Lizet's Place

We've been back to the apartment for 4 months & 10 days and I'm slowly trying to get my room back to "normal". Mostly I'm doing it so I can get out of the expensive storage unit and to a lesser expensive unit (from $124/month to $80/month), but I need to bring the stuff I'm absolutely going to have in my room back to my room and everything else will be moved to a smaller unit.

Friday I brought home 4 boxes of book. I went through 2 of the boxes and shelved 50 books (I had 5 on my shelf that I got from Christmas)! Today I opened another box and shelved another 20 books. I still have 1 more box to go through...plus another 8 or so boxes in storage. Yeah. I have my own library and it might be growing again soon lol

I also need to go through my DVDs. I got a few for Christmas and I need to shelve them properly (in alphabetical order) so I can find them easily.

In other news...yesterday morning I went to a graduation. My adopted sister, the girl I used to babysit, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology. Being at her graduation made me want to re-visit the idea of going back to school for my Bachelor's Degree, but I can't narrow down what I want my major to be in. I go from Criminal Justice to Law (heading towards law school)...to...I don't know what else I'm interested in that would be worth spending more money I don't have to get a degree I won't be able to use. But I really miss being back in school. It's almost kind of sad.

eta: possible major: Public Administration w/concentrations in either Administrative Management, Criminal Justice Administration, Nonprofit Management, or Public Personnel Administration

1. Borrowing my Pastor's car for today and tomorrow.
2. Parents are back.
3. We have keys to the apartment.
4. The apartment has that new apartment smell (aka fresh paint smell)
5. I have blinds in my room. No more sheets for curtains!
6. My room looks much smaller than it was before. that's odd
7. I GET TO SLEEP IN MY ROOM! even though I'll be on the floor.
8. My room will have a Hawaiian/tropical theme to it. Pictures to come much later.
9. We start moving furniture in tomorrow, Friday and Saturday!
10. I have to pick up my stuff from my sister's place as well as some blankets from storage

I think that about sums it up. I need to call the Pastor's wife to inform her of the change in plans and hope it's okay for us to keep the car over night. we'll be without one if not.

So I'm just getting out the shower and someone's banging on the door but by the time I get there no one is there...and there's an amazon package sitting on the planter.

At first I thought it was the first books that I ordered and I was going to send it back...but the box was too big and rattled too much. So I opened it and HOLY CRAP! YEAH! Christmas came 4 days early!

Thanks you so much HUNTRESS69! (if I could do the LJ coding on my phone I would)

5 mystery movies and a CD!

I'm gonna try hard not to open any of the movies until Christmas Eve.

Also got confirmation on when the parental units return home. January 9. Sadly don't have a car to pick them up so I guess my sister will do that or they'll have to take the bus - depending on when they get back. Also, I don't know HOW they're getting back. It will either be by plane or train. Tomorrow I guess, I will call and find this out. Will also ask about when we will begin moving furniture back in so I can take the week off from volunteering to help...and enlist the aid of my friend who helped move us at the last. minute. Thankfully there's no rushing this time.

Speaking of packing and moving...going to put in the change of address tomorrow so that by January 10 we will get our mail back to the apartment. I don't know what my sister is going to do since she gets some mail here and some mail to our place for the kids school. I guess for her she can just wait until January 15 when the change of address expires and hope that everything gets back the way it was before.

Again from the beginning!

Sunday afternoon I had quite a bit of help packing up. Then my sister had to go and ruin it all by throwing away my dad’s stuff. He told me to go through it and if it was still good to either keep it or give it to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. He told the same thing to my sister, but to her, everything was crap and hadn’t been used in at least 15 years so could be thrown away. ALL OF MY DAD’S PHOTOGRAPHY EQUIPMENT WAS THROWN AWAY! I had a mini breakdown at that. She didn’t get why I was so upset. THE STUFF WAS STILL GOOD and could have been donated or sold! Cynthia thought it was funny how I was acting and was making a joke about it. Same for Jasmine. I didn’t get the chance to go through the stuff to see what was still good or not. Just because my sister may have known our father longer, I live with him now and I think I have a pretty good idea that he would have kept his photography stuff, cleaned it up and either donated it or sold it. Sorry, he doesn’t have that chance now. There was totally space in storage for it too!

