Empty, Bud Light Platinum – the new Zima, Post Pics Dummy!

Wow what a weekend.

Ali was off on Friday and spent the day at home pretty much all day doing the final packing.  When I got home she gave me a rundown of what she did.  She did a nice job of separating stuff, leaving me the core basics I will need.  Despite it being the eve of her moving out of the house we still clung to our Friday night Biggest Loser and pizza tradition, almost like nothing dramatic was happening the following day.

For the most part we didn’t spend the night focusing on it being the last time for this and that, dwelling on that would just have been a recipe for more negative feelings.

We had to prepare to time a race Saturday morning as well.  This was a big race, the third biggest of the year.  Despite it’s size, it got relatively little attention from me leading up to the event because of the other turmoil in my life right now.  We got the car all loaded and ready to go for a 4:40 am departure the next morning.

Because of the size of this race there are a lot of moving parts.  I told the race director Matt that we would basically handle laying out and running the registration area.  This year we were allowed to utilize the lobby of the Naples Philharmonic for registration which was a huge help.  It allowed us to split the registration functions apart, dramatically improving the congestion problems we had the year before. Despite the large numbers of people the pre-race scene was pretty orderly, as orderly as 900 people can be I guess.  I never saw any substantial lines in any one area.

I had some help with getting my timing stuff running.  A guy that already does timing of local school cross country and track meets volunteered to give me a hand and learn the timing system.  Over the years we have had a couple people talk about helping with timing but none have worked out for various reasons.  Well this guy is the first one that definitely has the skill set to do so because he is basically already doing it.  He used different hardware to time things but the mindset is the same.

It will be cool to have a safety net when it comes to timing but to be honest, right now I need the money.  I’ll time whatever they throw at me.  You want to do two races on Saturday and a third on Sunday? No problem, bring it on.

As a whole the race went very, very well.  The only timing issues I had were those related to human error, something at this point that I have come to expect, getting bent out of shape about it doesn’t help.

For the race Matt got a moving truck from a local moving company that he has close ties with.  He was kind enough to allow us to use the truck for moving Ali as well, all we had to do was dump some gas in it after we were done.  After we were done cleaning up from the race I headed out in the truck while Ali drove the Camry.  She had to stop at her new place to hand them the move in check and get the key.

When I got home I didn’t have time to do my normal post race stuff, I had a number of things to get done immediately before people showed up to help with the move.  I had to rip apart Ali’s computer and computer desk and get other stuff ready to go.

One of the first things I had to do was pull the Water Monster off the moving truck so we had room to load stuff.  The Water Monster is a monster water cooler as the name would imply.  Well this sucker is big and relatively heavy.  I wasted no time hurting myself as I tried to wrangle the thing off the back of the truck myself.

Once our help started to arrive we got busy with the moving process.  Since I spent a year or so driving truck for Goodwill I had a basic game plan for how I wanted to load the truck.  Even using my moving experience I doubted we would get all of her stuff moved in the 15 foot straight body truck in one shot.  I was wrong.  Between packing the truck to the gills and utilizing the vehicles that people brought with them we actually got pretty much everything in one shot.

The dogs were funny as we were making trip after trip into and out of the front door.  They plopped themselves squarely in the way, evidently excited to see all of the feet and legs walking by.  Repeatedly we moved them only to have them come back shortly thereafter.  We left the dogs in the now gutted house while our vehicle caravan pulled out.  We figured it would be pointless to bring them along until the new place had the stuff in it.

I was quite nervous about the process of loading stuff into the new place because of the stairs that include a 180 degree turn in the middle of them.

We first offloaded most of the boxes into the garage where the women could shuttle them up and down while we worked on getting the furniture up into the place.  Surprisingly, the steps for the most part weren’t as bad as I thought they could be.  The turn around section was big enough to accommodate most of the furniture without a major hassle.

We saved the most challenging thing for last, the sleeper sofa.  To get this monster upstairs we had to set it on end once we reached the turn around point and manhandle it from there.

All in all we got everything moved in record time.  From start to finish, we utilized less than three and a half hours.  After the last box was unloaded we hung out a bit with the people that helped us.  Thank you Todd, Chris, Christy, Scott, Taylor and Rebecca.

