Adrift in Japan

And We're Off!

We've got a Yellow Cab mini-van picking us up in half an hour to haul us and all our luggage off to SFO. We'll be leaving around 11:50 pm and arriving Thursday evening in Sapporo. Hopefully we'll have internet access in our apartment by Friday with the help of one of Matt's labmates. Wish us luck and see you in Japan!

We're Out

The packers came on Friday and wrapped up our kitchen and our breakables. Salvation Army came and hauled away all of the things we decided to donate - clothes, old electronics, unopened food products. The movers came on Saturday and, in the space of 3 1/2 hours, loaded up most of the rest of our belongings into a moving truck. Matt thinks they underestimated how much stuff we were going to have. In fact, the estimators who had come before thought it was perhaps going to be 3-4 storage containers, but after loading our stuff up into the truck, they said they would try to fit it into 4, but it will probably be 5 containers, which means an extra monthly storage fee. But what can you do? Since we ended up not storing anything in our condo's storage unit, all of that had to go to our off-site storage as well, so that might have made the difference.

After they left, we still had a lot to do. After a "quick" lunch we ran some errands, including dropping off our digital cable box at the Comcast office. We were cleaning and packing and bustling around before going out to Boulevard for dinner, which we had never done before (Capsule review of Boulevard: nice atmosphere, good food, but overpriced considering the great meals we have had recently at places like Zuni Cafe and Gary Danko).

Back at the condo, here's a picture before packing of what we decided to take with us to Japan. After packing, we've got 6 large bags plus a ski bag with two pairs of skis. We're probably going to leave one bag with friends and pick it up from them in October and then send it pack with parents sometime early next year.

On Saturday night we crashed at the condo on our air mattress. On Sunday morning, we did a little more packing and organizing before breakfast at Town's End with TA & CB (congratulations on your engagement!). Afterwards, we rushed into Fredricksons' to buy some paint, which turned into a test of patience when there were several people in front of us who wanted paint and the line moved slower than a snail. I wanted to yell, "Please! I just want a quart of white semi-gloss!" But we managed to get out of there and Matt did a great job of repainting the bathroom ceiling. We moved all of our luggage into the storage room to get the condo empty. We gave Ky all the rest of our kitchen items - plasticware, sodas, tortilla chips - for his trip to Burning Man. Afterwards, we dropped off several cases of wine at AMF's place, where he's storing them for us in his garage. He also took two boxes of good but undonatable (read:open or things I thought I might keep) food items which he said he's pick through and figure out to do with the rest. He got some great Scharfenberger chocolate along with a lot of spices and various staples like vegetable oil. Afterwards, we went back to the condo, loaded up about half our luggage (too much for just one trip) and drove our way down the Peninsula to the place we're crashing with friends. What a relief to have a place to relax.

It's Monday! We've been waking up so early that we've been awake already for an hour and a half. We're running little errands in the morning such as shipping my mom a painting, buying an Apple iSight, and having lunch with a couple of aunties in Redwood City. Afterwards, we'll head back up to SF to get a safety deposit box, pick up a few additional copies of our marriage license, and haul the rest of our luggage back down. We'll drop off the garage door opener and all the keys in the condo. It's a little sad to say goodbye to a place that's kept me so comfortable for nearly four years and that was Matt's and my first home together. Pictures of the abandoned empty condo coming soon. Renter moving in on Wednesday.

Counting Down

Days till Departure: 13
Days till Movers Empty Condo: 9

Until yesterday, I hadn't really be stressing out about the move. Maybe I just wasn't that conscious of the fact that we are moving in (now) less than 2 weeks. It still seemed like something out there in the future. Now it's imminent and there's still so much left to do. You just have to take a look around the apartment to see what I mean, and that doesn't include to-dos like donating the Subaru my parents lent to us, figuring out how we plan to do our banking in Japan, and cancelling all our accounts. At any rate, yesterday I had a terrible tension headache that seem to give me little stabs every time I moved my head. Today I'm feeling better and I'm about to head off to yoga for a little relaxation. This afternoon Matt and I are going to the Chagall exhibit at the SFMOMA. Our empty boxes are getting delivered tomorrow so packing will start in earnest.

Interestingly, now that we're moving, Comcast has upgraded our cable system. Just two days ago, our digital cable service went out. I called yesterday to get it checked out but I got a somewhat unhelpful service person on the phone who said she'd set up a service appointment. The person apparently came by but couldn't get into the cable box and didn't bother to let me know. So today I called them back and got a great guy on the phone who knew immediately what my problem was. First of all, the woman yesterday had not punched my correct problem into the computer. Secondly, a service visit was not even required. Russ, my helpful service guy, realized right away that upgrades were happening in my area and sent some signals to my cable box. When it came back up, my channels had moved around, and suddenly I had the increased bandwidth I've always wanted, and TV stations I've wished I had such as Animal Planet, Comedy Central all 24 hrs (instead of split with CNBC), and even more stations of HBO, Starz and Encore. Wow. And we could finally get cable modem broadband access here now. Sigh. At least we can enjoy our gazillions of channels for the next 8 days. Thanks, Russ! (I actually took the time to leave a voicemail for his supervisor to let his boss know he did a great job)

Moving into Storage

We've made progress on planning our move. We got a couple of estimates for moving and storage from Marin Moving and Shamrock Moving and Storage. The estimators were both nice guys, but Michael from Marin Moving (they are partnered with United Van Lines) was more impressive. They have great technology, which he used to enter in to a hand device the quantities of various things we had and total up the amount of space and time it should take to move, to compute our estimate. He also had one of those little impressive portable printers. The estimates were surprisingly close, although there were some small differences. For example, Jose from Shamrock estimated 4 containers of stuff, whereas Michael thought we could do it in 3, really full containers. One of the companies said 3 movers, the other said 4. One budgeted in some packing time, the other didn't. Shamrock offered us one month free storage, Marin Moving didn't. They have different approaches to pricing our eventual move (next year) out of storage to San Diego. Matt actually put together an Excel spreadsheet comparing all the costs for the two different movers. Yes, we're a little geeky, but thorough. The prices were so close though that breaking it down didn't really give us a clear winner.

In the the end, it came down to something simple: references. Not only did Shamrock provide a book of reference letters, I actually had heard from a work colleague who had used them for a move that they were really good. Plus, we get the extra bonus good feeling that we are supporting more of a local, family business than a big conglomerate. We called them to schedule our move. Friday Aug. 22 they will come for up to 4 hours to help us pack up our fragile items (they assume more liability when they pack those items) and bright and early on Saturday the 23rd they will come, load up our stuff and haul it off to storage for the next year.

I had to call Marin Moving to tell them we decided to go with someone else. That's always the worst part of any decision. The guy who answered the phone (both places had very good customer service, by the way) asked if he could ask why we decided on a competitor, so I told them we knew someone who had had a good experience with them. Matt yelled from the other room I should have said they were cheaper (they were, but not by that much. Except for that free month of storage).

It's all starting to come together. Now we just have to get off of our butts and pack our stuff away.