Emily's House Warming

Emily Elasky had a house warming party in celebration of moving in to her new apartment with Ross. Just a few of their friends were there and after eating some yummy food and chatting about movies, tea, and Tacoma we all went bowling.

Most of us are really bad at bowling. The high score for the night was 123 (yeah Tim). The rest of us, struggling just to keep the ball out of the gutter, had a great time laughing at our inability. Jen (wife of Tim and fellow TEPer) was hysterical, walking up to the line only to yank her ball back because she had started walking on the wrong foot. Emily takes the cake getting two gutter balls in a row. I was the most consistent bowler managing to knock over nine pins almost every time. However, the strike and the spare remained elusive leaving me with a final score of 91...on the low end of the scores.

After a night of bowling I returned home (around 12:30) and crashed a little while later.

Life Without Miles

My first day without Miles was the day of my brothers wedding rehersal. This was somewhat stressfull for everyone else. I got to sit back and enjoy the show as I decided ahead of time that I was just going to try to keep everyone else happy and calm. This turned out to be a bigger task than I had origionally anticipated...however, I did my job quite well.

Bride (Kelsey) and my brother Elias at their rehersal. The ring bearer is my littlies bother, Sam.


The next day was the wedding. I have never really understood why people don't like going to weddings by themselves and I am still as lost as I ever was. Miles wasn't there and while I would have prefered his company I had a fine time dateless. This is probably because I was really busy trying to keep the calm between my family and the bride. Kelsey (bride) is 5 months pregnant and I am attributing this to her higher than normal stress level and inability to go with the flow. On the other hand my family is large and forcefull and I completely understand how she could be pissed off when my younger brothers were climbing all over the fence with the sign that specifically says "no climbing" on church property or that fact that my dad was packing heat. Not really sure what that was about but I am not going to ask.
My brother Elias, his wife, and me...

I flew back to Seattle on the third day without Miles and it was at this point that I had my first break down. I only had an hour long flight but because my parents could only drop me off at the airport 3.5 hours early I waited around for a long time before my flight. I had been living out of my carry-on for almost a month and I was ready to be in a place that I would be living for more then a couple of weeks.

When I finally walked though my door the TV was on so without even thinking about it I turned it off. A half hour later I went to turn the TV on and NOTHING. It had worked all of a half hour ago but when I pushed the power button on the tv it would not turn on. I thought the power might be broken so I spent 15 minutes trying to find the remote to see if I could get it to work using the remote. This didn't work either. I had checked all the outlets and connections and I could not think of why it would not work. This set me off. Miles is supposed to take care of the technology and he was really far away and I missed him and not being able to solve my own problems was just a little to much.

In tears I call Miles. I was having a break down and I knew calling him would make it better. Within 5 minutes he had the TV working and while he couldn't fix his not being in the same state as me he did what was important at the time.

So, it has been 5 days and I have had 1 meltdown. At this rate I will have freaked out 22 times while we are not living together. This is not a good statistic. Here's hoping it gets easier with time.

What Is With This State...

and people not being on the same page. We have run into countless problems with taking care of business here in NJ and we can't get two people to tell us the same thing. Miles has tried to get his NJ licence and registration twice. The first time he went in with all the paperwork that it said he needed online only to find out that our copy of the lease is not proof of residence (the original lease would work but the broker has that). They told him that a piece of mail would work so we mailed ourselves something and Miles took it in to the DMV only to find out that this mail has to be a piece of government mail or a utilities bill. We went to the utilities place today to get the paperwork that the DMV said would solve the problem. Miles is going back tomorrow to see if he can finally finish this task.

Then there are the customer service people at F.Y.E who told me that my reserved copy of 300 in HD-DVD would be in on Monday at about 2 (it still wasn't in at 4) and then when I picked up the DVD it turned out to be defective. So I called F.Y.E and was told I could exchange the DVD but they couldn't hold one for me until tomorrow unless I came into the store to reserve it...what would be the point of going into the store to reserve a copy of a dvd that I want to exchange and they just told me they have extra copies of it? So, I ask to speak to the manager that apparently said I couldn't place a hold on the DVD over the phone and guess what...without any hassle they are holding a copy of the DVD for me at the front desk and I can pick it up whenever.

These are not limited incidences of people working for the same company not having the same information about policies and procedures. I just don't get it.

