MondayLunchCrew

Well, it's been quite an exciting few days that's for sure. I'll do this chronologically and you'll see what I mean. After dinner on Thursday:went home and pack and surf and etc. Next thing I know, I look at the clock it was 1:30 am. Which was surprising but okay. I keep going, then 3:30 am. Oh! got to get to bed, but told myself this was okay since I could sleep until about 10 since the movers won't be coming until afternoon. Go to sleep. Friday: 7:05 a.m. Movers are here!!!!!!!! I'm groggy and I told them to go away for an hour, they're way too early. I call gary and he kept telling me to get up and deal with the movers saying if I send them away they won't come back. I got all mad at him because that's ridiculous and he wasn't supporting me at all. I could barely stand, I couldn't be directing moving and packing! Haven't had coffee or food etc, no way this was going work. I wake up all mad at him and hung up. 8:30 a.m. Gary looks up the number for the movers and calls them and tells them they didn't call to change the time on me and they need to come back in the afternoon. I call them too to confirm that they'll come back at noon. 9 a.m. go to sleep. 9:30 a.m. my mover sales person calls to confirm the move. I groggily tell her that yes, but there was a mix up and they'll come back later. 10:30 a.m. Get up. amazing what another hour of sleep was enough to get me going. go for breakfast, read a book. I'm completely normal by the time noon comes along and they start packing. noon. Two really adorably cute young men in their twenties show up. (wow!!) and they are my movers. and start to pack up stuff. noon - 5:30 p.m.. They pack, I bite my lip and stand around. Occasionally guarding the truck when they are loading. I'm directing them to what to pack and what not to. I'm grabbing things from their hands to 'lose'. (like an ugly doll my mom gave me ages ago.) Very often mentally freaking out about the fact that I've got soooooo much stuff! I could barely believe it. I could, but thank goodness I wasn't doing it myself. that would have been insane. Sometime here Gary calls. Friends from work call to see if I'm freaking out (of course I am) 5:30 p.m.. They go away, I sign a document saying I've got just under 50 boxes/items. breakdown: 10-15% clothes. 50-60% books/magazines. 5% kitchen 4% bathroom 20-30% stash (yarn, xs, art, etc). Mentally freak out some more, and sit around in empty apt. 7:30 p.m. meet Terry for dinner. 10 p.m. cab home to deal with being in empty apt and last of my packing for my two suitcases. (Apt is totally creeping me out) 1-3 am try to sleep. can't do it. apt is creeping me out. there's a lot of noise, and I keep picturing mice. I play music on my computer hoping it would work. It does eventually. Saturday:5:10 am drag my ass out of bed. should have got up 10 minutes ago, but one of the alarms didn't seem to have been working. Pack up last minute stuff. 5:50 a.m. The driver is here! try to move my suitcases down the stairs without waking up all my neighbours. Mildly successful. Poor neighbours. 6:15 a.m. I'm at the airport checking in. struggling a little with my suitcases. Get to the counter. 6:20 a.m. counter person trying to get me to remove some items from my carry on so that it would be under the weight limit of 22 lbs or I'd have to check it. I take out the laptop and it makes little difference, I'm still 7 lbs over. There's nothing I can remove to make up for 7 lbs. I'm begging her to help me out. I can't check this carry on as it's all electronics. "Is there anything you can suggest or do for me? I'm moving home! I can't leave this or check it..." I'm trying to take out the two pieces of clothing, knowing it'll do nothing. She takes pity and gets an exemption and tags the bag as overweight and lets me through. (in the mean time, all this seems to be happening as an out of body experience as I'm so tired and can't believe I'm moving.) 7-8:30. sit around and read a magazine and eat breakfast. then finally get on the plane and fall asleep and take off. as I'm half sleeping. the air stewardess are going around saying "would you like to buy some food?" it's all strange even in my sleep. The seats on this plane is the worst I've sat on in 10 years. They are shallow and short so that even a short person like myself felt like I was being pushed off the seat. Thank goodness it was only an hour flight. 10 a.m. or so. I'm in line for the customs check. and of course, I'm in the slowest moving line. I'm 7 deep and last one in my line, and two other lines are opening up. While people in front of me was complaining and chatting, I move to the empty line and they finally wake up and take note start to do the same. 10:05 a.m. Talking to very good looking male customs person. "I think I'm filling out the declaration incorrectly. If I'm moving home and I've got movers with things coming, does that count as "goods being shipped"?" "yes." He marks my card correctly and tells me I have to talk to other customs people with my inventory and they'll give me papers for not paying duty on my goods. I'm still groggy and not comprehending. "I thought I had to do that when my boxes gets