Monday I went back to the apartment for the last of my things and as I was loading it to the car, the owner came. I’d never introduced myself to him, but since I’m doing stuff on my parents behalf while they are on vacation, I thought it was the right thing to do. So I did that and told him about the big pieces left in the apartment because the dumpster was full and he said he’d take care of it. I didn’t mention that we left quite a bit of broken trash in the garage from when that was crashed into. Then I went to storage, dropped off my stuff and then dropped off the apartment keys with the property management.

Then I came to my office so that Jasmine could type up a paper. OMG she has the attention span of a gnat or something! It took her 2 flippin’ hours to type a 1 page paper! But she finally finished, we went to lunch then back to my sister’s place. Then Marlin can’t harping on wanting to watch tv, so I said I’d set up the tv I brought over. I went to do that but a cable was missing. I thought I had an idea where it was, but when I went back to storage for a 2nd time and spent 2 hours there, I didn’t find it. Stuff is all moved around in storage that I don’t know where to look and it very well could take me 6 weeks to find it. I might just buy a new cable today.

Was able to watch Hawaii Five-0 last night (OMG it was so good! I typed up my running commentary thoughts and posted them), but had to sit through 90210 and Gossip Girl. OMG! I wanted to bang my head against the damn wall!

I’m stupid. I don’t know how to connect my laptop to the wireless connections that are available around my sister’s place. Like my laptop recognizes there are wireless connections available, but it won’t connect to them and they’re unlocked too. So now it looks like I will be coming to my office every day. There are shows to download, movies to download and other online things I need/want/have to do.

Speaking of things I have to do…I need to e-mail my supervisors and let them know I’m available to come back to the clinics for volunteering. I meant to do so last Thursday, but clearly my mind was elsewhere. I don’t even know if I’ve been scheduled for this week because no one emails me the schedule anymore!

I’ve got the rest of the day ahead of me. I’d like to be watching tv, but I also want to be on the internet. I can’t do both though. *sighs*

But I need to start at the beginning...

On November 7, I posted that I wouldn't be able to post again/be online until Friday, however that wasn't the case.

Wednesday my parents went to get the Uhaul truck and were gone for nearly 6 hours! Why? Not more than 15 minutes after they got the truck, they got into an accident! The brakes went out and when they moved to the left to avoid hitting a car, they still hit the car and big time crunched that car's trunk in! Since this happened after the Uhaul facility closed, they had to call the 1-800 number to get them to contact someone who could bring a replacement truck. Police report was taken, no one was injured, however, they got hone far too late to even begin to move stuff into the truck.

Thursday, we started bright and early at 7 am and loaded the truck. HOLY CRAP! It took us, and by us, I mean, me and my dad, 3 hours to move the bulk of the bookshelves and 2 beds. Then it took another 3 hours for us to unload everything into storage! By the way, it started to rain while we were unloading the truck! I wasn't a happy person at all! That night, when we got back home, had the intention of packing up more of the truck, but that didn't exactly happen. I ended up falling asleep (on my floor with hardly any blankets because they were packed away!) at midnight and my parents were still packing up!

Friday, when technically we should have been done Friday, we still had a corner china cabinet, dining room table (my mom wants to keep), 2 dressers and a bunch of other crap to move, oh and they were still packing! I loaded up the car and told my dad I was going to pick up my friend/cousin Cynthia because she offered to help us move the remaining stuff. I pick up Cynthia and in 3 hours we get more stuff loaded into the truck and car and make another storage run. We should have been able to make 2 runs and get the entire apartment packed and loaded to the truck and to storage before they had to be at the airport, but I think my parents were running on fumes. My dad was not doing anything he needed to do. Finally I told him that we were going to load the last 2 heavy furniture units on the truck, he was going to call Irma (the manager) and see if there was a way I could turn the keys in on Monday) and they he had to wash up and put on fresh clothes so they could leave. My dad called the Uhaul people and worked it out with them for me to return the truck since it was nearing 12 pm and they needed to be at the airport before 130 pm. The Uhaul was left at storage, Cynthia went with us to the airport and my parents made it through everything with minutes to spare! When they got to the gate, they had begun boarding! Cynthia went back to storage with me, and in 30 minutes we had that sucker empty and were taking it back to the Uhaul facility. Here's were more drama happens! We used a quarter tank of gas and my dad was supposed to give me money to fill it back up. He forgot, and that's understandable, and I didn't know how much it was going to take to fill the tank back up. I put in $10 but aparently that did nothing because it was still at 3/4 tank. They charged me, well my mom's card $55 for that! On top of having the truck out 2 days instead of 1. The guy who my parents were dealing with came in and was like "you weren't supposed to charge them for gas because that was the deal I had with them after I took the replacement truck to them on the 7th." Well the card had already been charged and I don't have it since it's my mom's and they're on the other side of the country on vacation. So the manager (who initially charged for the gas!) is going to give us $50-$55 off our next rental.

