Pre-Move Costco Run. I love Costco.

(Part 20) Ok, move time is upon us. First, I have an extra couch that was left for the garbage downstairs a few days ago. It’s a perfectly fine couch and the roommate loves it because it’s purple. So I hauled that upstairs and Flatrate told me it would be an extra $150 to move it. I can buy a used couch for that much. Anyway.

My schedule this holiday weekend is kind of packed (no pun intended). On Thur. I move. At 1pm, on Thur., my parents’ flight lands at JFK, and they will be visiting for 4 days. They leave on Sunday, which is also my birthday. Then I have to take a major professional exam on Monday. Oh, and BTW, my parents are not currently speaking to each other, so that should be fun. When we planned the visit, I didn’t even know this part of Brooklyn existed. They thought they’d be staying at my nice place, doing fun things, while getting along. But things change, now they’re staying at my “cheap” place, helping me unpack, while not speaking to each other. Oh, and Clay Aiken was supposed to be in Spamalot when I bought the tickets, but now he’s not. My parents are huge Idol fans, so I picked that show, even though I’ve already seen it.

Anyway. I don’t even want to tell you what the plan originally was, because it sucked, but I came up with a new plan. Wed. at 4 pm, I left work to pick up a zipcar truck (ziptruck?). I also bought a gps navigation unit shipped 2 day express (thank you amazon.com prime). I make the roommate guard the truck (no tickets please), and I park right behind the UPS driver who has my gps unit (timing). I carry the roommate’s couch down and load it into the truck. I also haul down two air conditioners, and some tools. Off to Flatbush Gardens. I drop the roommate off to pay the remaining money on our places and get the keys. I park and start unloading. We dump the stuff off and immediately head to Costco. Which was insane, especially the last several rows as Costco employees are yelling “the store is closing in five minutes!” I don’t even want to tell you how much we spent, but even without my new glasses, it was a new Costco record for me. I think it was a new personal record without counting the glasses or roommate’s stuff.

We load the truck, and head to the UPS depot. That took some effort to find, but get there a little before they close to pick up the roommate’s air conditioners. There are crazy, crazy people at UPS at 10pm in Brooklyn.

Back to Flatbush Gardens for the Costco unload. It’s painful. We forgot my shopping cart, so we’re stuck with a cardboard box and a luggage cart. It’s not too bad, but certainly not fun, and we’re getting very tired by now. The cart breaks with a huge final load, so one of us is stuck like an idiot in the middle of the courtyard watching the stuff while the other takes slow trips up to the apartment. We meet a nice lady whose “baby’s daddy is up in this building with another woman.” (Roommate’s building). She advises us that it’s a crack house, and in the 16 years her baby’s daddy has lived there, she’s been attacked in a life threatening way 3 times. Anyway. She seems a little, um, upset, and just generally not happy with the area or the building her baby’s daddy is currently in (her terms, not mine). So, we take her warnings with a grain of salt, and also, 16 years is a long time. The current management admits before they got there, fixed it up, implemented very strict rental application guidelines, and added a 24/7 security force, that it was a crack house with a serious crime problem. We hope today it’s not so much.

Once the stuff is finally in the apartments, I install the air conditioners, and we go home. I’m asleep by 4:30am and up again at 8am. Good times. I through some laundry in the washer, take a shower and go downstairs to feed the meter that starts at 9am.