The Five Stages of Moving

We arrived in St.Louis one week ago today. Moving is like a full time job, only more stressful, and you end up losing a lot of money. It's helpful to familiarize oneself with the Five Stages of Moving:

The Five Stages of Moving

1. Denial. For a long time, my mind refused to accept the fact that we were moving. Then we got into the mindset of "we don't have that much stuff" and "it won't take us long to pack," and so when we had friends over for goodbye drinks etc, everyone would look around the room and say cautiously, "I thought you guys would be more packed?" or "When are you moving again?" or "Oh wow, I expected more boxes." And we'd laugh and nod and not really believe it. And then the moving trailer came.
2. Anger. Huge amounts of anger. I spent a lot of the move really angry. I was angry about how much work it was, angry at myself for not starting sooner, angry at all the crap that I've accumulated. The last time I moved, I got everything into a few car loads! I wanted to burn everything. I was angry at Saori's stuff for being there. I was angry at Suki for being a cat and needing to be pilled and sedated. I was angry at myself for being so angry. Finally we got everything sold, loaded, donated, given away, or simply tossed wholesale, and we were on our way to St.Louis.
3. Bargaining. Once we got to St.Louis, unloading our stuff from the trailer loomed like an impending tidal wave that I could no longer pretend to avoid. I was really stressing out about our 28' long trailer fitting into our narrow residential street where its hard enough to find regular curbside parking, let alone enough space for a freight truck to parallel park. We bargained with the shipping company on the drop and pick up time, we bargained with our downstairs neighbor for the ability to block the driveway. We bargained with the city and the police for permission to park the trailer there. In this case our bargaining paid off, the trailer arrived.
4. Depression. Unloading the truck took three hours, and was a comedown from the rush of bargaining. Stuff was gouged, scratched, or broken. Each box marked "Misc. Crap" was another depressing failure of ours to eliminate crap from our lives. When we were done, we had essentially filled the living space of the apartment with boxes and we had to creep around the edges of the room. All of it needed to be assembled or a home. It was the end of the move, and the beginning of The Thousand Little Things that need to be done when you move. Our friend Sal went back to Phoenix, and we stayed behind, strangers in a strange land. 
5. Acceptance. But after some really killer bbq and the best hot links I've ever had, I thought, hey maybe we can make this work. They've got some killer breweries in town as well. We put stuff away, and every box we emptied and crushed left me more at peace. Our apartment is almost presentable now, and I think I might be able to live here. 

St. Louis, day one.

Monday we had a nice Ponca City Interlude for Saori's birthday which started with a tour of the Marland Mansion, coffee at Brace's bookstore, and an afternoon at Sun'n'Fun waterpark. Grandma Case took us out to dinner at an Italian place in the old downtown for dinner and afterwards we had cake, ice cream, and Porter Peaches (from Porter, Oklahoma). I usually don't like peaches, but I liked these.

Tuesday we headed out early and drove all day to get to St.Louis, getting in around 4 pm. The drive was pretty boring- the Ozarks we drove through were kind of pretty but not really the rugged mountainous forests I was expecting. Mom also called to wish me a good trip and I returned it, as she was at the airport, waiting to get on her flight to Buenos Aires.

Once we got to St.Louis, our landlord's father met us at the apartment to let us in- he had been there earlier to turn on the AC for us. Since we are moving in (hopefully) soon, it was natural and fitting that St.Louis would be in the middle of a record-breaking heatwave. Yesterday, we were just drenched in sweat. Saori likes the apartment, which makes me happy. Suki was not so wild about it. She kept returning to her kitty carrier and looking at us like "ok, time to go. Joke's over." We hit up Wal-Mart and picked up a bunch of temporary and permenant items like dishwashing detergent, soap, a small inflatable bed, and a few food items, as well as small trash bins. 

We also picked up some beer for our neighbor downstairs who turned out to be a really nice guy. He invited us in and we sat and drank beer and chatted for a few hours. He's working on his PhD in electrical engineering at Wash U. He seems like he's going to be really easy to get along with.

Our shipment may get in tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow. I think we have a plan for squeezing the trailer in place, we just have to get our neighbor's sign off since it would involve blocking the driveway to the garage. We also need to get a truck permit from the city, I think. That's what we're going to do today, while we're at city hall. We apparently have to register as denizens of the city, which involves a $25 fee for what I have no idea.

Hopefully after we get our shipment in, we'll get internet up and going shortly.

Trials, Tribulations, and Trailers

Yesterday we got our trailer at 5 pm. It's a huge, 28' long cargo trailer 9 feet wide. The way the whole thing works is the shipping co. drops off the trailer and then we get three days to load it before we call themto pick it up. We estimated using around 9 feet of the trailer, but we actually only get charged for what we actually use. If we use less space(and I think we will) we get a credit to the tune of about a hundred dollars per foot. When we're done loading, there's a big bulkhead we install wherever we stop. The shipping co. then picks it up, and fills the rest with freight at their shipping center before driving on east. They'll clear out the freight and drop the trailer in front of our duplex in st. Louis.