If we didn't have Cynthia's help, I don't know what would have happened. Irma was nice enough to allow me to keep the keys until Monday ad Cynthia and Chad will be helping me pack the remaining stuff to put into storage. My dad said I could throw a lot of the damaged stuff from the garage away.

I have my fingers crossed that today and tomorrow we can get the stuff packed away and into storage. Irma said she needed the keys at 9 am on Monday, but my dad said I work on Monday so I have to get the keys to her as soon as possible. The apartment will be worked on first thing Monday morning.

My parents are safely on their cruise ship with my Aunt and Uncle. My parents will be out of contact until November 18 when they get to my brother's place.

I'm at work now trying to get some stuff I neglected earlier this week and last week, then I have to wash clothes, pack them in storage and go back to the apartment and finish packing up. I hope I get all this done by Monday!

It's 3:30 pm, the day before we're supposed to "turn the keys in" and the apartment is still furnished? My parents room looks like it still needs to be packed and the living room looks like a tornedo went through it.

My dad's been pounding it into me that the apartment needs to be empty TODAY because the keys get turned in on Wednesday, but he and my mom just went to get the moving truck.

Oh and storage gate locks at 7 pm, so anyone on the property has to be out by like 6:50!

We're going to be moving stuff until 6:50 Thursday night and cleaning walls and whatever the rest of the night and come Friday morning, the keys will be turned in.

Oh and my parents are going on vacation (and renovations will be done to the apartment while they're gone) for the rest of November and part of December but depending on when the apartment is finished, they probably won't be back until the New Year. So anyways, they leave for their vacation Friday at noon (flight is at 2 pm)!

WAY TO FUCKING PROCRASTINATE!

but I get the computer and TV longer.

my room would be a lot more empty if I just put the remaining boxes in storage and if I need something from them, I could go to the unit and get it out. I just have this fear that I'm going to absolutely need something that got packed into storage at a time when I can't get to storage (like my medical documents)

As it is, my sister told me she has space for one of those 56 quart storage boxes and a suit case. I'm going to see if I can get away with 2 of those storage boxes and my suit case. In one storage container I probably have 2 weeks worth of clothes (that's 4 business casual sets and 4 lounge sets).

Since I have to have my room basically empty by Wednesday of next week, I'll just finish packing everything and deal with the what if's later.

Another weekend of packing. But tonight's the homecoming game at my old high school. I hope my nephew gets to play tonight!

I was checking my shopping email address and there was a notification from amazon about 666 Park Avenue. So I click on it and it's a sale on the book. That makes sense because of the TV show. It was like $9 or something so I thought what the hell and bought it. Then I saw there's a sequel, The Dark Glamour, so I bought that as well, and on January 2, a third book, The Lost Soul, is going to be released (I pre-ordered it). I have some reading for while I'm at my sister's (though I'm going to be working on my big bang fics mostly)

In other news, I have a deadline for when my room needs to be completely packed. Last night my dad said I needed to plan to have my room empty by November 7th. Okay, I can do that. So long as there's space in storage for me to put everything.

I've e-mailed J & N that I wouldn't be available to volunteer October 22-November 9 so that I can devote more time to packing, then eventually vacuuming once everything is moved out.

I'm wondering what all is going to be done to the place. I know new carpet will be put in and the walls painted. I hope ceiling fans are installed and vertical blinds. I hope new flooring is put in the kitchen and bathroom. I also hope they fix the faucets because they drip a lot. I doubt they can do anything about the water quality because our water is shit. After every shower there's like a nasty grime or something on my body and it's like I never took a shower. I'm pretty sure the pipes have to be worked on too.

All in all, the place isn't that bad for not having major improvements since we moved here in June 1986.

I'm also giving myself another 12-24 months of living here. Of course this totally hinges on if I get a full time job and I can afford to move out. but realistically, I haven't found any apartments in the state of California that weren't a ridiculous amount per month.