Right From the Start

Who knew Steven Seagal had a blues band? Raise your hand. It’s true. And they will be playing in Richmond, at the River Rock Casino. What is the pull at the River Rock Casino? First Air Supply, then a quick one-two punch of Chilliwack and Trooper earlier this year and then I heard on the radio this weekend that Lyle Lovett is playing there. I don’t WANT to go to the River Rock Casino but its siren call may be too much. As it was for Steven Seagal and Thunderbox.

Thunderbox? Seriously? OK.

In other news, remember how a week from Friday we were going to be moving? Oh, my ducklings, it was not to be.

Top tip re: buying your own place to live. When preparing to go into a situation where you have to make an offer on a property you like, have all your information ready. There’s the obvious information like: how much money can we spend without sacrificing our addiction to cheese and How much do we really like this place – “hell, yeah,” “fuck, yeah,” or “sweet Thunderbox, I can’t live without it, yeah.” Then there are small, seemingly trivial bits of information which can become important because you will have to commit to something called a Possession Date. This is the day you can move into your new home. You will probably have to commit to this date a month or two in advance, while you are sweating, doing math, deciding on the scale of house love, it may be your birthday and you may also be pregnant. (Well, it’s possible.) You will have to write this date in stone on a legal document and then work your world around it. Think hard about this. The Possession Date will come. Will you be ready?

The night we made the offer on our townhouse, we allowed our agent to suggest that our possession date should be April 1st, because, as she reasonably put it, “you’ll have to leave your apartment on the 1st.” That made sense to us. Only 2 weeks later, after signing paperwork, getting a mortgage, hiring a lawyer, hiring movers and giving our notice to our landlord, did we remember that when we moved IN to our apartment, it was Halloween. What day is Halloween? The last day of the month. Is it the first day of the month? No, it is not.

Our landlord confirmed that we would need to vacate our apartment by noon on March 31st, leaving us 24 whole hours to hitchike to the new place…oh wait, but we already had movers. Maybe they could just drive realllllly slowly?

But it was OK. We checked with our movers, movers we had used when we moved into our apartment on Halloween 1.5 years ago, movers who had, in the interim, really screwed a co-worker of mine (after I recommended them to her) but whom we still deemed trustworthy having pronounced the co-worker the crazypants in this particular situation, and our movers said, “Yeah, no problem; we’ll park the truck with your stuff in it, overnight, in a location of your choice and you can even padlock it with your own lock and then we’ll pick up the truck the following day and deliver it to your new place after noon. Sure. Dude. Of course.”

We relaxed.

We packed.

We cleaned.

It’s a damn good thing we did all those things.

This past Friday (the 24th), SA called the movers to confirm the location of our truck’s overnight parking spot (my parents’ place) and that we could padlock it ourselves and that we were still on for the 31st/1st.

I listened to the following half of a telephone conversation from bed, where I was resting up from the walk home from work.

“Hi Mover Guy, this is SA, just calling to confirm our move on the 31st.”
“Actually, it’s NOON, not 1 pm, but yes.”
“OK, and we can park the truck in Burnaby, at my in-law’s place?”
“Is there a problem?”
“Well that’s a little different than what you said 3 weeks ago.”
“No offense to you or your men, but I am a little bothered by the fact that our stuff will be in a truck with someone else’s stuff and that we can’t park the truck where we want.”
“That’s not the problem, the problem is that you’ve changed your story since we last spoke. Also, it’s all the stuff we own. We just want to be sure it’s safe.”
“Don’t you think it’s unlikely that we will find other movers ONE WEEK from the end of the month?”
“Let me discuss this with my wife and I’ll call you back later tonight.”

When he found me, I was hiding under the bed with the catt, rocking gently from side to side.

“So,” he said.
“Argghhhhhh!” I said, “Should have listened to Co-worker G! She wasn’t crazy! HE’S the one who’s crazy! INSTITUTION!”
“Yeah, anyway,” he said, “apparently they’ve taken another overnight job. And they have to park the truck in their own lot, but they’ll divide our stuff from the other peoples’ stuff with mattresses. Oh! And one of his guys will sleep in the truck to keep it safe.”
“No!” I said.
“That’s what I thought,” he said.
“Is he insane?” I said.
“He told me if I didn’t trust him, I could cancel the job and find another mover. He also said he thought there had been tension between us from the start.”
“…”
“He really said that.”
“Well, have you been sleeping with him?”
“…”
“Or did he maybe ASK you to and you said no? You know you shouldn’t cavort with movers. They’re very needy.”

In another hour and a half, despite it being Friday at 6:30 pm, we had hired new movers for the 29th and the 1st, booked a storage locker to hold all our things in the interim, confirmed with my parents that we could camp at their place for 3 nights instead of 1 and ordered pizza. Online! You can order super greasy disgusting Pizza Hut pizza online! I love living in this world.

Then we called Crazy Mover back.
“We won’t be requiring your services,” said SA with just a slight edge to his voice.
“No, we won’t.”
“Thank YOU. Goodbye.”

“What’d he say,” I said.
“He said, ‘Oh, man, really?'” SA said.
“You broke his heart, you know that.”
“Yeah, I know.”