Public School Issues

Hannah and I have both become well acquainted with the bureaucracy and red-tape associated with large scale public institutions, but I recently ran into a completely new level of ridiculousness. I received my tuition statement and it reflected my first semester classes. Of course they were the usual first term law school classes: Freshman Interest Group, Sub-Sahara African Politics, Chemistry for Engineers, and something abbreviated as Law&Amer Lab Mov Sem. I'm worried I may have purchased the wrong casebooks, I don't see how Tort and Accident Law is going to be of much use.

Our Apartment Video

For those of you interested in our new place here is a video for you.

Hoboken

We have been here for a few days now. Moving in is a chore but one that I don’t really mind. Miles really hates the hold un-packing thing so I have done most of it. Miles has offered to help but if I do it everything will be where I want it and everything will get done without complaint. We only have about 3 more boxes to un-pack (I am not including the books because we don’t have a bookcase for those yet) so most of our stuff is where it belongs.

With most of our stuff un-packed our apartment feels enormous. We have a lot of open space and not enough furniture to fill the space. Our bedroom has just a bed and nothing else. Everything fits in the closet. So, we are trying to decide what to do with the rest of the space. I don’t feel the need to do anything with it but it might be nice to have a rug or something to make that space nicer.

My klutzy moment of the week was when I was hanging a picture on the wall and I put the hammer down on the desk and promptly managed to knock it onto my toes. They are really sore now and there is a nice little bruise on the underside of my foot. Miles offered to get me ice before laughing at me for being a moron.

It has been 3 days since we moved in and we are both still walking around like cripples. We are both so sore we can hardly move. Miles is doing a lot better than I am but I am really hurting. I was thinking that it would be my arms that hurt but it ended up being my calves. I am fine after I have been walking for a while but when I first stand up, or first go down the stairs, it is really painful.

We are really enjoying living in Hoboken. We went out to eat the first night at an Italian place that is fantastic and only slightly more expensive than Olive Garden. We have actually eaten their twice. The second time, a night later, we had dinner with Josh and Sam, law students at Rutgers.

We made our own dinner last night rather than going out and we realized that we have nothing. Because we left all food products in Seattle we have no condiments, spices, etc. We have realized that we are going to have to go to a large chain grocery store to get most of the stuff we need because while all the shops in Hoboken are great they also are really expensive for the little stuff. They are kind of like Trader Joes in that the food is really good but we don’t need deluxe ketchup. Dinner was really good though.

In other news…

Miles got a video game that he swore he was not going to get because he is starting law school. He loves it of course though I might have to take it to Seattle with me so he doesn’t spend all his study time playing.

We got our cable hooked up today. Internet is way faster here. That’s nice.

Oh, there was a huge thunder/lightning storm last night. We turned off the lights in the living room and I just watched it while Miles played his video game. The lightning actually hit a water plant and 6 cities have to boil their water before drinking it until the situation gets fixed. It rained as well and the rain here is not like the Seattle rain. When it rains here it POURS. The rain cut down on the humidity making today more tolerable than last night.

I am adding some pictures of our new place below for those interested...Please ignore the clutter as we are still moving in.

[this is our living room]

[here is the kitchen]

The Move

We got up early thinking it would be good to eat the breakfast provided by the hotel. We knew we were going to get pretty tired as we had to unload two apartments worth of stuff into walk up apartments. We did have a little breakfast and then we hit to road. At one point we did end up going west on I-78 when we wanted to be going east but that little detour only cost us about 20 min. Traffic was bad but not what I was anticipating.

We got to Hoboken right when the street cleaning was supposed to be done. That was perfect because if we had gotten there too early we would have had to move the truck so the street cleaners could do their thing.

We went to park in the spots we had reserved (4 meter spaces) only to find that there were cones blocking 2 of the meters, a car parked in one of the spaces, and the another space had not be bagged. Two foreign ladies are upset with us for pulling in front of the cones as it turns out that they have reserved the spaces in front of the ones we reserved for every Wednesday. However, due to a construction dumpster in the spaces they reserve they had called city hall and reserved the same spaces that we reserved.

