It's official.....

...I am in my new house.

This past couple of weeks have given me much to blog about, unfortunately I just haven't had time. So I will try my best to remember the past couple of weeks and give you a quick recap of what has transpired:

On October 24th we sold our house and the same day buy a new house. A good deal was made by all and I think everyone won in the deal. So after that the buy of our house had a home inspection done and everything passed for the most part. I had some painting to do and some other little things, but in all it wasn't bad. We start packing, now I had the intention on getting everything into the garage by the time moving day came around(Nov. 29th).

In the new house we need a few appliances, we need a fridge and a washer/dryer. I find that Best Buy is going to be running a sale on a washer/dryer that I want. So the Wednesday before Black Friday I go to Best Buy and order it. This was by far the best experience I have every had at a chain store. The service person was very friendly and knowledgeable. They didn't give me any grief about the sale or try to up sell me. They set up a delivery time that I was ok with, they even had the items advertised in stock in a warehouse in Baltimore. Next, I needed a fridge so we went to Home Depot to check out the Fridges, we wanted a Maytag since the other appliances in the kitchen were Maytag, and Home Depot sold Maytag appliances. The lady we spoke to that night was very nice and told us we may want to come back in a few weeks because they would be running a sale on the fridge we wanted at that time. We thanked her and off we went. We didn't order the fridge yet, but we knew what we wanted.

Ok so a few weeks goes buy and we are still packing stuff and running out of room in the garage. We also head over to Home Depot to order our fridge. Well I get there and am "greeted" by a rather arrogant man, who is really no help at all (should have taken this as a sign). He was very rude and short with every question we asked, but we had already worked out what we were getting so I bit my tongue and ordered the fridge and set up the delivery date, ok fridge ordered.

Moving day is fast approaching and we need to rent a truck to move all this stuff. Also, we ask our realtor to see if we can move some stuff a little early to the new house to help out with moving a whole house in less than a day. She was able to get us an early occupancy agreement form the builder of the house that would let us move stuff into the garage and backyard the day before the settlement, great! So with moving date in hand Allison calls u-haul. So as you can expect, anytime you deal with u-haul it is never an easy process. But we finally reach a deal on a 24ft. truck, we wanted a 26 ft. truck, but we got a 24 footer.

Finally moving day has arrived. Now if you remember I planned on getting everything in the garage to make this the easiest move ever. Well that didn't happen, probably got half the stuff into the garage. My friends Troy and Rich worked the day shift of the move. They were at my house when I arrived there with the u-haul, which believe it or not wasn't a hassle at all. When I arrived Troy and Rich were playing Baseball on the Wii. After Rich finished his game we were off to start moving.

We got truck load number 1 loaded. And drive over to the new house to start putting stuff in the garage. We get there and start unloading. About half way trough the unloading process Rich and I hear a bang and some thumps, basically something or things are falling in the truck and Troy is in there. Rich and I run to the truck to make sure my stuff, I mean Troy, is ok. We get there and apparently the wall of boxes we built when loading the truck has fallen, luckily Troy is ok and other than some christmas balls breaking everything else appears to be fine as well. We finish unloading and head back to the house, where Allison is waiting with pizza.

After we eat, we start with load number 2. Things are going fine, but not as fast as the other load. We decide to start loading my kids playset into one of the pickup trucks at the house. It's a rather large playset with swings, a rockwall, and a club house. Rich, myself, his brother and my neighbor Jay had taken it apart earlier in the week, I think. Either way, we load some of the playset into the pickup, it doesn't all fit, and head over to the new house for unloading. This went well.

When we get back Troy leaves and the night shift shows up, Jerry, Traci and Jeff. Keep in mind Rich is still there, what a great friend. The night shift starts on the loading process. After some time we decide to load the clubhouse into the pick up truck and drive it over to the new house. So I get in my truck and Jerry and Rich follow me over in Jerry's car (Jerry lives down the street and doesn't plan on coming back to the house). We get about half way there when I here something sliding in the back of the truck. Just about the time I turn around I see the playset fly/slide out of the truck onto Rt. 24 (a busy street i might add). Crap! I pull over and luckily Jerry was too busy talking to Rich to tailgate me. So he didn't get hit by the playhouse. Jerry and Rich pull over and start picking the pieces up out of the road. Jeff and I walk back to Jerry and Rich to look at the damage. All in all, I would say that it was probably the least bit of damage that could have probably happened. The roof came of and a few other boards ripped out form the screws, but it is definitely repairable. We load the pieces back in to the truck and drive to the new house for unloading. The rest of the trip was uneventful..and slow.

