San Antonio was awesome. We ate the famous puffy tacos, walked (and cruised) the riverwalk, did Sea World, and the Texas Pride BBQ... We had a great weekend. We also hit up a bunch of those funny, hokey tourist-trap places: the wax museum, Ripley's Believe it or Not museum... The Guinness World Records museum, the mirror maze, and Tomb Rider.

Amaris had a blast. Sea World was great. The waterpark there (Lost Lagoon) was actually a lot more fun for us than The Schlitterbahn. There was a ton of cool stuff for us to all do together.]






It was a perfect "last hurrah" for us here in Texas.






The moving process this week was not as perfect. By far. The movers sucked. Horribly. The planning was impossible and horrendous, and in general everything about it was miserable. There was no way to adequately prepare ourselves, our home, or our belongings for the shipping/storing/throwing away nightmare. Then TMO smartly scheduled both movers to appear on the SAME DAY. So there wasn't enough of Mark and me to go around and keep things in order, and the movers were constantly in each others' way. By the middle of the day, all of the movers were irritated with everything and were cutting corners to try and leave as quickly as possible. Nobody had a good attitude and everybody was unprofessional and unhappy. My storage movers tried to leave without taking my kitchen table and chairs as well as a ton of miscellaneous stuff in the living room, which they took grudgingly without properly wrapping or boxing because "we don't have any boxes." As a result they refused to "guarantee" the condition the final items would arrive in. They scratched and gouged walls and doorjambs throughout the house. And after they were long gone, we opened up a huge kitchen cabinet to find Pyrex measuring cups, ramekins, and our fondue pot, to name a few things, completely untouched. (Son of a...)

The "shipment" movers started to get annoyed when Amaris darted into her bedroom and started peeling inventory control tags off of her furniture. It all happened so quickly that I didn't even know what was happening until after she'd already done it. UGH! After that, they tried to get Mark to sign the inventory lists and I confirmed that he was aware that our giant plasma TV was functional. The driver said, "Nope. I listed it's condition as 'MCU - Mechanical Condition Unknown'." TMO warned us about this. They said we were to ensure that our expensive electronics were confirmed to be in working condition. We argued with him and he kept insisting that it was "really no big deal". Uh, yes it is. If we arrive in Okinawa and are delivered a TV that doesn't work, and we complain about it, they could say "Well, it was listed as MCU - as far as we know it was broken when we picked it up." And boom! We're screwed out of one very expensive TV that there is no way in hell we can afford to replace. We pitched a fit about it because I'd made a point to turn it on that morning so that they could see it's functionality, and finally ended up reconnecting it to show the driver that it was perfect. He then took a turn for extremely pissy, and proceeded to slam doors throughout the house, make snarky comments to us, and scratch the hell out of our driveway with his fork lift. When they left I realized they'd packed our cable modem, router, and all of the other electronics, but had left behind almost all of the power cables... Like, why would you do that?

After the movers had both left and we'd had some time to cool off, I checked our inventory sheets. Both moving companies had wrongly reported EVERY single one of our belongings to be in very poor condition. They use codes to describe the condition of each item. Everything was listed as "badly worn," "scratched," "soiled," "stained," "faded," or "rubbed." And when I say "everything," I MEAN it. Right down to things that were brand new. My golf clubs, which have seen a total of maybe 20 minutes of daylight in their existence, and are almost all still wrapped in their protective plastic, were described as "badly worn," and "faded."

I am livid.

I fully intend to write angry letters to the managers of each of the moving companies as well as TMO. The whole thing was completely unacceptable.

But I find that I am really pleased that it's over with. Even though I have a house full of miscellaneous crap that I will ultimately have to ship to myself or leave with a family member. Or throw away.

Whatever. That's my rant. Tonight we are happily in the hotel room, which is actually bigger than some apartments I've been in. And I'm looking forward to sleeping in a real live bed. And I had the room windows open to allow in the sound of evening colors and taps. Which made me happy.

Tomorrow our plan is to do absolutely nothing important. We're having some people come here so we can barbecue, and other than that we're going to just completely take it easy. Sunday we're going to hit the cleaning (and touch up painting) head on. Next week is jam-packed with appointments and to-do's. It'll be stressful, but at least we're getting a handle on things. (Sort of).