Just letting everybody know that I’ve finally moved to South Jersey. Today is my third day of work and things here are going well so far. I’m mostly settled into my new home here in Collingswood, about a mile from the office. I’m living with a couple roommates in a large house for a few months until I’m back on my feet financially and can move into my own apartment (hopefully around January or so).
The move itself was a total disaster thanks to the gross incompetence of U-Haul. No words are sufficient to describe their sheer stupidity and gross unprofessionalism. Even though I had made my truck reservations over a month in advance, they still didn’t have a truck for me when I showed up on Saturday morning. After almost 1-1/2 days of waiting, we stormed out of the U-Haul location on Sunday morning and managed to acquire a Ryder truck that afternoon, but couldn’t get a trailer to tow my car. (U-Haul finally called my cell phone around 10:00 Monday morning and informed me they have a truck, but my girlfriend and I were almost in Ohio by that point.) This fiasco put us two days behind schedule, and royally screwed up my plans to take Robin to NYC on Monday. So my car now sits in a friend’s garage in Chicago, and I’ll have to fly back there in a couple weeks and make yet another 14-hour drive across three states.
Lessons learned from this move:
1) Never, under any circumstances, use U-Haul. Pay a few extra dollars and use Ryder instead.
2) Never attempt move on Labor Day weekend.
But I guess the important thing is that we had a safe trip, and I got all my stuff unloaded. Most of it went into storage in Maple Shade, but there’s still a few things remaining to be unpacked at the house. My girlfiend and I said our goodbyes at the airport on Tuesday, and I’m now officially single again. To be honest, I doubt our relationship would have lasted much longer anyway, and me losing my temper at the U-Haul place on Sunday certainly didn’t help things.
In summary, it was probably the most rotten weekend of my life, but that’s now in the past and my new life here in Philly seem to be off to a good start so far. I never thought I’d say this, but good riddance to Chicago.
My new job is going well so far… The people here at the office seem nice, the place has a very casual atmosphere, I’ve got a huge workstation with a nice computer, and the PATCO train goes right behind our building. I can hear the trains go past as I type this.
Classes at Drexel start in about two weeks or so, and I’ve already registered.
My activity here on SubTalk will remain somewhat limited for a while, as I’m still in the process of getting my home computer online. Right now my only internet access is this computer here at the office, and I want to be here at least a few more weeks before I begin abusing that priviledge. 🙂
(originally posted on the SubTalk forum at nycsubway.org)