Moved

You may, or may not, have noticed that I was offline a lot Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday, I finally moved into my new, and first, condo. Dear Lord, it's a nerve-fraying experience. From picking paint colors (I seriously don't have that gene) to telling every legitimate business on the planet that your address has changed, it's a non-stop whirlwind of to-dos. Then there's moving day itself. Gotta love movers. Around noon, two hours into my move, El Jefe of the movers pulls me aside. Our conversation went a lot like this:

Jefe (pointing to the $500 "not to exceed" bid I got from him boss): It's noon.
Me: Yes.
Jefe: The bid says we expected the job to take 3 hours.
Me: Yes.
Jefe: It's already two hours, and moving the rest of your stuff to the truck will take another hour and a half.
Me: Yessssssssss.
Jefe: So that means we'll go over the estimate of 3 hours.
Me: Yes.
Jefe: (silence)
Me (growing increasingly annoyed since I know where this is heading): What's your point?
Jefe: Well, we're going over the estmate.
Me (making no more pretenses of courtesy): What is your point?
Jefe: Well, to keep it in the estimate, maybe we just leave that corner of the room here and not move that stuff.
Me: Uh, no. That's not an estimate, it's your boss' bid. You don't get to change it because it's taking too long.
Jefe: Yeah, but it's taking longer than 3 hours - see? - so we'll just charge you more?
Me: Do you understand how your own company works?

To the day he dies, Jefe will have no idea how close he came to death, or at least castration, that day. He then proceeded to explain to me that his guys had to move my clothes to the wardrobe boxes, and that's why they should charge me extra (yeah, except this moving company moves your clothes into the boxes for you, that's part of the deal they explained to me). You get the picture. Anyway, five hours, and a scratched dining table, broken small table, and chipped Alaskan memento later, we were done.

Moving is hell. And don't even get me started on the trials of living in a new home. I've spent 28 years living in rented apartments and homes. You put your money into the washer and dryer and they work. Now I have choices. And they confuse me. Take the dishwasher. How it dries the dishes is beyond me. All I know is that when it beeps and the "clean" button comes on at the end of the cycle, it's lying. Whatever you do, do not open the dishwasher when it says it's done, or you'll get a blast of moist heat that, according to my sister, who I dutifully called right after, is the stuff that somehow magically dries your dishes - an hour later, and only if you don't open it. Then why, you might ask, did it beep and tell me it was done if it really wasn't done for another hour and I'm not supposed to open it? Ah the mysteries of home ownership.