DAVIDHERSH

Today marks three weeks out in San Francisco and all I can say is that its been borderline insanity.

I got out to San Francisco on the 8th and after one night at Shane's house, I spent the next eight nights on an air mattress in the new house. Just me, one of the cats (Lasher) and a laptop, although my new 46" LCD TV did show up after a few days to keep me company as well! Just minutes after walking into the house for the first time on Friday the 9th, I got a call from the Mayflower driver saying that he would be there the following Tuesday morning to deliver our stuff. I was pretty psyched, as this was the first day in the delivery window they had given us.

The goal of me being out in San Fran by myself was to get the place as ready as possible before Tracy and the kids arrived, and I certainly did the best I could. I had painters out to paint the kids's room, an electrician out to fix wiring problems, I installed custom closets, had a security system installed, had all of the utilities set up, in addition to a dozen other small projects. I also bought a car and found office space. Not bad for the first week!

Over the weekend I bought plane tickets for me to go out to St. Louis Friday the 17th to pick up the family and bring them out to San Fran. I figured that would give me three days to get most of the unpacking done. I woke up bright and early Tuesday morning to get ready for the movers. My phone rang at 7:30am and, instead of telling me he was out front, the driver informs me that he's not coming until Friday. He broke down in Reno over the weekend. Someone was supposed to have called me. Guess that someone forgot.

Needless to say, I was pissed. In addition to more nights on the air mattress, I've got a 2:05pm flight to St. Louis on Friday with movers now coming that morning. My options were to change the flights, which would have cost me a small fortune, or to pray that the movers got there on time and got everything unloaded in time for me to make the flight. I decided to roll the dice, which obviously meant that instead of everything being unpacked when the family arrived, nothing would be unpacked.

Fast forward to Friday morning. Again I get a call from the driver first thing in the morning. Again I'm expecting him to tell me he's out front. Again I'm disappointed. He says that he can't get his rig up the hills in my neighborhood. Probably an issue that would have been good to identify before the morning of the delivery. Have they never delivered to San Francisco before?! He said that they would have to transfer my load to a smaller truck to shuttle it up to the house.

At this point I figured I was screwed and was going to have to cancel all the flights. Best case I'd be getting my stuff later that day. I will give him credit, though, for dealing with the situation pretty quickly. I get a call from him three hours later, at 10:30am, and this time he finally is in fact in front of my house ready to deliver.

I made it clear to the driver that I had a flight to catch and that time was of the essence, but he was way out of shape and only had one other guy helping him. As the morning went on, I kept revising my drop-dead time for having to leave for the airport in order to make my 2:05 flight.

The last item was brought into the house at 1:20pm. I signed the papers, rushed them out the door, and nearly ran them over in the driveway as I sped off to the airport. All I had with me was an empty duffel bag to help bring stuff back. Since my return flight was 9:15am the next morning, I wouldn't need much. By some miracle, I actually made my flight. Got the car parked, cut to the front of the ticketing and security lines, and then sprinted through the terminal in my socks to get to the gate. Talk about a stressful day.

Of course, my connecting flight in Denver was delayed a couple of hours so, as usual, I got to spend some quality time in the Denver airport. Didn't get to St. Louis until midnight. Despite not getting much sleep, the next morning was great because I hadn't seen Tracy and the kids for almost two weeks. We got everyone packed up and out the door at the crack of dawn and were on our way to San Fran. I had a full nine hours in St. Louis. :-)

Needless to say, the following week was total chaos as we tried to get unpacked and get Tracy acclimated to her new surroundings. We've still got a ways to go, but most of the boxes are gone and the place looks more like a home than a war zone. We got Tracy a GPS for the car so she can navigate her way around town. San Francisco, especially our neighborhood, is much more of a car-oriented town than Manhattan and that's been a big adjustment for her.

Despite all the chaos we've managed to have some fun. We went over to Golden Gate Park one weekend and to a place called Children's Fairyland over in the East Bay last weekend. We're entering the warm season here in SF so the weather has been awesome. Lyla seems to be adjusting very easily. She loves the new house with her decked out pink room and a back yard to play in. She starts her new school on Tuesday, and I suspect that will be a little more problematic.

Definitely not an experience I'd like to go through again any time soon, but now that the worst is over I'm starting to get excited about exploring the area.