So yesterday (since I’m writing this just a little after midnight) was the first day of moving stuff into our new place but really this was the 4th day of moving stuff as I’ve been helping my friends Elaine and Roy to move into their new apartment over the last week.
Anyways I’ll start my tale of woe on Tuesday when my car decided that it doesn’t like me. Tuesday evening I went out to go to the bank and then Home Depot to buy some moving boxes. First I stopped at the bank to deposit some money that I had gotten from selling some of our stuff. It’s so old and crappy how can you resist?) When I get back in my car to leave the bank it won’t start. Now it’s been doing this off and on for months. Basically what happens is when I turn the key I just hear one loud click then nothing, and usually if I keep trying it’ll start in may cases after only a few tries. This time however I tried for maybe five minutes then gave up and walked over to the dollar store so the car and I can cool down. I come back the keep trying for maybe another five or ten minutes and I finally got it to start, but there were maybe three or four times that the engine slowly turned over a few times then quit. Then I went to Home Dept and wanting to avoid dealing with all that again I just let the car running when I went into the store.
I figured that since even when the car tried to start that It was having trouble that the battery was dieing so I put it on the charger over night. After charging all night it still wasn’t starting, my dad asked me if I’ve checked if I needed to add water to the battery, which I answered no. Now this is something I have heard of before but for whatever reason never thought to check. So I did and it’s very low I filled it up tried charging it a little more and it still wouldn’t start.
Since we’re moving having my car working is rather helpful so my dad offered to buy me a new battery as long as I pay him back over the next couple of weeks when I get my next two unemployment checks. So I take my old battery down to Kragen so they can test it. The guy tells me that the battery is putting out over 14 volt which is way to high but only about 100 amps which is way too low and that I definitely needed a new battery. The new battery cost $100, took it home installed it and guess what? Yeah that’s right my car still isn’t starting. Having done some more research online I’m thinking that it’s probably the starter solenoid (this seems to be a common problem with Toyota’s made around that time BTW I have a 1996 Toyota Corolla) my dad thinks it could be the starter relay, either way I’m looking at least another $100 to get my car fixed. More on how much this sucks a little later.
Wednesday night our new landlord Ben came over to have us sign the rental agreement and to give us our keys. The rental agreement was 4 pages long and like 8 or 7 point type so my dad couldn’t read it and Ben insisted on reading it to him because he’s kinda fussy about details and wanted to be absolutely sure we understood everything. This took almost two hours in large part because he was filling bits of it in and making edits as he went and because him and my dad kept arguing over the fact that the rental agreement was saying that everything starts on the first of the month and it was now the fifth.
Our new place is fairly close to downtown San Jose in a house that is about 100 years old. The house has been divided into two units, ours being a two bedroom unit. It’s going to be my dad, my brother, and myself living there. My dad is planing on sleeping on a fold out sofa bed that will be in the living room. The room I’m going to be in is the same size as the room I’m in now, however due to where the closets are and a door to the bathroom is I can’t put everything in there the same way I have it now and I haven’t figured out where everything is going to go yet. The room my brother is going to be in just got new drywall put up since one of the previous tenants apparently destroyed the walls, that just barely got finished the other day and Ben still needs to put up a door to that room.
Just about the time that Ben was getting finished reading us the rental agreement Elaine got to my house to pick me up and take me to Fremont where her new apartment is. Elaine and Roy had rented a U-Haul and since I could now start moving stuff into the new place they let me borrow it to use Thursday. This is the first time I have ever driven anything bigger than a minivan so I was really nervous but it wasn’t all that bad driving it back from Fremont at night but still just a bit scary as I would sometime drift into the lane on my right because the truck is wider than I’m used to. Got home around midnight, packed a bunch of my stuff also when though and threw out a lot of old crap that I’ve had for years like some model paint that was probably 20 years old. I ended up going to bed a little after 2am.
Hardly slept all night since I have to many things on my mind. Got up about 10am, started loading the truck around 11. As I was loading the truck the mail came and I was kind of surprised it was so early as it usually comes around 2 or 3. This should have been a good thing as I was expecting to get my unemployment check. Since I needed to fix my car I was planing on cashing my check then trying to get my car started then taking it to my mechanic and hope that it doesn’t cost too much to get it fixed. But alas no check, so I called the EDD information line which among other things lets you find out when the last check was issued to you and for how much. After listening to a 3 minute message that I can’t skip telling me that Obama has signed another extension to unemployment benefits blah blah blah I find out that the last check issued was the one I got 2 weeks ago. Having been on unemployment for some time now I know this likely means one of two things, either I filled out the form wrong and I’ll get a new one hopefully today that I have to fill out again for the last 2 weeks then wait another week till I get a check or this new Obama bonus that they were yammering on for several minutes is causing my benefits to be stopped then restarted again which could take as long as 3 weeks till I get a check. So yeah now no money and no car, ain’t life grand?
Now back to the moving I loaded up the truck with mostly my stuff that I don’t need day to day and some kitchen stuff since those are the 2 rooms in the new place that are mostly clean of stuff. Ben is still in the process of repairing and improving the new place and because he apparently doesn’t have anywhere else to store this stuff the living room has a bunch of drywall leaning against one wall and what looks to be the materials for Chris’s future door. Chris’s room is almost completely full of various building materials and tools so for now we were planing on just moving stuff into my room and the kitchen.
Elaine wanted me to bring the truck back to her old apartment by around 2pm so they could get one more load of stuff over to their new place and return the truck by 4pm. It didn’t look like I would be able to get everything unloaded by myself by then so I asked them to come to our new place to help me unload everything. But before going to the new house I stopped at the goodwill collection trailer that’s just down the street from us so I could dump some of the crap that we had in our garage. Problem is they apparently don’t take furniture at the collection trailer which kind of sucks since I had brought my old bed frame and dresser. So boo I had to bring that crap with me to the new house since I didn’t have time to stop at a goodwill store and drop that stuff off lke the guy told me to.
I get to the house and there is no parking on the street anywhere near the house plus it’s garbage pickup day and there are like 4 or 5 garbage cans in front of every house including the new one and they are all blocking the driveway. Lucky for me Elaine and Roy got there as I was circling the block for the third time looking for somewhere to park so I had Elaine move the garbage cans and open the gate to the drive way (which I already hate the very idea of, sure my car is slightly safer behind a gate but what a nuisance having to jump out of my car to open the damn thing) we didn’t move one of the garbage cans far enough and I ended up running it over a bit yay?
I get out go to unlock the door and guess what, one of the two keys needed to unlock the door doesn’t work. So we all just start unloading stuff into the yard since my dad was supposed to be over there in a little bit and his keys just might work. Fortunately his key for the deadbolt worked, but his other one for the other lock didn’t work. So if we want to get into the house we both have to be there at the same time. lovely.
So we get into the house and it’s in the condition I described earlier although there’s these two big drawers (they look like the sort that you put under your bed) in the middle of my room but they are on their end and all the drawers are out stacked next to them that were there before when I went to look at the place a week or so before but I had assumed they would be gone by now. So it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to move my bed or desk in there yet and with all the other crap in the living room and Chris’s future room I don’t see how we’re going to actually start living there within the next couple of days like we’re supposed to.
OK I’ve been typing for about 2 hours now and I’ve managed to write almost 2000 words I think I should stop now. Please excuse any grammatical errors or weird missing or wrong words. I don’t feel like proof reading right now and sometimes I don’t actually type all the words I think I did.
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