Pajiba

I moved from Germany to VA this January but I didn't have any issues. I'm packing my stuff up next week to move to Georgia (well, more accurately, someone else is packing my stuff up Friday) so ask again soon - I might have some then.
Although driving cross-country from Seattle to Champaign, IL with my parents at 13 wasn't exactly fun. Especially when the U-Haul's tires and breaks started smoking while going down the Rockies. Since this was before everyone had cell phones, my mom and I were in the car behind the U-Haul trying to get my dad's attention with borrowed walkie-talkies. Didn't work so well.
When I was a junior in college, my parents and I moved me out of my room in a house I shared with a friend in one afternoon after she and I had a huge argument and I decided I'd rather move back in with my parents for the rest of the semester than deal with her anymore. I was rather impressed with how smoothly that went, though I'm sure her reaction was rather different.
I can't think of any crappy possessions, though.

i hate moving! and it seems to be all i ever do. however, with every move of the last ten years (there have been five in this time period across four continents), i take less and less.

i have no real horror stories aside from the normal horror that you've outlined above: having to take stock of things--what to take and what to give away and what to throw out

i have found it to be a very sobering experience at times. things that meant so much at one point just don't mean that much or anything at all any more; i suppose that's what happens when you grow or mature or some such shit

let's see what's the one thing that i always take with me and can never leave behind? there's really nothing except for my damn laptop; i can't live without it and thanks to it (and a friend's suggestion) i came across pajiba all those years ago in eastern europe. i've followed you guys from there to east africa to southeast asia and now to the caribbean

so there you go; pretty shitty answer to your post. sorry about that

I've moved more than 1,000 miles three times in addition to various smaller moves, but none was particularly terrible. I did live in a pretty shitty house when I first got to Alabama.

Assuming books don't count as crappy, the one thing with which not part is probably my football helmet. It's almost certain I'll never wear it in anger again, it's dirty, the facemask black, red or white depending on which level of paint has been blasted away AND I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT IT.

i've moved at least 2 dozen times in my life, sometimes thousands of miles from one end of Canada to the other, or all the way to Germany. other times only two blocks.

I once had an apt where i rewired the oven outlet to accommodate a dryer, as i had a dryer but no stove. I cleared out of that place in a midnight move and after we had all drank copious amounts of beer, I couldnt figure out how to rewire it properly.

I lived in Montreal, which has a tradition of July first being moving day, so all leases are made to end july first. It also has a tradition of moving, even just across the street for an apt with better light. so, when you should be enjoying canada day, the streets look like a parade of ants carrying furniture on their backs.

I once "moved" from vancouver to rural Ontario via bus. 3 day trip, I was broke, figured i wouldnt starve in three days. But I had accidentally bought for the milk run, not the express, so it was 5 1/2 days of living on a bus without food. I was half starved when i boarded the bus, its safe to say i mostly fell off the bus at my destination.

i never realised how big canada is until i was in europe and realised all of europe isn't as big as one canadian province.

One time I moved out of an apt in a poor neighbourhood. there were three of us, all going travelling and we were just bringing things to the curb, like everything. we had one flight of exterior stairs to carry things down, and every time we came back out, there was nothing left at the curb, and no sign of life anywhere. stuff vanished as fast as we could haul it out.

one time, moving into an apt, i got a sofa jammed in the stairwell, so it seemed to hover overhead, at a corner. we jammed it so bad, you could grab hold of it and hang from it. It lived there for weeks, with tenants crawling under it to get by. one morning it was gone. i know not where.

I have an endless pile of junk that i refuse to divest myself of. most of it worthless junk that has found its way into my heart. pebbles, old paperbacks, cheap knick-knacks from loved ones. I have an entire bowl of chestnuts that go everywhere with me, they've been important for so long, i can't remember why. I have a chipped Raid coffee mug, my only souvenir from a dear friend who was killed twenty years ago, it never leaves my sight. it's probably safe to say nothing i hold dear has a single bit of objective value.

