Moved!

Okay, we're all moved in now. I suppose I didn't actually mention the fact that Mike and I were buying a house together, but as I posted photos of the one we had made an offer on, it was fairly obvious. At any rate, the sale went through, and on December 21, we moved into the first house either of us has ever owned, which was all terribly exciting.

We had the worst movers in the world--their strategy was to basically be rude to you and tell you that you weren't doing things right in an attempt to get you to pay more for their alleged difficulty. And they tried to charge us for their own commute time--in other words, they showed up at 4, but said that we should start paying them from 2, as that was when they left their office.

Mind you, the quote they'd given us already had an extra charge for "distance," which I think is fair enough, but I'm not going to pay that AND a spurious charge given at the last minute.

Fortunately, Mike is considerably bigger than the guy who was being mean. I was alone at the flat initially, and when Mike showed up looking like someone whose girlfriend you don't want to make cry, the nasty bloke started being strangely polite.

I felt sorry for the guy working for him, who was obviously a very nice guy trying to make a living. He was embarrassed.

At any rate, we eventually just asked them to dump everything in the living room and GO. No matter how nasty a mover is, with any luck, you never have to see him again, so just get them out of your house as quickly as possible.

I've never paid anyone to help move my stuff before--every other move has been me and possibly a friend or two, with a big van. But having two slipped disks in your back makes you consider the options. All in all, having someone else carry the heavy stuff is a good plan.

Mike has become Mr. Tool Man. To wit:

I had firewood delivered the next day so that we would be able to have roasty fires (the house has two fireplaces) for Christmas. Mike had to rush out and purchase two, count them, TWO axes. He explained that you need the big one for chop-chopping, and a little one for making kindling. Okaaay.

In the process of putting things away, I realised that I needed an additional shelf in one of the kitchen cabinets, and, as there were several boards in the garage that would serve nicely if cut down to size, I asked Mike if he would mind going to the hardware store and picking up a circular saw. He said he could just cut it with a little hack saw, but I pointed out that now that we have a house that will need things doing to it occasionally, it's not like we're never going to want a circular saw.

Now, because he had originally sort of balked at the idea of an extra purchase, I foolishly thought it was safe to send him off to the hardware store ALONE. This is a mistake I will not repeat.

He came back with the circular saw, two hand saws, an extra blade, and a large hammer. Evidently the TWO hammers we already had weren't proper man-sized hammers, and heaven only knows what was wrong with the hand saw.

So he's been happily wandering around finding things to use the tools on and swearing.