Loading and packing is so frustrating. We pack and load and load and load, and the apartment never seems to empty. Part of it is we're taking stuff out of the incredible storage capacity of the apartment and our furniture, and part of it is just having a lot of stuff. I think we might be halfway packed and it's now Wednesday evening. I was hoping to have had our packing done by tonight so we could clean and patch the walls ahead of our walkthrough win the landlord at 3 tomorrow.

To be fair, we did take a nice lunch break at the Parlor, a nice pizza restaurant on Camelback. We meet up with two friends of ours who both work at the same architecture firm, incidently the same firm that designed the pizza restaurant. Lunch was very nice, we split a few pies and a salad, and I felt started to feel relatively normal.

It's wednesday night now, and we're nowhere near done. We're about out of boxes, so we made a run to Wal-Mart for some big storage bins, and we're going to hit up Safeway tomorrow first thing for boxes. We'll see what we can get, and then its going to turn into a pack and load scramble. We just ran out of time. We've inflated the blow-up mattress, and we're showering (carefully) without a curtain, but we just can't have a slow start tomorrow by driving down to mom's tonight. Looking around our bedroom, and around the apartment, it strikes me that there's still so much to do. And today's rain did NOT help.

Saturday - Packing

Started packing in earnest today. I'm not making much progress, although I've taken everything down off the walls that was formerly affixed to the walls. Removed some mollybolts from the bathroom which was holding up my bathroom shelving unit. The secret to removing mollybolts from walls is that you don't really remove them. You cut away the flange around the outside, and push the whole bolt into the wall cavity. The problem now is you have a hole about a 1/4" to 3/8" wide. I stuffed a little wad of paper in each one as a backing and patched it with spackle. I'm probably going to need a little paint too to touch everything up.

Sunday morning:

Apartment updates

We decided to go for the Tulane apartment. Even though it is farther from campus, the location and route to school is a lot safer. Its not as convenient to other things like light rail, stores, or food, but I thought that since (A) we're new to the city (B) St.Louis has more crime than Phoenix and (C) as architecture students we tend to come and go at odd hours, it was better to err on the side of caution at least until we get the feel for the city.

View Larger Map

So, we scanned in our applications, mailed in our application fees, and now we're waiting to hear back from the landlord. The other place we had lined up, on Waterman, we let the realtor know that we were no longer interested. 

It's been really stressful, actually, since I kind of feel like the place to live is kind of a critical path. Saori's working on figuring out the specifics of how to move with a big ABF trailer. My biggest concerns right now are making sure we're reserving it with enough time (we theoertically move in about two weeks), and also the legality and logistics of parking essentially an interstate freight container on our street. And in St.Louis, which had little curbside parking even during the doldrums of summer. So that's stressing me out a little bit. 

Gotta keep moving forward though. Got a few things done on my to do list, but I've added more, so its spilling onto a second page. As I keep telling myself, everything will work itself out, and I act to direct things to work out in my favor.

It's been a long week, and its only Wednesday night

Saturday night I was on a boat of the coast of Mexico, partying wildly with family and contraband liquor. Monday morning I was back in the office. Sunday was a long day.

Yesterday, I found out my office is changing its health benefits again, which is never a good thing. It's almost to the point where I may just try to find my own insurance. I have no faith whatsoever in insurance companies. I fully expect them to try to get the most money they can out of me while providing the minimum amount of care they are legally obligated to provide, and to fight me every step of the way. Our new fringe benefits company actually brought in reps for each of the health companies they were selling us, so we were subjected to the dog and pony show. My mistrust level went through the roof.

Then I went to the dentist for a tooth cleaning, although I didn't tell him my coverage was expiring in two days.  It was uncomfortable, the dentist asked me to not brush my teeth so hard, to take out my aggression elsewhere. But on the shiny side, at least I don't have any soft spots or cavities.

At work, I was assigned to a Revit committee, where I was bemused to finally get upgraded to "Revit Guru" status, joining the ranks of the other three or four Elite Reviteers. No badge though. Just a long meeting to try to figure out how to standardize and implement better Revit practices within the firm.

Today, I also wore a tie as I had to present some glass samples to the head of our biggest client. That was a little nerve wracking as I usually don't have a lot of face time presenting to clients. In fact, I almost never present material. I really really need to work on my speaking and presentation skills. My intent is to join the local AIA in Missouri and see if there's any groups that would help that, or all else, toastmasters.

Tomorrow is one of my coworker's birthdays, so he, Saori and I went out to celebrate during lunch. We went to Gallo Blanco, a Mexican cafe in uptown Phoenix in the swanky Clarendon boutique hotel. The food was really good. I got a pork torta (sandwich). Highly recommended for lunch. Not sure if they have dinner. Afterwards, coffee ice cream before heading back to the office. My coworker is turning 30, a milestone that doesn't stand too far off from where I'm at, and when I asked him about it, he said that he was happy with what he had done with his 20's.