After unloading we head back to my house, minus Jerry, and finish loading load number 2. It doesn't look like we are going to make it. We are going to have to continue loading the next day. Rich and his family go home and Allison and I do a few other little things. I go to bed about 1:30am and Allison gets to bed around 4:00am(hey I have to work the next morning she doesn't) So before Troy left we made plans for him and Rich to come back in the morning to load up the rest of the swing set and finish load number 2.

The next morning comes around and I go to work and come back home around 11:00am. Troy and Rich had already loaded everything up and took the u-haul to the new house, what great friends. The people buying the house had a final walk through at 9:00am even though we weren't finished moving yet.

At 1:00pm we meet the buyers for settlement. Things for the most part went smooth. Just a couple of hiccups with some wording on the buyers mortgage application needed changed. But we settled on the old house and now it was time for us to go to settlement. Oh and we also saw Mike Noss, nice as ever.

3:00pm rolls around we meet our realtor and the builders folks over at the settlement place, Chesapeake Settlement Company. Everything went extremely smooth, nothing needed to be changed, all the paper work was already done. In all the settlement took 40 minutes and that was with me telling a few jokes, sorry Melissa. I would highly recommend Chesapeake Settlement, as well as Jeff from Wells Fargo. They were both very helpful along the way and very efficient. So anyway, yee-ha! We now own a new home. Oh did I mention Rich volunteered to wait at our new house for Comcast to show up, while we at settlement, is he great or what?

December first rolls around and between 8am and 10am, Best Buy is supposed to deliver our Washer/Dryer. 7:58am and Best Buy is out front. They deliver and hook up the appliances and give me a few pointers. Man, I like Best Buy. Home Depot is to arrive next, sometime between 3pm and 7pm.

At about 11am I get a call from our CIO/Sr. VP, to help him set up outlook. Why in the world is he calling me? Well I walk him through most of it, then my phone goes dead. Oh crap, I just hung up on the CIO! I put my phone on the charger to charge. A half an hour later I look at it, in hopes it has enough juice to give the CIO a call back and explain myself before i get fired. What? It hasn't charged at all. I move it to another receptacle and still no go. I try one last one that I know works and VIOLA! It is charging. Too late to call the CIO though. So 6:45pm rolls around and still no Home Depot. I check my cell phone and there are 2 messages from GE appliance delivery. They say they can't find my house and need directions. I give them a call back, but they are already closed. I then call Home Depot and they tell me to wait around a few more hours, that they will show up, they probably just needed to stop somewhere for directions. They also said if I don't get my fridge tonight to call in the morning and they will get a manager on it. Well 9:00pm rolls around and still no Home Depot delivery.

We wake up the next day and go to Home Depot. At first we tried to talk to someone in customer service, but they said they couldn't help and that we needed to go back to appliances. So we did, and lucky us Mr. Arrogant was working. We explained to him what happened and he got a store manager. The store manager was a complete DICK! His name was Mike, but it should have been Dick. We explain to him what happened and his first response is "ya, what do you want me to do about it". Then he offers us a loaner fridge, but we had to make the arrangements to deliver it our selves and install it, then bring it back when our Fridge that was supposed to arrive on Saturday finally shows up on Wednesday. I ask him if it will fit in the back of a corolla. He said nope. Then I am not exactly sure what happened, but we ended up just cancelling the entire order. So no fridge would be delivered. On the way home Allison called the Home Depot Corporate Customer Service and some how got us $176.00 gift card, but still no fridge. When I get home I look around on the internet and Home Depot actually has the same fridge $200 cheaper online. I know I am just asking for it, but I ordered it anyway.

Oh, sorry to jump stories here, but the reason the phone didn't charge was because the circuit wasn't on. I went to the basement and turned the breaker on and we got power. Ok, on to the rest of my week. Last night I receive a call from my wife. She apparently thinks she may have possibly put too much oil in the car and now it sounds funny and won't stay running. I leave work and go see the car. She did, in fact, put too much oil in, about 2 quarts too much. We drive down to the local auto parts store and pick up and oil pan and a cheap socket set. I drain enough oil so it is now halfway between the full line and the add a quart line. I try to start up the car but same thing. So we go over to the garage where the Explorer is getting inspected and pick it up and leave the corolla at the parking lot at my wife's office. She made arrangements today to get it towed over to the garage that we just got the Explorer inspected at. It has arrived there and the garage called me to tell me it didn't sound good. I told them i know and to fix it. I think they are going to need to rebuild the top half of the engine. Oh well these things happen i guess.

Oh and we still don't have a fridge, but it is supposed to arrive tomorrow. Probably today by the time you read this. I am sure there are things I am missing and just forgot to mention. But you get the jist of it. The past couple weeks have been hell, but hopefully things will get better this week and next.