The big move - part 2

We were able to sleep in a little bit the following morning, which was amazing. James' dad stayed home from work to take us to the airport. On the way there, he stopped at the hospital where he and Jeanne (James' mom) work, so we could pop in and say goodbye, which was nice. It was so strange to say goodbye to her knowing that we weren't going to be just a car ride away anymore. We also met the doctor that Jeanne works with, which later turned out to be fortuitous.

Mark drove us to the cute, sunny and remarkably empty little Bakersfield Airport and we hauled our two big cardboard boxes full of clothes (you can take a lot more on a plane in cardboard boxes than you can in heavy suitcases), James' computer bag, a duffle bag carry-on, my big duffel bag/purse/computer bag, and Winston's cage up to the check-in counter. The friendly ladies at the counter were very curious about Winston and they cooed over him a lot. But when it came time to actually check in, they realized that Winston would pose a problem since he's a rodent (apparently the chewing could be a threat to the airplane even though he was in a cage). One woman made a lot of calls about how to handle him, and the verdict was that he couldn't come aboard the plane. I was horrified at the thought of having to leave him in CA, even though James was assuring me that we could mail him through FedEx overnight and everything would be fine. I started to cry a little, and the ladies continued making calls, and they finally told us we couldn't bring him aboard unless we had a doctor's note saying that I was emotionally dependant on Winston and that I needed him to fly with me.

This is were Jeanne's boss came into play. Mark gave him a call, and the doctor faxed a note over to the airport, and we were allowed to bring Winston on board. It's a good thing we went to such a small airport with such friendly staff, because if we'd been at LAX, I bet they would've said no and that would've been that. Also, it's good it was such a quiet little airport because we were waiting at the check-in counter for quite a while but since there was no line at security (at all!), we were able to make our flight no problem.

We landed in Philadelphia around 10pm on Wednesday. We had Thursday to recover a little bit and to do some errands like buying Winston a new cage. He travelled in a cat carrier, and we threw out his regular-sized cage back in LA. It was too small for him anyway. We went to petsmart and got him a huge cage, which he loves. On Friday, we meant to leave for Boston in the morning, but somehow we didn't get on the road until early afternoon. The delightful result of this was that we hit rush-hour traffic all the way across Connecticut. We didn't get to our apartment/extended stay hotel until after 10pm. At which point the leasing office was closed. And the "late night check-in" phone number didn't work. And we didn't have the code to the late night check-in key box, where I knew our keys were waiting for us. So we ended up having to go to a Motel6, which was beyond sketchy. There was a guy checking in before us with a woman that we had reason to believe was a hooker. Classy place.

But anyway, we had a place to sleep, and it was warm, and dry, and the sheets at least appeared to be clean, so it was fine. The next day, we were pretty steamed that the leasing office hadn't sent us the code to the lock box so that we could retreive our keys. We went back to complain, but they didn't open til 10am, but we had an appointment with our realtor at 10. Which was annoying because we were all pumped up to complain and demand a refund or something. But we had to go meet Marj and we spent several hours looking at houses with her, then James and I continued to look on our own for a while.

We finally made it back to Princeton Properties (the extended stay hotel), and checked in. The room's small and not fancy but it has a little kitchen and an air conditioner and a TV with cable and we're making it work. The dresser is small and we each have three little drawers, so we're basically living out of boxes for the next month or so, but it's fine. It's nice to have a place of our own, actually! Living with my brother was nice, and had its perks, but it's also nice to have privacy and a place of our own.

Next up: the house!!