I moved my upright piano several times, without ever learning to play it with any proficiency, luckily my ex-wife nicked it in the divorce and that albatross is no longer round my neck.

moving, sigh. . .good times.

I come from a military family- and then spent 15 years in the Navy- so I've moved a lot.

Worst move: In the early 80s, I flew from Washington state to northern California to pick up my then-girlfriend (now wife) and drive back to Washington. She'd already packed up all of her stuff- including a lot of family heirlooms- into a big U-Haul. When I arrived, we went back to U-Haul to get a car hook-up so we could tow her 1967 Camaro behind the U-Haul. Then we went to a hotel to get some sleep. During the night, somebody broke into the U-Haul in the hotel parking lot and ransacked it. We didn't hear a thing, and discovered the loss the next morning. Hardly an auspicious beginning.

One of the reasons I now have such a fierce hatred for criminals is because they made the woman I love cry.

The cops managed to recover some of the stolen items about a year later, but most of the sentimental value items were never found.

I have moved quite a bit over the years from Africa to Europe,America and back to Africa with only the odd small mishap along the way. Like Nicolae I came back from a weekend away to the shell of a burnt out home. Not long after that I tragically lost my wife. So my worst move was picking through the charred rubble for what could be realistically salvaged. I managed to half fill a backpack with smoke and water damaged clothes and a box of jewellery then I rode 800 kms on my motorcycle in one day to go and stay with friends and I do not remember one bit of that journey.
The one item I cannot live without is my parachute silk hammock. I have always had one with me and it is a godsend when needed.

Hehe, buc, The Honduras-Texas move was probably the easiest move of my life. I can only imagine what it must've been like for my parents...but let me start at the beginning.

1) Moved from Honduras to Brazil when I was only 3. I don't remember much about the move. But can you imagine flying 10 hours with 3 children under 5? my poor parents. We moved because they both got scholarships to do Master's degrees in Brazil.
2) Moved back to Honduras 2 years later, plus one sister. And it was only my mom that time, because my dad came later. So 4 children under 6, one of them an infant, plus all our luggage, in a 10 hour flight? My poor mother.
3) In Honduras we had to live somewhere else three different times while our house was being renovated.
4) Moved from Honduras to Venezuela in 1993 (I was 10) because my mom had been transferred for work. 2 parents, 5 kids, 1 nanny, about 10 suitcases. Obviously we sent a lot of stuff by ship, like our furniture and stuff.
5) Switched apartments while in Venezuela. Wasn't too bad (for me, anyway)
6) Moved from Venezuela to Honduras in 1998. That one was horrible and I remember it very clearly. We had 14 suitcases with us, and getting into Honduras was a NIGHTMARE. We also had to live in my godmother's (thankfully huge) house for 2 months while our house was cleaned up. The tenants we had rented it to had practically destroyed it.
7) Went off to college in upstate NY. Got a scholarship. That first time was a NIGHTMARE and I'll write the full story in another comment.
8) Went back and forth between Honduras-NY for four years. Every summer I had to pack up my room and put my stuff in storage, only to get it out and move to a new room the next year.
9) Went back to Honduras in 2005, with way more stuff than I had arrived with. Actually had to send about 5 or 6 giant boxes full of books and ceramics stuff I had made (most of which was broken in the mail).
10) Moved to Texas in 2010, and compared to all those other moves? Easiest thing in my life. Of course I'm very lucky that MrFig has a fully furnished apartment and I really just needed to bring my clothes and some books with me.

Phew. I never think it's that much until I list them like that...

My crappy moving horror story happened because, my last semester at NYU when I knew I had to get the hell out, I was completely losing my mind. If I didn't transfer out of that school and get away from that program, I'd be in an asylum right now. Complicated issues meant for another diversion.