here." "yes, and you'll use these papers to get the boxes out of customs.". "oh. okay." 10:10 - 10:30 a.m. I'm talking to nice customs lady about the paper work on my move. She: "You have to tell me how much your items are worth for the paperwork.". Me: "uh... I don't know." She: "do you want to estimate. I'll give you my calculator to add it up." Me: "resale value or replacement value?" She (confused): "how about what you insured it for?" (Easy)Me: "$#0000" She goes away. I'm standing there with my suitcase thinking this is so strange. She comes back: Do you remember what date you left? Me (easy): "July 1, 1998". She: "wow... that's easy to remember." (lesson for future reference, always move on a national holiday like Canada Day for all future easy reference.) Finally leave customs and Gary picks me up. We went home and tried to unpack, eat some food etc. Had to try to get errands done asap, so we went to the bank to try to open a joint account. RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) Branch: We tell lady #1 we'd like to open a joint bank account. Gary is already got an account, so I need to fill out paperwork. So I sit there doing that. We discuss how stupid this was to fill in paper work since I'm writing things someone has to type into the computer anyway. They should just let me at a computer screen. Lady #1 comes out from talking to Asian Lady and tells us that because Gary's account is in another branch, they cannot open a joint account for us. Gary: "uh?" Me (loud and incredulous): "WHAT the FUCK is this?" [I can be such a bitch.] Gary to Lady #1: "what do you mean?" Lady #1 looks shocked. Asian Lady comes out of her office since she didn't want me to tell the whole branch that they were stupid. "Why don't you come into the office and we'll discuss the options." Me: "what's the point of discussing options if you can't do it?" Gary: "what's the point?" Asian Lady: "why don't you come in and we'll talk about it..." Gary and I lament and give in and sit in office. turns out Lady #1 was incompetent and didn't understand the concept of new joint account != adding name to existing account. However then it turns out they can't open a new account for us since gary's got an account at another branch and we need to do everything with his representative. One stop convenience banking. (Oh yeah, bullshit, this was really convenient.) We leave. Me (walking out of the door): I feel like I moved into hick town. Gary: I'm in shock. Go to mall to move to next errand, getting me a cell phone, so I've got some contacts and don't feel so lost. This errand was very slow going, however I did manage to walk out of the mall with a new phone and knowledge that my credit score in canada appears to be in tact. Been playing with it for ages. But feel better about having a phone. Spent rest of the day in between things adding in all my numbers. Dinner with friend at Lone Star Cafe: Should have been a nonevent but it was! Highlights: 1. the place has turned into kids party and family place. the place was 80% kids (under 10) and their parents. we were all shocked. 2. two tables over, dad drops a baby practically on (her) head and the mom freaks out and cries etc. but doesn't take the baby or check on baby or beat the crap out of the dad. Just in the corner freaking out. waitress comforts her while the rest of us watch and wonder. Baby didn't cry right away but sure was screaming after the mom starts screaming. 3. not 20 minutes later, table two behind us sends a huge try of dishes to the floor. Loud crash. 4. same table does the birthday song and singing. 5. Table next to birthday table has two guys trying to eat a 74 ounce steak each (time limit an hour). 6. Waitress drops a plate of tortillas. "Damn, this is the second time I've done this, that table's never getting their food." Good thing it wasn't our food. We're amazed that our plate of hot dessert comes without spilling and none of us will be needing surgery to fix the burns. 7. We're outside chatting before getting into car, another kid (8 or so) takes a spill right in front of restaurant. (WHAT??) In the course of this meal, I manage to drop salsa down my teeshirt (without touching teeshirt, into cleavage). AND drop food on jeans. It was quite a display. Sunday: Went to Ikea to get a catalogue but they won't print one until after July when I'm hoping to be mostly done with my decor. Go around calling friends to see if we can track one down and eventually do. Grocery shopping. While on one hand I have a lot more grocery selection, I manage to find that I have less selection on things. (no fat free yogurt selection, no ready to eat purdue chicken, no fat free half and half, no skim milk that tastes like 2%.) But manage to find much more other things while shopping. We are hanging on hope that when the new grocery store opens on Wednesday at the mall across the street I'll have a much better store. Summary As you can imagine, I'm completely beside myself. I feel like I've moved to a foreign country even though it's not. But having spent really my adult life in New York, I'm finding a lot to have to adjust to.

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