Getting down to the wire

Back tracking a little bit. We had to gather up some of my dad's trains that he kept at other locations. He had about 20 to 30 at John's house, and almost as many (plus tools) at his work. When we went to his work again to get his stuff. His "boss" was still trying to convince us to let him come back to work. We had brought boxes for stuff and were gathering up his tools and his boss was going through the box and taking stuff back out. Which one of my dad's coworkers would put back in. At one point I told him that my dad was burned out and with all his other problems he would not be able to work there again. He just acted like he never heard me. One thing we picked up was a drill that had belonged to my grandfather, and I had not seen since I was about 11. I have since rebuilt it. The drill is about 60 years old.

sigh™... we have the truck back, we returned my friends car (with extra gas), and the day of the initial move is here.

The "two guys" and their truck show up and they are... Well, we'll call them Speedy, and lazy. Speedy (the guy in charge) and Lazy is probably some guy he picked up at a Home depot parking lot... Oh shoot! now I gots to tell you about what happened at the home depot. SIDETRACK!

Ok first off in order to tell the story correctly I will be describing skin color, those who have a problem with this can go here: http://www.hasbro.com/mylittlepony/en_us/ for the next few minutes.

WE went to a Home Depot days earlier, to pick up some locks for the second storage unit and more shipping supplies, it was in the part of town where the main road is called "Martin Luther King Junior parkway" (or something like that). The longest street sign I have ever seen. We are gathering up the locks and some packing supplies, and my breakfast (from McDonalds) is talking back, so I must retreat to the restroom. As I go in I notice there is a black guy in a scooter sitting about 15 to 20 feet from the door (just sitting there), (staring), (in to nowhere). Whatever... I have my own problems. I take care of business, and go to leave. There is another guy standing in the doorway trying to leave but something is blocking him. He kind of slides by the guy who was sitting in the scooter, who is just standing there as if frozen... In a pose that looked like he had reached for the door handle and someone shot him with a freeze ray. So I slip by the guy and start walking off when the smell hits me... I continue walking... Turn around... and see this guys pants (and underwear) hanging down halfway to his knees (he was holding the front up)... The source of the smell was visibly obvious...

I did NOT need to see that! He was still standing there, the last I saw of him.

OK were back, put down your pony game.

Speedy (so named) because he talked and acted like he'd had a Vente quad shot espresso, but he was all business. Lazy was... just there. I need to keep this endeavor under $300 so I have to take control of this situation from the start. They were going to cart the stuff to the end of the hall and then transfer down the stairs, then cart it to the truck... No no no, no... NO! My nephew and I had found that the small boxes fit perfectly through the window and it was just slightly over 6 feet from the window to the ground. So initially speedy was going to pass the boxes through the window and lazy would put them on the truck. Speedy quickly saw the error of his ways. as lazy could not move fast enough or get the boxes up the ramp, plus the ground was wet and the boxes could not be put down. They switched places with lazy complaining about... everything. I would keep lazy on track. The large boxes would be moved the hard way. In a reasonable amount of time they got all 85+ U-haul boxes on the truck.

We gave them the address and we all drove the 20 miles to Issaquah (the location of storage), where they unloaded the truck in record time (just under 3 hours)... THANK YOU JEBUS! I paid them $270, and off they went. NOW we have the majority, but not all (we had underestimated the Mary Poppins closet) of the stuff at storage, we are getting closer!

We made another run to the dump as well as goodwill to get rid of the couch, waterbed, and other furniture in the back of the unit.

You will note from previous pictures of storage, that there is less stuff going up the side walls. We had taken my dad at his word and thrown away a large amount of magazine and for some reason the multiple copies of MTH and Lionel catalogs. We did keep the magazines and catalogs from before the 60's. In the apartment we had thrown away a large amount of unopened "Fire Apparatus Journal" magazine. This will come back to haunt me (we thought he was getting them and just tossing them aside unopened).

Other stuff going on at around this time: I was getting no sleep on the "bed" maybe 3 or 4 hours a night, we were constantly checking the passes both through OR, and CA. We'd had a "coming to Jesus" meeting with all of the family a day or 2 after Nephew had arrived. The document I used for notes was 3 page outline with 13 subjects, 59 sub topics, 14 (sub) sub topics. It took at least 2 hours for the conference. My sister told me that when I called to bring her in to the conference, her husband said in a loud voice "ALL RISE!", "The Honorable Judge XXXXXX XXXXXXX Presiding!". Ha ha very funny.

After many, many tries we had gotten a hold of My dad's friend Dave, and he would be there to help us with loading the truck, Hallelujah! There is something kinda weird about Dave, which we will discuss later. My Nephew Said "Don't freak out when you see him", but would not tell me anymore than that.

We now started cleaning the apartment, well... I did most of the cleaning. Per the manager we did not need to do a really thorough job as the Kitchen Cabinets, Sink, and Stove would be replaced. The Carpet was going to be just covered over with some kind of flooring. So I only had to clean the Refrigerator (gross), The shower (gross), The bathroom sink (gross), the Bathroom Floor (gross), and the toilet (surprisingly not as gross as I would have thought).

Next Post:
"the final push and cleanup" or "I hope I never, EVER, EVER, EVER have to do that again!)