Don Xml's Grok This

Hell week is finally over.  I don’t know what is worse, trying to move all in one day, or spreading it out over 10 days (but I don’t know if I could have done it in one).  My dad came up for a couple days and helped.  Besides the painting and moving that he helped out with, just having a third adult around for deliveries is a blessing.  Dad, thanks again. 

Here’s a bunch of various observations:

• After living in a house for almost 12 years, you really accumulate a ton of crap.  I spent the last 4 years knowing that we were probably going to move, and did my best to clear out as much crap as I could, but we still wound up with about 150 boxes of stuff (and that doesn’t include clothes, and with 3 females in the house, there is a lot of clothes).  Everything still isn’t at the new house yet.  I’ve still got two 10x10 storage rooms (both just over half full) of stuff to move to the house.  But first, I’ve got to clear up the boxes at the house.
• Cablevision (or cable in general) is the biggest scam artist in town.  My local cable company (Cablevision) never “turned off” the cable, even though the previous owners discontinued their service on the closing day, but the cable company said that a technician had to come out and turn it on (and charge us for the service call).  They wouldn’t give me the 2 digital cable boxes while I was at their office, and charged us to hook them up, even though a first grader could set them up.  The technician tried to scam me out of even more money, by stating that he “had” to check each cable connection (in just about every room of the house, at $17.95 per connection), or disconnect them.  That is the biggest crock going.  Don’t fall for that one, they have no right to touch any connection other than the ones you give them access to.  As long as the signal strength is good enough for the connections that they are setting up, there is no reason to touch any of the others.  If signal strength is a problem, call in a third party (like Landing Wiring, if you are in NJ), they are cheaper than your local cable company, and probably do a better job).
• Suburban Propane also tried to pull a scam on us.  My new house uses propane, instead of oil or natural gas.  Typically, a local propane provider owns the tank that is on your property (unless you buy it yourself and have it put in, which they charge you through the nose for), and you can only buy propane from that provider (other providers will want to see your receipt of ownership for the tank before making a delivery to a tank that they don’t own).  Suburban Propane knew that the house was sold (because they had to do a final reading, which was 20% of capacity).  Our community gets a bulk rate discount from Suburban Propane for the months of August thru April, so it is in our best interest not to buy any propane (or as little as possible) from May thru July.  The previous homeowners said that 20% capacity should make it until August (since it is only used for cooking, hot water, and the dryer).  So what does Suburban Propane do, but show up on Thursday, without a call from us, and fill the tank, and leave us a bill for about $700 dollars.  Now, we never called them, and haven’t even set up an account with them, but they delivered propane to us anyway, and left a bill in the mail box.  Well, my wife blew a gasket, and called them and told them to take it back, since we never asked them to deliver propane, which they promptly insisted that that couldn’t be done.  After arguing with them for a while, she eventually agreed to buy what was delivered at the group discount rate of $1.59, instead of the $2.29 they were originally trying to charge.  Not a perfect solution (since you can get propane for around $1) but at least I don’t have to worry about running out during the summer.
• The lawn at the new house is enormous, and needed to be cut when we closed on the house.  I tried for a week to get a landscaper to come in and take care of it, but in NJ, most of the landscapers are fully booked, so I was out of luck, and had to mow it myself.  Now, at my old house, it had a small yard, so a normal self propelled mower was all I needed, and the lawn was done in a half of an hour.  But with the new house, it is on over an acre, and thankfully most is still trees.  On Saturday, I broke down and spent almost 4 hours mowing it with my old mower (and I didn’t even trim it yet).  I must find a landscaper if I’m going to get anything done this summer.  I’ve already got a couple numbers of landscapers that already do yards in my neighborhood, so hopefully; they can squeeze my house in, since they are in the area anyway.
• Soft water is hard to get use to if all you knew was hard water!  I’ve only known hard water, so getting used to soft water is going to take a while to get use to.  I’ve always had public water that was from a well (not a reservoir), and it was always filled with calcium and iron (Morris County, NJ, has enough iron in it and could supply the U.S. with all of its iron needs for 300 years, or so they say).  The new house has well water, but the owners added a water softener, so now I have soft water.  The first time you take a shower with soft water, you will immediately notice a difference.  Soap actually lathers up, and I actually thought my wife had switched to one of those female friendly moisturizing soaps.  It feels kind of oily, until you dry off.

I’ll add more stuff as I get time, but I’ve still got a lot of unpacking to do.