Okay, so it's nice to get the official warm welcome from Big Brother, although I'd say that the warmest welcome has been the three - count 'em, three - weeks that I've spent on his couch as I wait for my apartment to become available. The filth and squalor haven't been nearly what he makes them out to be, and I've greatly appreciated having a daily shower, air conditioning, a reasonably soft place to sleep, and an adorable little dog to boot off the couch every once in a while. I like to think the benefits haven't been entirely one-sided; through my presence, he's gotten some free housekeeping, some free groceries, and he's been introduced to the concept of "vegetables," which seems to be agreeing with him.
I hope that he's found my presence to be more of a pleasure than an imposition, because... well, I might be there longer than expected. That whole "moving this weekend" thing? Turns out that when the moving company says that they can have me packed up by 10:00 Friday morning, they mean that they can have me packed up by 10:00 a.m. Friday. After that, they allow themselves seven days to actually get my stuff where it needs to go.
And those are seven Earth days. The twenty-four-hour kind.
So let's review: It took me and my wonderful, gracious, longsuffering mother and father one day to move me from Atlanta to Columbus. Twelve hours, actually, from their arrival Saturday morning, last-minute packing, chaos and confusion with U-Haul, an angry phone call, lunch, more last minute packing, dinner, final deep-cleaning of the apartment, and a two-hour drive down to Columbus. It was another two hours to get the truck unpacked into my storage unit and my sofa disposed of. So we're looking at fourteen hours for three amateurs to ghetto-pack a one-bedroom apartment and move it a hundred miles to the south and west.
Professionals, however, who merely have to pack up an already-packed storage unit and schlep it three hours to the north and west, will need a week to do so.
Thus my lovely new apartment remains vacant, and the Baby-Sis-shaped butt print on Doug's couch grows ever deeper.
Sorry, dude.
