We didn't have to return the U-Haul until Thursday; our three-day rental covered it until then. However, we were done with it, and it took up three spaces in the apartment's parking lot, so we wanted to just drop it off and be done with it.
This was easier said than done.
Why? Well...
U-Haul works in strange ways. Even though there's an actual U-Haul depot down the street from our new place -- like, five blocks away -- the return locations listed for drop-off were scattered all over the city in different areas, and not one of them was an actual U-Haul depot. They were places like gas stations, smoke shops, convenience stores, etc. Why? Who knows. It doesn't make any sense to me either. None whatsoever. The location they gave us (well, the one we picked as it wasn't in a terrible part of town) was one of those aforementioned smoke shops, but it was basically across the city from where we are. I told Daisy beforehand that even if it was in a questionable or "bad" part of town, it's not like we had to be there long -- we just had to drop off the truck, get back into the car, and go back home. That's it.
However, even though she's been living here for ten years, Daisy herself doesn't know Omaha like the back of her hand, or anything like that. She knows how to get around on the west and northwest side of the city, and part of the central city (we live in what is colloquially referred to as "central Omaha" according to the maps, because we're further east into the city than her parents are), but she doesn't know much else when it comes to getting us around. This means she had to GPS the drop-off place and have me follow her in her car. At this point, my Monte Carlo was still parked in the parents' driveway, where it had been for five days or so.
So, she plotted the route, and we went. It was...interesting. The truck drove terribly -- it had no acceleration, it was very slow to brake, and it had a massive turning radius. Because it was a 17-foot box truck (essentially), all of its mirrors were about useless. It's hard enough getting the truck through traffic on interstates and highways, but downtown Omaha weekday city traffic is something else altogether. And, of course, if I don't follow her, I don't know where we're going. Because of this, I had to run a red light to be able to stay behind her, and she had to pull over after another light that I had to wait through in order for me to be able to continue to follow her through residential streets which were somewhat winding and confusing.
The drop-off process itself? It was, as I mentioned before, at a smoke shop. It consisted to us handing the guy there the keys, him typing the number into the system and getting our confirmation information, and doing a very quick once-over of the truck to make sure everything was there and that it was in good working order. Seriously, that's it. We went back inside and one of the guys behind the counter told me "You've returned everything in good condition, it's all here, the gas levels are above what they need to be, and you have no further charges today. Your receipt has been e-mailed to you."
*blink*
Okay.
He was right; the receipt was emailed to me, but that's all the drop-off consisted of -- I didn't have to sign anything, I didn't have to do a point-by-point inspection of the truck with anyone, just drop it off and go. So that's what we did.
The grand total to rent the truck, not including the gas we had to put in it? $374.03. Daisy easily put over $150 of gas in it as well -- when we stopped for gas in Concordia, it took a full $100 before the pump automatically shut off at that point -- it could've taken more. It's 200 miles from Concordia to Omaha (almost exactly), which brought the tank down to under half by the time we were done. Putting that into perspective, a U-Haul gets roughly the same gas mileage as my Monte Carlo does -- about 19-22mpg. I'm not sure whether that's good for a truck that size, or really terrible for my Monte Carlo.
So, the U-Haul was dropped off, but that doesn't mean we were done. Daisy still had to move some stuff over from her parents' place (a process which she's still doing today and tonight, even) and even though everything of mine was here, it still needed to be unpacked, sorted, and put away. The latter was a much larger task than I'd anticipated, as...well...between the two of us, we have a lot of shit. I'd done a lot of my packing long before Daisy had found us this place, sealing up boxes of things beginning well over a year ago -- with the assumption that wherever I ended up, I'd have room for all of it. That simply ended up not being the case. Our apartment has a LOT of space, yes, but it's all open space -- there's no storage space for anything. We have very little cupboard or closet space (comparatively speaking, for all of our stuff), but we have giant rooms. We no longer have a pantry for dry food, which we had in my place in Newton. The closets in the bedrooms are nice and big, but with everything I brought with me -- a house full of stuff -- cramming it into a much smaller-than-the-house apartment, even a large apartment...it's difficult, obviously. There were many things I packed that I looked at once I unpacked and said "yeah, I don't need that," and tossed it in the trash -- simply because there was nowhere to put it.
The unpacking process took almost a full two days. All of the closets are full of things that must later be organized and really be put away/in their places once the wedding is over, but as we have people coming in rather soon, it all just has to be shoved into closets right now, for the moment. It also doesn't really help that Daisy has just as much stuff as I do, and she's still bringing bag after bag, box after box of it over from her parents' place.
While unpacking of everything important is done, there are still a few boxes in the dining room and a few more here in the computer room that I need to find a place for. The closets and storage areas in the house are already filled -- these boxes may just have to sit where they are for a while.
As for the internet and this computer room? The internet was installed without incident early on Saturday afternoon, and the computer room has both of our desks in it, Daisy's side of the room being more bare than my own because she doesn't have nearly as many nerdy things as I do. As for me? Eh, I'm fine. I'm really tired, and even five days later my muscles and body are both trying to finish recovering from the move. I also have as many gripes about our new place as I do likes of it; for example, I hate the showers. There's no water pressure to them. The kitchen cabinets are small and shallow, and the doors won't stay all the way shut on them. It was a bitch and a half to hook up the washer and dryer, because the dryer's exhaust hose was too short and we needed to get an extension for it. Etc. Little things like that. However, I really like the balcony, I really like the area, and the people who live in the building/complex all seem genuinely nice thus far. We're a five-minute drive away from the parents' house, and a three-minute drive from Daisy's office. The cats love it. I like having an automatic ice maker in the freezer. I mean, there's going to be good and bad in any place, but the good is good and the bad I can learn to deal with and accept, as we'll probably be living here for a while.
As we broke the massive bed frame while moving it (the cheap wooden slats in the center snapped in half), we simply had to throw it away once we got here to Omaha. This means that the mattress and box springs -- until we get a new frame -- are just on the floor in the bedroom. This isn't a huge deal, of course; I slept on that bed without a frame for a long time until I got one, but it's different than what I'm used to. And it makes the bed so much harder to sit up in and get out of in the morning. On the plus side, it makes it so much easier for the cats to sleep with us.
So, really, that's how things stand now. Daisy is still loading up/packing/trashing everything from her room, basement, and garage at her parents' house, something that she needs to finish by tonight before people start getting here for the wedding. It's been rainy and stormy here off and on, and when it's not, it's incredibly humid and muggy -- the beginning of what Omaha people refer to as "sauna season," apparently. It's an apt description. We were going to go see the new X-Men movie tonight, but both of us are really tired and have been near-constantly busy and/or poor, so I doubt that's going to happen.
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