a huge weight both mentally and financially.
Today started with us agreeing to deliver a futon to someone for the privilege of selling it for $40. It seems like all we have done is chase after people to pick up free stuff or cheap stuff so things won't end up in the landfill. We have sold a lot of stuff also, but only one or two things yielded what we thought they were worth.
I had to go rent a cargo van at U-Haul and that set my day into a downward tail spin. I have sworn never to use U-Haul EVER again, but sadly, I caved. We finally found a great storage place IN San Francisco that is cheaper than all the rest. It's http://www.kennedystorage.com/ and I heard about it from http://www.metafilter.com/ - we got a rate of $40 a month for their only size box of 5 x 7 x 7.5 They are not one of these fancy 24 hour places and you can only get your stuff Mon-Friday and one Saturday a month and they charge for lots of in-outs, but if you want just no-frills long term storage, it looks like the best place in the Bay Area.
So back to U-Haul, we needed the cargo van for the futon delivery and moving all of our stuff into storage. I get to U-Haul and some surly woman is being rude to the customers in front of me, she then proceeds to take a 20 minute phone customer before me even though I was there in line before the phone rang. Some other guy sits down and stares into space for 10 minutes while the customers previously in front of me come back. They reserved a cargo van I guess and she asked if they wanted a truck instead. Thinking they would get one of those big fancy truck with more room, they probably figured, why not. What they got was a pickup-truck and a huge scolding after being asked what they wanted about 10 times in a high irritation voice. I think they didn't speak good English and were starting to get frightened by this mad woman.
Finally, the guy at the other desk decides to wake up from his cat nap and offer to help me. He did an OK job and was fairly thorough even going so far as to point out that I should check the mileage and fuel so I don't get overcharged. He forced me to take a $10 insurance rider because I couldn't prove my own insurance. Then he charged me like $250 as a deposit, an estimated 50 miles of mileage at $.79 and $7 for a furniture dolly, and $10 for another dolly. My $19.95 cargo van was now up to like $100 not counting the security deposits.
I was getting a little worried, but I figured it was all estimated only. He asked me to swipe my card and told me my Pay Pal (debit/credit) card with a MasterCard logo wouldn't work most likely. I tried and it asked for a PIN which I didn't really want to give. I swiped another card and the machine seemed to just mock me with a flashing advertisement. I shrugged and looked to the guy for help but he was pointedly ignoring me. I swiped another card, told him I don't think it was working. He just kind of stared at me, I swiped the original card again and after all that he mumbled something and the transaction some how went forward from there. I still don't know what card this is all on or what was wrong. I had to check a ton of stuff off on the machine to agree to crazy terms, and then sign a bunch of stuff. I was told to go outside and inspect a van that was being brought down.
I go outside and wait a bit, trying to fend off the Mexicans looking for hauling work. Finally the most SURLY person I have ever met came over and just glared at me. I said I had a cargo van, showed him my stuff, and he pretty much glared some more, muttered something almost unintelligible, and then game me more mean looks and I tried to rephrase what I was asking for. Ultimately, I don't think ANY real communication happened between us other than him just sending vibes of how shitty his life was, or maybe he was on downers or pot, not sure. He finally disappears, and comes back 10 minutes later with a cargo van. It has music blaring and the AC jacked on High, he jumps out, glares at me some more. I tell him I am going to check for damage and such and he just glares. I get in and turn off the radio, turn off the AC. Check the mileage and fuel. I ask him if it takes diesel or unleaded. He glares back at me (notice a trend here), he mutters something and walks away. I figure he is "checking" and he comes back and doesn't say anything about it. I figure, ok, I have had enough of this guy and I want to get out of here. I look at the full body of the vehicle and see nothing "majorly" wrong and hope they won't hold the millions of little scratches against me. I show him that the gas says 3/4 tank instead of full and that they misrepresented the mileage by 100s of miles (which had I left the lot would have cost me like hundreds of dollars in gas and mileage). He stares daggers, sends some animosity my way, grunts a little, then pencils a few things on a sheet of paper. I bolt out of there hoping to get on with my day.
I turn the corner and hear a horrible grinding noise that seemed to come and go. I am wondering if the muffler is ragging or something, but it goes away some times. Also the right mirror was slapped against the van and wouldn't electronically open. I hope if I return it as is, they won't blame me.
I go home, load up the futon, ignore the grinding, drop off the futon a few miles away and while turning a corner some women point out that I have a nasty flat tire... I check and sure enough I have a full flat the whole time. The van didn't wobble at all and the surly asshole didn't notice it and I was too intimidated to check the tires while trying to check the body closely. I wait for like 2 hours for roadside assistance (provided by U-haul for free and handled by their call center and a third party local mechanic, so it was much more pleasant).
Finally, I have to call everyone to push back storage appointments, the rental return time, my friend who is helping me move on his birthday (Thanks Alex!). We finally get back to the house and load up super fast and efficiently. Finally the day is starting to go a bit better. We move stuff into storage, but get lost finding the place a few times, but finally get there, load in fairly fast. At this point I haven't eaten in a long time and get a bit hypoglycemic and Jen and I stop for an emergency Coke (I usually avoid crappy foods and beverages but I was in desperate straights here). We then bring the U-haul back and guess who I get at the desk. My surly. He is a tiny bit more talkative but he keeps nodding off for a microsecond here and there and he has this I am REALLY dumb, really on DRUGS or REALLY lazy. I think all three. He even had the nerve to mutter "We take tips" like 6 times while checking me out and even picked up and shook a little tip can he had mad with a smiley face. I swear, where did they find these people. I wanted to just tear into this guy and verbally rip his head off, but I guess I am too nice or too much of a wimp. He tries to charge me for 17 miles even though it was 16 miles. He was able to subtract 2440.5 from 2456.5 on his own, although a tad slow.
Anyways, I was glad to get out of there, get a burrito with Alex and Jen and get home for ... you guessed it more packing, selling and giving stuff away.
The person scheduled to pickup the TV from our ad on http://www.craigslist.com/ flaked of course and we decide to do the BIG POST of FREE STUFF - COME AND GET IT OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE!!!! Jen against my better judgment put in a small blurb that if you Text message her about something that you are willing to come get in person tonight only you can come by, NO CALLS + NO FLAKES. She got a few calls, some flaky text messages, but one cute couple in medical school texted that they were poor and wanted a lot of stuff. They came over and took a ton of small stuff that is hard to sell or get rid of and it was fun talking to them, so that was kind of bizarre and interesting.
Tomorrow is our last day here, so time to get some sleep.
Matthew + Jen
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