After people left Ali and I headed back to the house, I stopped to throw gas in the truck so she got back before I did.  I was surprised to hear that one of the dogs took a dump in the house while we were gone.  I guess I shouldn’t be though.  Being alone in a house that looks totally different  than what they are used to was stressful I am sure.  By the time I got there Ali had cleaned it up thankfully.

We used the return trip to get a few items left behind like Ali’s 4 bikes and a few other items. We had to put the Water Monster back in as well.  Ali followed me back to the moving company building to return the truck.  After that we stopped at Panera to eat dinner and then Super Target for Ali to load up on immediate need items.  It’s nice that both of these places are about 90 seconds from Ali’s new place.

After dropping off the stuff Ali dropped me off at her place while she headed back out to the house to pick up the dogs.  I told her I would work on stuff like getting her bed back together in the meantime.  Not only did I get the bed up, I threw the sheets in the washer and got her new shower curtain up as well as unpacking more stuff.

The dogs were confused but excited as we lead them up the steps.  The sight of their familiar furniture was welcome.  They both hopped up on the sofa/ottoman immediately.  We let them sniff around the place as much as they wanted.  They still hadn’t eaten supper so we got that ready as well.  For the first time in years, Nicki didn’t finish all of her food, a sign of her dog stress I’m sure.

Ali and I worked late into Saturday night starting the monumental unpacking task.   I had hoped to also get her computer desk together before I left but that didn’t happen.  By the time I got home it was around 11 and I still had to quickly move the bed from the guest room to the main bedroom, get it sheeted and ready for slumber.

I think I closed my eyes a little after 11:30.  I was so damn tired at that point I hardly even thought about the fact this was my first night in the house officially alone.

I slept solidly through the night and actually didn’t crawl out of bed until 7:30 since I had no black and furry alarm clocks to nudge me.  I had to remind myself several times it was actually Easter, a holiday I typically care very little about normally, which this year meant even less.

The first thing I had to do was get the race results up and running, something people are accustomed to seeing a couple hours after the race.  After that I did some work picking up a few items around the house before I headed back out to Ali’s place to resume unpacking work.

I ran into some issues trying to get the computer desk back together, issues that required some additional tools like my drill which I retrieved later.  Eventually I got the desk up together and set up in Ali’s spare bedroom.  It looked pretty decent in there.  We tried to bogart some free wi-fi from neighbors but all of their networks were password protected and my attempts to guess their passwords were unsuccessful.

Later on Easter afternoon Michelle and Christy showed up to both belatedly celebrate Michelle’s birthday and dig into the piles of boxes in earnest.  Michelle is a minimalist and very well suited for the job.  I let the girls worry about where stuff went and I just concentrated with cleaning up the byproduct of their labor, breaking down boxes and depositing them later in the community recycle bins.

Ali got a couple pizzas for dinner and I snagged a 6 pack of Bud Light Platinum and Mike’s Hard Lemonade.  I knew nothing about Bud Light Platinum except I saw an ad for it during the Super Bowl.  To be honest I had no idea why they needed another version of Bud Light.  Well when I saw it on the shelf of the cooler I saw what the difference is, 6% alcohol content!

Most light beers that offer lower caloric numbers also have similar low alcohol volume content.  So if you feel a bit loopy on 3 regular beers you need to drink close to double that in light beer to match it.  Well with BLP you get less calories with high alcohol content, a winner for me.

It pretty much fills the role I used to utilize Zima for.  Zima had a very high alcohol content along with a relatively pleasing taste.  It was my go to “get drunk” beverage of choice when it was in production. Zima was not a reduced calorie product. Well it looks like BLP will now fill that role and maybe even surpass Zima in it’s effictiveness.

I had a total of three BLP’s and that was more than enough to get going.  It hit me pretty hard.  It is on the grocery list for this week.

I stuck around for a little while after Michelle and Christy left.  Ali and I made plans for me to return once again on Monday to go to the Comcast office with her to hopefully get her internet and cable tv set up.

On Monday morning I woke up early on my own, like 4:30 am early.  My mind got focused on all of the stuff I needed to do so I knew laying in bed was fruitless.  It was the first time I took to really take in the new reality of my living space.  It depressed me a bit as I went from gutted room to gutted room.

I figured the best way to keep my mind off of it was to get busy which I did. The great room was the most visually impactful, the huge space occupied by a sole recliner and nothing else.

