Everything that could go wrong, did.

Not only did it rain on the day of the move, I hadn’t finished packing. From Friday morning to Saturday morning, I packed. Yes, that’s right. 24 hours straight. No sleep.

The moving guys were at least an hour late on Saturday morning, too, and only two of them were sent—not three. The cat man, who arranged the move for me, had told them 9 pieces of furniture and 60 boxes. Naturally, he underestimated. There were something like 80 boxes.

Worse? I had a ton of packing yet to do, and it would have to wait for a second trip.

The boxes I packed, of course, were neatly done, symmetrical, and sturdy enough not to crumple. The boxes the cat man packed, of course, were crap. I had five times more stuff to pack, a ton of books and computers and clothes, but he had two times more boxes. Go ahead and try to figure that one out. No, seriously.

You see? There’s something to being anal like me.

Next thing that went wrong? As the moving guys were loading the truck, there was a little mishap. My brand new $400 Sauder desk, the one on which my PowerMac G3 resides, or resided, got a little dinged. One of the moving guys kept banging on it to get it in a little further, and even as the other moving guy said, “No, no, no, don’t do that,” the desk decided to make an audible crack that had the cat man running and yelling, “What the hell are you doing?!”

Later, I find that not only is it dinged, it’s completely broken into pieces and beyond repair, so $400 worth of desk is now thrown into the trash. Thank you, moving guy. I now have an excuse to buy an even better one, but couldn’t you have broken my oldest desk and not my newest one?! Egad.

Worse, when we were all packed up and on our way to the new place, the cat man realized he left out a line in the driving directions. Naturally, that made the moving guys late—80 bucks an hour’s worth on what is normally an hour and a half commute. They must have driven all the way to Riverside to get to a Huntington Beach destination. Bleagh. So add an extra hour or two.

Another thing that went wrong? My jeans tore, across the right cheek, and I had no extra pair into which I could change, since everything was all boxed up. So there I was, unloading boxes with my ass hanging out for the world to see, going up and down the stairs and truck like some shameless hussy. Isn’t that special?

Speaking of which, even with the moving guys, I did a fair amount of labor myself—carrying many of my heavy book-ladened boxes up and down a flight of stairs. In fact, by the time we were finished, I’d been up 36 hours with only a meal or two and about a gallon of water. So now, I’m bruised and sore and stiff and completely drained, and to be honest, I have more to look forward to, as I still have more stuff at the old place.

Life is fun, and Murphy hates me.

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