life hereafter

random musings from a wannabe economist

I spent yesterday helping the family move from one part of New Jersey to the other. Moving day is never a fun day.

We ended up starting at about 6am, taking the boxed items and cramming our cars. (We couldn’t rent a truck until about 9am). After two trips back and forth from the old house to the new, it looked like we had barely made a dent. At 9am we were able to get the big truck and pack all the large furnature, bedroom sets, mattresses and TVs. Then we loaded up our personal cars again with as much random stuff as possible.

At this point I feel it is necessary to point out that items weren’t exactly packed into boxes before I came to help with the move. Everything was just kind of haphazardly thrown into whatever container looked like it could contain the item. Plates weren’t wrapped, and it is amazing that none of them broke.

Around 12 the entire family decides to show up, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, they all came. So not only is the house in utter and total disarray, we now have 12 extra people running around, getting in the way, asking where the food is, and completely unable to help carry anything heavy. Of course, we now have to feed these people, so my brother and I run over to the Italian deli about halfway down the street and order about $200 worth of sandwiches and french fries.

Next we headed over to the storage unit to load all of the furnature that my mother purchased but could not store in her current home. And of course, this was the heaviest furnature known to man. For some reason everything was made of marble and glass. At this point in the day, things started to get a little heated. Everyone had a different opinion on how we should load the items in the truck, where we had to place them so we wouldn’t break anything, and what to do next in terms of loading. By the time we got these items back to the new house and unloaded them, it was starting to get dark and we had to return the truck to the rental place.

Unfortunately, we were not done with getting all of the items out of the old place. My mother’s office was still completely put together.

The entire time we were doing all of this loading and unloading, the only room in the house they completed putting together and unpacking was the master bedroom (of course).

I ended up spending the night on a mattress on the floor with no sheets and an uncovered pillow. Woot.

–

Comcast has not completed laying wire to this area and so they are not ready to sign up new customers at this location. On the other end Verizon has completed laying the necessary hardware for FiOS, however they haven’t finished marking the area as “existing” in their systems and so can not create a workorder for a tech to come out and complete the connection. My mother decided to buy a place in the middle of no-where and so there are no stray wireless networks. This place is completely devoid of any connection ot the outside world.

With that, I’m off to Verizon Wireless to sign up for a USB device to at least get one desktop computer on the Internets in this house. Whenever Verizon proper or Comcast decide they wish to service the area, they can cancel the service and get something a little more substantial. For now it looks like the only forms of entertainment will be reading, watching others play Wii and any DVDs that have managed to be unpacked.

Ugh. I paid an expensive bill ($411) twice. I guess I thought I was being proactive when I was really being forgetful. Just checked my bank statement and sure enough, six days apart I sent them two checks for the exact same amount! No wonder I thought my checking account balance looked low

…

Just got off the phone with “sam” from India. I now have a check on it’s way with the credit. Sweet!  It’s almost like finding money!

Around 1pm I decided it was time to go for my weekly supermarket run. I went out to my car, and click click click, was the sound of it not starting. Ugh. I had to rouse the roommate and get out the jumper cables. After a few minutes of trying to remember the order to connect everything in we started his car and then attempted to start mine. click click click. So we decided to leave it for a few minutes. After about 20 minutes and a few attempts, I realized that the battery was probably too far gone to save and I would have to find another one.

Around 4:30 I got a ride to Pep Boys and purchased a brand new $90 Energizer battery. Now, they sell batteries for about $40, however my car had to be a V6. I got the new battery home only to find out after thirty minutes of trying that I do not have a tool long enough to remove the screw at the bottom of the old battery holding it in place. Ugh.

At this point I seriously considered just giving up on my car and bumming rides for a few weeks. Then someone reminded me that I have AAA and I pay them good money. After a quick phone call I get them to agree to come out to the apartment, however they will not install the battery I purchased, I will have to buy one from them. Fine, just come out here.

After the poor guy got lost for a good hour, he finally found my place and took a look at the car. Then he asked me to show him the battery I bought and offered to install it if I didn’t “tell AAA.” No problem. The guy got it in the car in about 10 minutes and the thing runs fine.

I am a child.

