Moving To Seattle

The concept of moving, as in relocating to another city, was a heavier notion when I was younger. Though I moved faster and more easily then than I do now, the decision to leave LA this time took far less fortitude. In fact the decision made itself.


Lia and I both agreed throughout the moving process that it didn’t seem like it was really happening. Right up to the house being completely empty, nothing seemed different. Even as we drove away, it just seemed like another day. I do remember feeling dumb for not playing guitar with Mike downstairs until the last day, when he picked up one of my guitars and started playing some fantastic music. He's a great guitarist and I could have learned a lot from him.


And still, now that we’re settled in our temporary place in downtown Seattle, we feel this looming threat of having to return to LA, like we’re on vacation and all our problems are waiting for us back in The Shit. Or maybe that if I misbehave, I could be sent back.



The Move

With the move being paid for by Lia’s new company, having to haul boxes and tables and stacks of bricks up and down stairs was never on my mind. Something else was, though, and it didn’t rear its ugly head until I heard one of the movers slam one of my Klipsch speakers on the floor, face first, twice within 15 seconds. Someone else’s sticky little fingers were going to be all over my stuff, and that was something I hadn’t planned on worrying about.


Lia wouldn’t trust Dr. Jarvik himself with a stethoscope, but would trust a Romanian auto mechanic to perform open-heart surgery on her in a gas station bathroom. So when she found a Romanian guy, Marius, with his own moving company operating out of the Valley, he was a shoe in for the job. That’s not to say I didn’t like the guy, he seemed very trustable. But he showed up three hours late, and arrived with two of the skinniest Mexicans I’d ever seen, one of which was sweating cheap tequila. Apparently cheap tequila makes ones hands slippery, and thus makes holding on to heavy speakers all the more difficult.


Aside from my speaker hitting the floor, things went relatively smoothly. As Lia grew anxious about the little things that went awry, Marius told her that with moving, one should expect things to go wrong, and that a smooth move is sort of a dream. I would have been slapped for suggesting such a thing. But coming from another Romanian, it was law. But what he didn’t say, was that problems during a move happen much like dominoes falling, one smacking into the other into the other.


The movers being three hours late and the cleaning crew being a half hour early didn’t pan out. The cleaners – an old school Mexican man and a fat Mexican woman between 25 and 60 – were sloppily smearing dust around the house when Lia realized their work wasn’t cutting it, and she told them in three different levels of attitude, ranging from miffed to pissed.


Well, do the math – old school Mexican man + attitude and scolding from a skinny white chic = trouble.

At some point we noticed the cleaners were gone, and two wet spots on the wood floor, one right in front of the door and about the size of J-Low’s ass, and another in the hallway about the size of Paris Hilton’s. I was busy with the movers bashing a refrigerator down the stairs and I didn’t stop to investigate further.

Lia came to me fifteen minutes later saying she had something to show me. She lead me to the spots on the floor, and pointed to deep wood stains. Just before their hasty retreat, the cleaners, sensing hey weren’t going to make a dime on this sloppy job, and lacking any sort of legal recourse or established business in this country, as well as senior’s bruised pride, had wiped some nasty chemical on the wood.


I tried sanding it that night, but it required serious tools and experience, and even then, how would I paint it to match the rest of the floor? That’s why we didn’t leave for Seattle Thursday morning as planned. I had to find someone to come and professionally fix it. Ironically, the cost to fix the floor was the same as what the cleaning crew had asked for. Is this what robbing Peter to pay Paul means?

My father stopped by Thursday while Lia was out getting her nails done. I hadn’t seen him in a while so that was nice. We ate one last time at CJ’s, a greasy spoon around the corner. We spoke about terrorism, and illegal immigrants, and the future of the country. We didn’t discuss the move.


By the time Lia and I got the car loaded – jam-packed actually, inside and up top, it was 7:00 in the evening. We snapped one last picture with our downstairs neighbors Mike, Paris and Dylan, and hit the road – already exhausted.



The Drive Sucked.

I did my last three years of college in Colorado, and used to make the drive home to LA often, sometimes just for parties or my mother’s cooking. That was 14 hours and toward the end I could do that drive no sweat. Lia and I made the drive to Seattle before, and we did it straight, with Lia shouldered much of it.


But if I’m not rested I can’t handle long drives. Lia, rested or not, has this unnatural ability to stay awake. The irony is that though I can’t keep my eyes open behind the wheel, I can’t sleep in a moving car either. I’ve never had an acid trip as bad as a long car drive when I’m tired. It’s horrible.

I pointed at most every hotel I saw begging for an hour’s real sleep, but Lia insisted on driving straight through. Then, after 19 hours on the road, there were questions about where we were going to stay when we got here. Lia had made arraignments with her company to pick up keys to our apartment. But after a few phone calls, things were up in the air. It turned out we had to stay in a hotel. With two cats in the car, we had to get creative sneaking them in.



http://www.hotelmaxseattle.com

We stayed at a place called Hotel Max. I thought The W Hotel was trendy, but The W didn’t come complete with condoms and a petite-size vibrator under the Bible drawer. The valet guys were cool taking care of the car, which had attached to the roof my golf clubs, a pack full of our personal belongings and my mountain bike. And we didn’t get caught sneaking in the cats, both of which were completely freaked out by the trip.


And, it was Lia’s birthday. As tired as we were, we showered and went downstairs where we were told was the best sushi in the city, a restaurant called Redfin. Of course they were going to tell us it was the best, and we were so tired we would have eaten anything just to go to sleep. Turns out, that with all the sushi Lia and I have had, Redfin was the best sushi we’ve ever come across. Mind blowing.

We slept great, got the keys to the apartment and snuck the cats out. We waited for our car to be brought around by the valet, and waited, and waited, and waited. Lia walked to the corner and looked down the street, then she disappeared. I waited, and waited, and waited.

Remember the bike on top of the car? Yeah, the valet dude drove the car through the short entrance, not the one with the high door, smashing my bike, breaking the rack and driving it into the roof of my ride.



The manager was apologetic, and offered to buy us a round of drinks. He took pictures, I took pictures, and he assured us the hotel would be taking care of it right away. And I think I’ll be having the ginger Manhattan.


Our apartment is small, but Lia is taking to it pretty well. It’s nice, with a window view across the alley to Lia’s office. I’m tired after my first day in the office at my job, and the TV show Age of Love is getting good, so I’m gonna go.



More to come.