I fired off the Roombas so they could assist in the clean up process.  I went around the house and cleaned up each room, removing unneeded cables, sweeping out corners and doing some minor rearranging to better utilize what stuff I have left.

I headed over to Ali’s place around 9 so we could go to the local Comcast office.

Ali had tried to secure internet/cable both online and via the phone several times leading up to Monday.  As is par for the course with Comcast, it was a very frustrating process.  She kept being told different things each time she contacted them, it was ridiculous.  Originally she was told she couldn’t get service until the tenants old service expired on Saturday.

Well Ali called Saturday to get it switched and Comcast said the old tenant actually has service until the 12th and the only way Ali could get service was if she walked into a local office with her new lease.  Sigh, so that is what we did.

The Comcast office was a busy place with lots of snowbirds dropping off their equipment before making their migration back north.  We probably waited about 15 minutes to talk to someone.

The guy we dealt with was nice albeit very, very quiet.  He was sort of hard to understand.  Anyway it took awhile but we walked out of there with her account set up and a Comcast DVR in hand.  We were happy that I was allowed to just hook everything up myself, saving Ali installation charges.

We originally were going to rent the gateway internet device but they didn’t have any on hand so we decided to just go buy one at Best Buy. After the first year you have made back your money anyway.  I found the Motorola gateway which pulls double duty as a cable modem and wireless router however it was expensive, like $160.  We could get a regular cable modem and wi-fi router for $50 less.  F it, that is what we did.

After Best Buy we stopped at Sam’s Club, I needed a few items and so did Ali. One of the things I got was a set of heavy duty ratcheting hold down straps to assist in transport of whatever furniture I would wind up with.  I figure I will be piling stuff on top of each other in the bed of the truck so securing the load will be crucial.

I stayed at Ali’s place until mid-afternoon getting both her internet and cable tv/dvr up and running.  Except for some annoying glitches setting up the wi-fi router it went pretty smoothly, requiring only a couple quick calls to Comcast to activate the equipment.  Ali was QUITE happy to be once again plugged in to the net.

We also scored a tv for Ali thanks to a lead from Jeremy, it is a 46 inch LCD for about $200 less than we have seen comparable models elsewhere. It even sold with free shipping.  It’s a great deal.

I headed out mid-afternoon, I had stuff I wanted to get done at the house.  Even though Ali still had a lot to do, for only being in the place three days she is in a real good spot.  It was sad saying goodbye to the girls but they seem to be doing ok in their new spot.  They definitely like all of the tile and the deck that looks out over everything.  They love hanging out there.

I had a bunch of stuff to do back at the house including more clean up and mowing the grass that was looking seriously ratty. I also took another Jeremy suggestion and emptied out the fridge in the garage and turned it off. I now have room in the main fridge for the stuff that was out there.  Plus running a fridge in a hot garage is a power drain that I just don’t have a need for right now.

I also worked on the finances last night.  Man it takes me a long time to crunch the numbers, made longer by reconciling the bank and credit card statements.  I now have a better picture of where I stand right now since our money is pretty much officially split at this point.  The belt will be on quite tight for quite awhile.

One of the things I have been looking to spend money on is some used furniture on Craigslist.  For the last week or so I have been looking for something to put in the great room.  I am amazed how many people put ads for furniture on craigslist but they don’t include pictures of what they are selling.  I can only assume these people are lazy or stupid.

I have seen some interesting options, unfortunately many of them appear to be in Cape Coral which is probably an hour drive for me.  Since I plan to use my Tacoma for transport it makes things more problematic since with a big sectional it would require multiple trips back and forth.

Well I think I have settled on something.  It isn’t a sectional, it’s a leather sofa and loveseat, both of which have recliners built into them, something I was looking for.  The one footrest has a small tear in it but other than that it is in good shape.  It is priced extremely reasonably.  So as of now my plan is to head there directly after work and pick up the two pieces, utilizing my industrial straps to hold the furniture on the back of the truck.

So here I am on the other side of the move.  A lot of people are not only amazed that Ali and I split but even more so with the degree of support and cooperation we have given each other so far in the process.  Ali thanked me repeatedly for all my help which of course I appreciated.  I am glad to see she has a solid starting point for her life reboot.

For my part I still have been trying to not dwell too much on the sad aspects of the situation, choosing instead to focus on what is ahead.  Looking in the rear view mirror too long will normally wind up with you crashing one way or the other.