Tomorrow is July 1st. It is a deadline to log in hours over six months old in the IDP (intern development program) for NCARB (National Council of Architectural Registration Boards). This means that if I want to get credit for work I did before January 2010, I have to get it in. I was pretty close, but I still scrambled a bit last night to log my hours. The website is still really buggy since its under the internet pressure of all the other people scrambling to get hours logged in, so they extended the deadline by a day.

Another thing related to that is that I realized my NCARB registration will expire at the end of August, and that because its less than 60 days away, I can't renew online. I was worried initially that I might lose my hours, but I think the worst thing that could happen if I can't renew is that I will have to pay an additional $40 a year after I re-establish my registration. It adds up, especially if I keep my registration current through taking the ARE (architectural registration exams). I've sent out some emails and I'll make some calls to nail that sucker down though.

Next Thursday, I'll be flying out again to St. Louis to look for apartments/houses. The only thing I've done is bought a plane ticket and arranged to meet a friend to see his apartment. I still need to line up places to visit, maybe locate an agent, figure out whether I'll need to rent a car or if I can take local transportation, and reserve a (cheap) hotel room. Or, I need to make close friends in St.Louis in very short order.

Can I please go back to this?

U-Haul out Ur Wallet

After doing more research, it looks like my options for moving are expensive and more expensive. My Prius is not recommended to pull a trailer, and Saori's car can only pull a small trailer, not nearly big enough for all the furniture/boxes we have. 

ABF offers a curb to curb trailer service where you fill up or partly fill up one of their big trailers, and they take drive it for you to your destination. This would run us from $1700 to $1100 depending on how much of a discount I can negotiate. (Student discounts, taking the stuff to their service center for loading, etc.) I'm not a huge fan of the price, but not having to drive a giant truck or trailer would make the move a lot easier in many many ways, including not needing a 3rd person to drive one of our cars.

The other option I've been looking at is a U Haul truck. The 10' mini mover or the 14' mover run right around a grand. What I hadn't budgeted before was the egregious gas milege these trucks get. The 10' mover gets around 15 mpg, and if gas is $2.50, (a hopeful estimate) fuel costs alone will run around $300. Add in $100 insurance and we're looking at $1350 to $1450. U Haul doesn't offer student discounts, by the way. 

Still looking into other furniture shipping services.

Move it, move it

There's an old riddle about a wolf, a goat, a cabbage and a canoe that I sometimes think about trying to figure out the logistics of the move to St.Louis. Here's my options as I see them. If you can think of alternatives, I'd love to hear them.

• Big Truck- The easiest thing is for me to rent a U-Haul truck and drive it out with Saori in her car and someone else like Tay or a friend driving the Prius. Unfortunately, this option would cost about a grand, plus gas, plus whatever a 1-way ticket for whomever was driving the Prius.
• A Tale of Two Trailers- Saori's car can pull a medium sized trailer, around $250, which would hold our bed, the dining set, and bookshelves, which are major items, but probably would not hold everything. The Prius can also haul a small trailer, which might be able to take the bulk of the boxes.
• The Ascetic- Saori and I decide we're only taking what will fit into our cars, and we sell or donate the rest. This actually is beginning to sound like a good option, except for the fact that we'd have to spend a bunch of money to buy new (or not, as ascetics), and I'm kind of attached to my stuff.
• DIY shipper- A co-worker was telling about moving out to Phoenix, where he took his stuff to a furniture shipper's warehouse and built pallets there. He shrink wrapped everything and they loaded it up and shipped it to their local warehouse in Phoenix, and all he had to do was rent a U-haul for a few hours to go pick it up. I'm trying to figure out who would off this.
• Caravan to Shangri-Louis- I know someone with a truck, who probably knows someone with a van, who knows some other people who might be more than happy to take a small load and a road trip across the US. Breaker breaker, one-niner.
• Ride-share XXXL- I was talking to mom about this issue and she immediately turned to her guanxi system to think of a classmate who knew someone who knew someone who was also moving to St. Louis. If we pooled our resources, we would be able to do a combined move and save money. We'd still have to figure out how to get both of our cars out there though.
• The Corporate package- I could find a corporate job in St. Louis to work part time at and they could offer to pay my moving expenses so I'd hire a crew to move us out and move our cars, and we'd fly first class to St. Louis with a stopover in New York. Right. 
• The Friendship Ender- I could borrow a minivan from a friend and make three or four trips to St. Louis and back again. It's only about 1,400 miles each way. 

Book of Lists

I've started keeping a notebook just for items related to transitioning my life from a corporate worker in Phoenix to a graduate student in St.Louis. I'm cannibalizing a really ugly hardcover notebook I once started as a book of poetry and prose. I ripped all the crap out and broke the first spread into four categories of general tasks: Leaving DWL, Leaving Phoenix, Moving to St.Louis, University Items. So far, leaving Phoenix has the most number of tasks associated with it, especially as it is a catch-all for random items that have accumulated and never gotten done. Like filling out my IDP hours. Today, I got one item done on the list, writing thank you notes to the people who wrote me recommendation letters for school.

As someone once told me, make a list and work the list. Sounds like an architect.