jducoeur

A lot of you know this already, but for those who hadn't heard: Niki is moving back to Philadelphia. We didn't have a big fight or anything (never mind the rumor mill, which has apparently kicked into overdrive); we still care for each other a lot. But we realized that the relationship wasn't going where we needed it to, and decided to move on while our friendship was still strong. And while she's developed a lot of friendships up north, the core of her personal support system is in the south.

I hope that the folks down there welcome her back, and value her properly. She'll be much missed by many people up here...

It occurs to me that I should post an update.

unicornpearlz has been successfully moved up here -- my deepest thanks to everyone who helped out. There was No Death, which is really the important bit in a big move like this.

Load-out in NJ was a tad stressful. The truck was about 45 minutes late arriving at the agency, so we started a bit late. We did get a couple more of Niki's friends helping out, as well as several neighbors. (Who were a mixed bag: at least one was clearly there solely for the purpose of calling dibs on as much furniture as possible, and was doing as little work as she could. Eventually, Alexandra got fed up and told her to get out; there wasn't *quite* spontaneous applause at that point, but it was a near thing. OTOH, there was an older lady who was genuinely friendly and helpful, even if she couldn't do any of the heavy lifting, so I'll count the neighborhood as an overall positive.) So we were a bit understaffed, but not quite as dreadfully so as I was worried might be the case yesterday morning.

Anyway, we got things loaded into the truck reasonably efficiently, and got things done by 2pm, only about an hour after I was targeting, so I was impressed at how well everyone pulled together. (I also learned that Dorren is a bloody lot stronger than she looks -- I think she did more of the heavy lifting than anybody else.) The only really tricky bits were the hutch (large and full of glass) and the piano -- small by piano standards, but a piano nonetheless, so it was a challenge for me, Dorren and Ken to get it into the truck. Blessedly, Niki's aunt had called her handyman to unload the piano (which was being passed on to her cousin for the time being); he was a long-time mover, and he and his apprentice dealt with getting the thing out of the truck again and up the stairs.

She and I had talked about downgrading to a 10-foot truck; fortunately, none were available, so I was stuck with the originally-planned 16-footer. This was the biggest thing I'd ever driven, so I was a bit nervous, but it proved to handle a fair amount like the cargo vans I take to Pennsic every year, only More. Less visibility, wider, harder to figure out where my butt is when changing lanes on the highway, but generally not really hard to handle. (Changing lanes was greatly helped by Niki tailing me -- we tacitly worked out a system where I would signal, she would switch lanes and run interference, then I would switch.) And it was a good thing, because we filled it most of the way to the roof, and still had to leave her sleeper sofa behind, the one major sacrifice to the moving gods.

Load-in to the storage units today was smooth as silk. I'd reserved a second unit after looking at the apartment and realizing that we needed it, so we wound up with Furniture Land (in which Yevsha and Peregrine played Furniture Tetris with great skill, fitting everything in with room to spare) and Box Land (the rest of the unit with my comics). Folks turned out in force, so we had a good dozen people helping -- my deepest thanks to all the folks who were able to make it. It was a testament to the Carolingian Moving Company that we got the truck completely unloaded in just about an hour, after which we adjoured to my place for pizza.

So we seem to be pretty well set. Niki will be starting to come to dance practices and such when she can make it -- I encourage y'all to introduce yourselves and welcome her to the Barony...