The Big Move of 2009, Part 1  

Posted by Roland

Here it is, past midnight on Sat, April 18th. The move began about a month ago, and yet I haven't had time to blog about it. I'm going to have to break it into pieces simply to post it all since I don't have time or energy to make one big long blog. As I type this I'm on hold for the insurance company because I've been needing to do that for over a week now. I also needed to go to bed an hour ago in order to get enough sleep for if Drake wakes up. But I'm gonna post something darn it, so here goes...

I think I'll just outline the event for now, and provide more details as I can.

Wed, Feb 4th, 2009, I was laid off from Mythic Entertainment (an EA company). After some intensive job searching, exactly 1 month later on March 4th, I received an offer from Buzz Monkey. I accepted the offer on March 6, 2009. Then things got really busy.

First order of business was finding a place to live. Fortunately, while I was there interviewing, I decided to explore around and look for places to live. I found a few promising ones, but not much, and I didn't have too much time. I was lucky to have a friend drive me around though. So I had a vague idea of what to look for, and I had a list of homes via the internet that I wanted to drive by. But the real question was how to best coordinate the move. Having a very limited relocation budget, and time, I planned the move like this (in 10 EASY steps!!)

  1. Drive Violet's Xterra from Manassas, Virgina to Eugene, Oregon.
  2. Find a place to live.
  3. Fly back to Manassas, VA.
  4. Pack and load.
  5. Fly Violet and Drake to Nebraska so she could visit family, and so Drake wouldn't have to endure 1,500 miles in a car seat.
  6. Drive my car (with a loaded trailer) with Sebastian, our 2nd dog, to Nebraska.
  7. Pick up Drake and Violet in NE and all of us then drive to Oregon.
  8. Wait a day or two for the movers to arrive around Wed April 1.
  9. Unpack.
  10. Start work on Monday, April 6th, 2009.
That's it in a nutshell. I'll go into more detail on various steps later. Things mostly went as planned, but it was easily the worst move I've ever done.

P.S. I was on hold for the insurance company for about 20+mins, so I hung up. I'll have to deal with that another time. And soon.