When left to my own devices when I am outside of the home, I eat garbage. I am currently in the airport and my dinner consisted of mozzarella sticks, potato chips and cookies. Need I say more?

It’s like leaving a child at home and saying “cook your own dinner.” What do they do? Eat ice cream.

Today I had the distinct pleasure of going down to City Hall and serving as a potential juror. Last night I called the selection commission’s number in the hopes that my instructions had changed and I did not have to appear. No such luck.

The time I had to appear was 8:15, which is actually an obnoxious time. If I take the 7:52 train, there was the chance I would be late, and in contempt of court. If I take the (next earlier) 7:24 train, I would be there at 7:40 and have to wander around a section of Philadelphia I do not particularly like to frequent just to “kill” time. I ended up taking the 7:40 train, getting a pretzel at 7-11, sitting under a tree and watching an individual get arrested for assaulting a woman. I had better not get selected as a witness in some other case…

At 8:15 I went into the Criminal Justice Center and handed in my summons. After swearing I was not a city employee, I went to a rather large room with flat panel television screens to wait. As I waited I had to ask myself how much of my city wage tax went to fitting that room with seven 42-inch flat panel tv sets. We were all given a questionnaire for both criminal and civil trials. The questionnaire contained such questions as “are you more likely to believe a police officer because of their job,” or “have you or anyone close to you ever been sued.” After answering a bunch of the questions I was convinced that no defence attorney would ever want me on their trial. THEN the selection commision shows a video about how to anwer the questionnaire, for those I presume could not read or did not know what YES and NO really meant.

Shorthly thereafter, two judges came into the room, one of which gave a brief history lesson on our branches of government and how the Judicial Branch, and namely the jury system was the only way we as American citizens can truely affect how we are governed. According to him everyone in the Executive branch was corrupt. (Should they really have had him say that?!?!) Then another judge came in and said basically the same thing.

Next we were all assigned to a case and given a juror number. I was number 39/40. That could have either been good (they already picked all 12 before they got to me) or bad (they didn’t have 12 yet and I was going to be on it no matter what.) My case was a civil trial and I was told that they were considering settling.

After what seemed like forever, they came in to tell us that our case had settled and we were “free to go.” Apparently I was being held against my will…

At least I have one year to NOT worry about getting called again.

Looking back on the experience now, with a peculiarly melancholic kind of bewilderment, he recognizes that he walked onto an elevator one night, with his life in one kind of shape, and emerged from it with his life in another.

I am quite sure I will never feel the same in one again.

This was quite the weekend for injuries.

1) Friday after work one of The Firm’s partners had a few people over for some volleyball and swimming. Now, I am not very good at volleyball and my general strategy is to make sure that if the ball comes near me, I send it away as quickly as possible. How I accomplish that is through a series of flailing arms and hands. On one particular volley heading my way I tried to hit the ball open palmed. Unfortunately the angle the ball and my hand were at ensured that the ball would only hit my left ring finger. The result was a jammed swollen finger and some broken blood vessels. No big deal, just a bit painful.

2)  This morning I went for a ‘training ride’ with a few people who will be doing the MS 150 with me in September.  While riding on Main Street I managed to get myself into an accident. I was riding behind my roommate who was riding behind a black car. The black car decided to turn right, into a parking lot, without using any signals or providing any notice. This caused my roommate to brake quickly and veer right. In order to avoid hitting him I tried to brake quickly and go around the car on the left. Unfortunately the woman driving the car saw my roommate in her line of sight and decided to stop very short. This did not provide me with enough reaction time to move more quickly to the left and I crashed into the back of her car. My hand was caught between my bike and her trunk, my front wheel scraped along the rear bumper of her car. As she calls out “Are you okay?,” I screamed back, “just fine thank you!” Later I realized that I banged up my right hand pretty badly, but it was really only superficial.

3) Waiting at a stop light I didn’t unclip from my pedals fast enough and I fell on my right side. Right in the middle of the street. If you were in a car at the intersection of Kelly Drive and Calumet Ave you probably had yourself a good laugh.

With the amount of klutzy things I manage to do it is a wonder that I haven’t managed to break anything in twenty years.