pins and needles

It's now exactly ONE MONTH until Chris and Dante will be moving here, and I'm so excited I can hardly think.

The original idea was for them to rent a U-Haul, pack all our stuff (and the cats) into it, hitch a car trailer to it, and drive to Haines, AK where they would ferry to Juneau. Then Chris decided that perhaps taking the car wasn't the best idea, so he decided to sell the car (he hasn't done that yet but I know the woman we bought it from wants to buy it back).

Then I got into a minor car accident with my Toyota. Basically, the streets were a mess after a snowfall, and it was hard to see what was street and what wasn't at this particular intersection (it's an exit instead of a right turn). I was meaning to go straight but was too far over to the right and hit the exit/median instead. It wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been the exact right mix of darkness, street mess, and precipitation messing up my windshield. Nor would there have been any damage to my car if there hadn't been a sign for the exit that I hit.

The signs are designed to snap off when you hit them and they just spring right back up, so I'm not being charged with anything, and there were no other cars involved. My darling Toyota has a busted headlamp, a slightly dented hood, and a completely destroyed front bumper. A full repair job will be twice what I paid for the car, but just to get it street legal is going to take 2-3 weeks (no local parts) and $1,000. So there goes Chris's ability to rent a truck and drive (although it was looking doubtful anyway).

So now the new plan is that Chris is going to sell 99% of our possessions and he and Dante will fly out here. In a way, we're all relieved; the drive was going to be a huge pain in the ass, and I was worried about the  cats. In another way, I'm kind of freaked about jettisoning all our stuff, particularly since I will not be present for the process. But we do have a lot of stuff that we don't need, and doing things this way will actually give us a bunch of money left over to replace stuff that we DO need. Renting the truck would have meant we'd have pretty much no money when he arrived.

Not everything is going; some stuff will be shipped here and a very few things will be stored. And in one month, the boys will fly out here, and we'll all be together again.

In the meantime, I'll be taking the bus to work until my car is (somewhat) fixed. This week, my other roommate has been driving me, as he works next door, but he's going to be traveling for the next two weeks. Fortunately, there IS a bus that would not work on a permanent basis (it gets me to work an hour later before I should be there and I end up shorting my work time by about 30 mins) but which should be okay for a couple of weeks anyway.

I'm told that ditch diving is a rite of passage here, so I'm hoping that's the worst accident I ever have.