Shoes and ships and Comcast cable and escrow deadlines and things

Tomorrow the mover guys will pick up a last load of stuff at Dale -- the heavy stuff that we can't (or would rather not) just load into the car and put our backs out moving. The mover guys will take the load to the loft where they'll drop off some bits and pick up some bits. From the loft, they'll head over here where they'll carry the heavy stuff down the steps and up the steps and up even more steps so we don't have to.

The multi-stage move on Wednesday went well. This is the third time we've used these movers (Eastern Moving, SF) for this exercise in shifting from old shell to new. We told them we only needed two guys this time and explained what we were hoping to accomplish. His nibs had been at work Tuesday and I spent my day moving things around at the loft to make room for the pinball machine the stagers had used and to clear the way for the movers to fit the other stuff in.

The two guys Eastern sent were ones we'd had before. Nice. Competent. Careful. Eastern always sends a crew with at least one crew member who manages enough English so we can communicate.

The truck they brought was bigger than the one they'd used the other two times -- bigger than we really needed -- so big that they couldn't come down the Montgomery without risking whacking parked cars. They had to park the truck at the gore point where Montgomery splits and walk the stuff down to where the steps come off Montgomery and then down to our place and up to our front door and then up to whatever floor the stuff belonged on.

Luckily, there wasn't much stuff to move down and up the stairs. Most of stuff we moved Wednesday was dropped off at the loft, where we picked up a few things. The movers only had to move a few things that had come from Dale, a few things from the loft and a variety of potted plants that I couldn't bear to leave behind and that I thought might survive the change in microclimate. The plants we left down in front to use in the front yard, such as it is, that we share with the neighbors, so the movers didn't have to carry those up to the deck.

We were very happy the movers carried the cast iron bench that had been at the Brittan ranch up to the deck. The very heavy bench was the main reason we hired someone to help us with this move instead of us making multiple trips back and forth carrying plants and cast iron benches and stuff.

Thursday we'll finish clearing out Dale.

Thursday, my younger brother came by and we loaded my three large dragon pots into his car, along with some decorative grasses. The pots were too heavy ("and where will we put them, Sal?") to take with us and I hated to give them up. I was very glad my brother wanted them and they wouldn't just be left behind for the buyers who might not care one way or the other.

We rushed back because we had a meeting scheduled with the Comcast supervisor, who was to appear some time between 12 and 4 to discuss the wiring issues with our Comcast cable hookup.

He never appeared. No one called.

His nibs called Comcast on Friday and never got a call back.

Talked with the neighbor last night. He says that they have Comcast for their TV reception and the cable has never worked right so he's spending $$$ to pull wire into their place to hook up to satellite TV. Why don't we consider that too?

I told him it wasn't the TV I was concerned about. I want my Comcast high speed internet. "Well, that's easy," the neighbor said. "You don't need Comcast. Put a repeater up in your place and tap into my wireless connection."

We'll see what the next week brings, whether Comcast ever gets back to us, whether we'll take him up on his way generous offer.

Come Friday, if all goes well, escrow closes.

Escrow didn't close yesterday. The buyers' money (they'd made an "all cash" offer with no contingencies but turns out were depending on someone else refinancing paper they carried to come up with the cash) never arrived at the escrow office and the other agent wasn't returning our agent's calls. When the other agent finally did call, he said his clients were in New York and he couldn't get hold of them. Our agent was =not= amused. He used the phrase "this malarkey" several times in his back-and-forth notes to us.

I found it hard to believe that the buyers would risk their downpayment on the off chance that we wouldn't really mind if we didn't get the money when they promised it. Good gravy. A contract is a contract and you just can't unilaterally decide you aren't going to meet your contractual deadline.

Luckily, his nibs was at work yesterday and I was at the warehouse, sorting through boxes of papers, trying to lighten the load before we move said boxes up to the loft. Warehouse lease is up at the end of the month and we have to have the space cleared.

Luckily, I decided to stay shuffling through papers after lunch instead of running a load or two up to the loft, because he called around 3:30P. By then it was obvious that escrow wasn't going to close. Chuck, our Realtor, had papers for us to sign. Chuck FAX'd the papers over and his nibs walked them over for me to sign and walked back to work, where he FAX'd them back to Chuck. A while later he came over with more papers for us to sign.

New deal is that the buyers have until Monday 4P to come up with the agreed-on price. If the $$ aren't at the escrow office by then and they haven't agreed to a changed contract (higher price in exchange for two extra weeks to rummage up the dough), the house goes back on the market Tuesday and I'm back doing yardwork and planting pretty flowers and getting our stager team to re-stage without the stuff we pulled out on Wednesday.

Fun, eh?