EYEHEARTZOMBIES

You know what’s really annoying? That the GoodTimes release of Bruce Lee’s The Chinese Connection has a “GT” imprinted on the image in the corner. I freakin’ hate branding, and it’s even worse when it’s on a great movie like that.

Some of you might have noticed that I haven’t been online since about this past Wednesday (4/5). Well, we got a fun phone call on the Thursday before that (3/30). Seems the guy that actually owns our townhouse needs to move into it. Something to do with his mother or something. In any case, we have to move out by May 1st.

Well, no one wants to move with a baby, so we got started as soon as we could. Meaning we went out that day to look at available properties.

First was a house not too far from our townhouse. Ugly bastard sitting crooked in the lot with no real yards. No storage, either. The kitchen “pantry” was all of three inches thick. So like one-and-a-half cans. Yeah. We left there quickly.

Next was one of a pair of townhouses right next to each other. This one was in the middle. OK, let’s see, the good points. It had a nice enough view of the golf course and tennis courts. Other than that, it was dark, dank, and smelled funky. No windows except on the front and back, linoleum over a lot of the house, which is just nasty, and the place seemed so small compared the house we were already in. We exited post haste.

Luckily the next place was right next door. So this one was on the end, more windows, and had more carpet. Same view, by the way, if you were wondering. Still seemed kinda small, but it wasn’t horrible. We left, but not really quickly.

Back to the property management offices. “Hold that one for us, but do you have any other places? Maybe even in another of the nearby cities?” There was one other. We pulled into its driveway and sat there, looking at the kids sitting in the garage of the other house (duplex). Now, I’m not one to judge based on appearance. I’ve often looked kinda rough and anyone who knows me knows that I’m a mild as the cat. Hell, I probably have him beat on a few things; I rarely throw up wads of hair or lick my own ass.

Anyway, back to the house. Or rather the kids next door. Three kids, two of ‘em guys, all looking stoned to high heaven (no pun intended). The also had a big black dog standing at the opening of the garage. They were lolling on a couch out in the garage, one of the kids wearing a Misfits t-shirt. Despite the positive feelings coming from a common band, I wasn’t too comfortable with them. Elaine wasn’t either, so we sat there for a minute. The kids stared, we sat, and eventually we decided we didn’t care to check this house out. The rest of the neighborhood was kind of skanky and whitetrashy. We pulled out of the driveway and went back to the PM office to tell them we didn’t like it and to keep holding the other.

The next day, Friday, found me calling the hell out of realty places. No one had anything. Well, I take that back. One place had a house for the top-end of our price range, but wasn’t sure it’d be available for rent. So that was a no go, obviously.

We thought about it over the weekend and decided that second townhouse would have to do for us. We could deal with having a bit less room. We had to get into the new place ASAP because we wanted to move before Monkey came. So we called the Property Manager and told her we wanted the house. And that we’d like to move in the next weekend.

Of course I wouldn’t need to tell all of this if there wasn’t some shit with which to hit a fan. So that’s what Tuesday was about.

When we moved into the first townhouse, the Realtor who showed us the place knew we had a cat. She told us not to mention him, as the owner apparently wasn’t happy about them. So we got the house and never mentioned him, not that we had any chance to mention or avoid, since we never really talked to the Property Management for the whole year we were there, and we never talked to the owner. So we didn’t hide anything.

Tuesday, however, found them claiming that we had withheld information on having the cat and they just weren’t sure they could help us with anything, I guess thinking they couldn’t trust us. Remember, we needed to tell people when we were moving if they were gonna help us move. And move the utilities. And hire a truck for the move (we’ve done it in the back of a car…never again (and that sounds dirty)). But do they care? No.

Wednesday was Monkey’s baby shower and the day we finally got the word that the PM was willing to “let bygone be bygones” and let us move into the new place. My parent’s had come up to help us and were as glad as we were that we got the house.

So Thursday was solid packing, Friday was two U-Haul trips of boxes and furniture, and Saturday (when I’m writing this without Internet access) was cleaning and moving whatever small stuff was left over. We’re still inundated with boxes, but we can get by for a day or two. Hopefully we get some more of this crap out of boxes tomorrow (Sunday) and be comfortable enough to live without moving boxes for a few days.

Oh, the new place is two-story, so my legs have started circling a petition to secede from the rest of my body. I think my hands have signed, having grown tired of clutching dirty brown boxes. My back has definitely signed, and started passing out flyers to increase support.

I should have Internet again on Monday, Tuesday at the latest. Then you can all tell me your horror stories of moving. Hope I make it through.

EDIT: Isn’t it great when neighbors leave their wi-fi connections open and turned all the way up?