I get on the phone to the parking people at city hall only to be transferred a few times to people that are not there. Finally some parking guy comes with a meter bag to block of the meters that have been booked. The meter bags are placed over the meters and say “no parking” and it prevents people from paying the meter. - Note: this should have been done last night so that the spaces would be free when we arrived in the morning, but whatever. - When I start asking why our meters, that we paid for, are not covered he gets confused and calls in another guy. I am really upset by this point because I am tired of hearing that we cannot park in the spaces all while I am holding a receipt saying I paid 100 buck to be able to park in front of our building. So, I am waving the receipt around, frustrated, and getting really irritated with the parking guys that can’t figure out what they are going to do.

The two foreign ladies own the store right below our apartment and they get deliveries on Wednesdays so they need the spaces. We are moving in and we need the spaces. So without the help of the parking guys, who have no idea what to do, we decide to take off the trailer and roll it onto the sidewalk, park our truck in the couple of spaces that are reserved, and we agree to be out of there by noon as that is when the truck is supposed to come with the ladies' deliveries. This seems to work for all parties involved.

[some blood Miles aquired moving the trailor]

We start unloading. It is going pretty well. It is really hot and sweat is dripping down our faces and backs and leaving nice little sweat stains all over our clothes. It is already really hot at 10am. Our apartment says it is 82 degrees. We get most of the big stuff up the 3 flights of stairs and into the apartment without too much trouble. The back of one chair is broken but it is nothing a little wood glue won't fix.

*I should mention that when I say “we”, referring to heavy lifting, I really mean Miles and Mike. They did a great job lifting and struggling through getting our stuff into the apartment.*

At this time a construction guy shows up and they want to park in the space of one of the blocked off meters. This guy comes over to us while we are unloading and starts telling us that we have to move. He doesn’t ask and is quite insistent. Being already pissed about the meter situation Miles and I start going off on this guy because we have a freaking receipt that says we get spaces so NO, we don’t HAVE to move our truck. There is an open space behind us so we back up the truck anyway but not before making it clear that if he would have asked us to move rather than tell us we would have moved no problem. Hopefully the point was made but probably not as we are on the east coast now.

We are down to about 15 boxes still to move when a semi-driver double parks behind us. It's 11 and delivery guy for the ladies store is here - one hour early. He now needs the spaces we are in and we are so close to being done. We estimate that it will take about a half hour to have us out of there but he can’t wait and he cannot stay double parked. The boys keep moving boxes while I deal with the semi-driver (who, I might add, is so nice and polite). Between the two of us we decide that if we unload all my apartments remaining stuff onto the sidewalk we can roll up the walkway and that will give us a little more space. The semi-driver even helps me unload the rest of the truck onto the sidewalk. As we are doing this a car leaves a metered spot behind our truck and we move some cones to block off the spot giving us a little more space. I ask the construction van if it can please move for about a half hour or so and surprisingly he agrees to. After Miles pulls the truck forward there is just enough space to get the 60’ semi into the open spot.

Once the semi-driver gets parked this fat guy in a white shirt with really bad teeth starts asking me about the trailer that we have put on the sidewalk. It is not blocking the sidewalk as in Hoboken the sidewalks are about 3 times as wide as they are in Seattle. Fat Guy is some parking authority person. Apparently you can’t put a trailer on the sidewalk. So, I get our receipt for the meters and start explaining what is going on only to be shushed and told that there is a new girl working at city hall and she didn’t realize that the meters were already booked when we booked them (thus double booking the meters) and we are going to have to work it our with the other people that have the meters…but we can’t have the trailer on the sidewalk. I GO OFF. I tell him that we are trying to make everything work which is why the trailer is on the side walk in the first place. We have 15 more boxes to move and then we will be done but the semi-driver is here and he needs to do his job as well. I am practically yelling that we are doing everything we can to make this work and it isn’t my fault they fucked up the reservations for the meter.

As I am practically yelling and I am obviously really upset he starts “ma’am-ing” me and telling me not to get upset. (It is way too late at this point). I tell him we will be gone in a little over 20 min and this seems to work because he just leaves.

The ladies from the shop below our new apartment are so thankful that we were nice and trying to accommodate everyone that they send one of their workers to help us carry a few boxes up the stairs to our apartment. They even provided us with free drinks. Miles and I are going to have to shop there a lot.

We get everything into the apartment and the semi-driver helps us get the trailer on the truck. Mike has gotten us sandwiches and we hit the road.

*it is 11:30 in the morning and we are only half way though unloading the truck*

None of us can really eat because we are so hot and tired. The food actually rolls in our stomachs but we eat what we can and call it good.

Mike has the directions to his place in Brooklyn, so he is directing and Miles is driving. We have to go through the Lincoln Tunnel and into Manhattan to get to Mike’s place in Brooklyn. While driving through the Lincoln Tunnel a bus driver tells us that we are dragging something on the cement. When we get a chance to pull over we do and it was just a piece of the trailer so we don’t worry about it.

In Manhattan we make a wrong turn and end up driving through the middle of Times Square, at lunch time, on a Wednesday. We manage to get going in the right direction again and we are back on track. We are going to go over the Brooklyn Bridge but as we are about to take the exit Miles sees that the clearance is only 11’9”. Our truck is 12’1” high so we would end up taking off the top four inches of the truck by driving this way. Thanks to google maps we find another route, this time through the Brooklyn Tunnel.

We arrive at the Brooklyn Tunnel to see that once again the clearance is 11’9”. There are some police and traffic workers that are checking trucks at a check point so we pull in to see if we can possibly make it through the tunnel. They make Miles get out of the truck and open up the back so they can see what we are transporting…blah, blah, blah… They confer and decide that we can make it through the tunnel, we just have to go fast and they will escort us. Miles and I look at each other, have a quick discussion about how maybe going fast will put more pressure on the tires and lower our clearance...but I guess we are just going to go for it. The truck is insured so at least there is that. The police car turns the lights on and we go. All three of us sat holding out breath and hunched over, as if hunching will make the truck lower, and we make it through. Not even a scrape. Thank goodness.

We get to Mike’s place and there is no parking!!! We pop the truck over the curb so it is diagonal to the street and over the corner of the side walk. Again the trailer comes off, and as the boys are moving it onto the sidewalk Miles tries to slow it down, stumbles, and breaks his flip-flops. I was supposed to remind him to change into tennis shoes but I had forgotten. The toe of the shoe had ripped out of the bottom leaving just a sad pathetic strap to hold Miles’ foot in place. Oh, and he is bleeding for the second time today.

We can’t pull the ramp out of the truck or it will be completely blocking the road so we know we are going to have to have someone in the truck to move boxes to the edge where the other people can reach them. Due to Miles’ lack of shoe he gets to be the person staying in the truck. Mike and I start taking loads up to his apartment on the second floor (another walk-up). After a while I am beat. Not that strong to begin with, I just can’t make it much longer carrying the heavy boxes up the stairs. Miles and I switch places. Mike manages to find him some shoes and they are only a little bit to big. It takes us about 3 hours but we get everything un-loaded and into Mike's apartment. About 45 min before we finishes we had all hit the wall and we were exhausted. It was purely by force of will that the rest of the truck got unloaded. By the end of it I was cursing Mike and Elisa for bringing so much furniture. Although, if I were being honest and we had moved them in first I am sure I would be making the same curse at myself…

[I forgot to mention this earlier but this is Mike. While Miles was parking the truck he ran over a water bottle that was in the street and it exploded all over Mike. This is a picture of Mike's water soaked pants.]

At about 3:30pm Miles and Mike got the trailer on the truck again and Mike took off to take the truck back to Penske. Miles and I set off to catch the subway home. We walked to the car (parked about 4 blocks away) and as we are walking Miles realizes that he parked on a street that was closed on Wednesdays for street cleaning. We are both sure that with our luck our car got towed, and when we show up at the space we have both never been so happy for a ticket in our entire lives. So, on our first day of parking in Hoboken we have already gotten a ticket. We are off to a great start with parking authority.

An hour and a half after leaving Mike’s place we open the box with the towels in it and take a nice cold shower. We are so tired and hot by this point. I don’t think I have ever been so tired. We both lay on the couch for a while and I try to comb my hair only to find out that I am so tired I have to take a break because lifting the comb and pulling it though the knots in my hair is just to much of an effort.

We decide we need drinks and something to eat because while we are not hungry we both know we should be. I run (read walk slowly) down to the shop below our apartment and buy two 1.5 liter waters and a couple of cliff bars.

After eating, drinking, and opening a few boxes we go to the Newport Mall and get some of the things we still need for the apartment (like a pillow - because I left one in Idaho). We dropped the stuff off at the apartment and had a nice meal at an Italian restaurant a block from our apartment. The food was really good and after eating we got Miles some booze from the liquor store. We got home at about 9:45. We were up until 11:30 unpacking at which point we both fell into bed, our bodies sore and our minds tired.