But the moving horror story. I never, ever, ever had one decent roommate. Whether it be on an overnight performance trip or a full year of college, I always got stuck with total assholes. The last two I had drove me to move out of the dorm three weeks before the semester ended. In short: someone took a shit in the kitchen sink. Even if that was the only thing they did to me throughout the year (it wasn't by a long shot), I would have lost it and moved out. Game over, dickheads.

My father was visiting to leave me some tubs to start packing for the move in three weeks. I insisted, about one more bad thing away from a panic attack, on leaving the dorm that day. I proceeded to tear through my private bedroom, loading up as many books, DVDs, instruments, and clothes as I could carry. I got most out, but abandoned many beloved pulp novels, signed memorabilia, and kickass t-shirts to get out. Shoot, I even left one of my many clarinets I had acquired under the bed.

When I got to the shared living space, the assholes started to ask what was happening with big grins. Obviously, they heard me explaining what happened to my father and were trying to cover up what they did to me throughout the entire academic year. I lost it, completely.

I have a very long fuse. There are people who have insisted they've seen me mad that only saw me a bit miffed. When I'm mad, it's dangerous. You do not want to see me get mad. I have lost jobs, friends, and property when I've been mad. I'm convinced I must turn bright green and leave a wake of destruction when I get to that point. I think the only reason I haven't seen the backseat of a cop car is that I'm so good at hiding the rage build-up, I blindside the target to the point of shock.

We'll leave it at I'm lucky I did not have a police escort out of my former dorm room by the time I finished explaining what was happening and why. One of the assholes actually did pick up his phone and I really went off on him. All of which, naturally, left me with a migraine from stress and nauseous enough that I threw up twice on the ride home.

I forgot a good one, for short stories.

i once got evicted from a rooming house, i guess for being noisy or having roof parties or something similar that i would have trouble denying before god. The landlord, a sterling citizen followed all the normal channels, beginning with a very large muscular man at my door with thick chains in his hands as weapons. As I gauged my opponent, I very quickly assessed that my canny, wise beyond my 17 years, knowledge of the law and the landlord-tenant act might not apply. I called 911.

the operator, sensing the level of priority from the location divulged by my phone number asked me simply, "are you being assaulted right now?" taken aback, i answered no. She told me to call the regular police line and leave a message and an officer would get back to me in 48 hours, but to call 911 back once an actual attack had occured.

mama raised some wild boys, but not stupid boys, I was packedy-packed and out of there in twenty minutes.

valuable lesson i learned that day about the difference between paper and reality, between rules and the world. i don't regret it, the lesson has served me well all my life.

p.s. i am much better at lying to the authorities now, as required.

again, goodtimes.

here's an even better, or maybe more horrific comment diversion, who has had to move an in-law, or an elderly relative?

my war stories are nothing compared to having to help on aging family moves.

Robert,

Please don't take this as sarcastic or 'yanking your chain' in any way, but I've been catching up on all my sites since 8am this morning & just got here a mere centon or so ago-

I was rarin' to post my own 'moving story' while reading the comments, and I had to stop at yours & read it again.

I'm fairly empathetic with people in the various ways their rage can be triggered, even more so unfortunately in the ways I've responded to inciteful incidents myself. While never having possessed the balls to just "let loose" in a violent manner, unless I was the only one in the vicinity to do it to when it happened, and the callous on my forehead speaks for all the times I either slapped my head repeatedly or banged it into various thick and/or textured walls...

But To The Point: aside from wanting to know 1) if your father was still present at this time, 2) how long ago was this, 3) if this is affecting your life in any remarkable way at the present, and 4) the fact that I have a brief respite from my g/f to actually read something online without a goddam background soundtrack from her never-ending '(S)Hit Parade' broadcast of word salad seemingly meant for other available plant species who may actually desipher her ramblings-

I'm truly interested and, if I'm not being too intrusive, a few more details would be appreciated. Might be a slow holiday for Pajiba, y'know?

I'm not a doctor, don't play one on TV; I'd simply like to get a bit more insight, and we both seem to be somewhat-- "not otherwise occupied," so to speak? Mi no habla any gringo advice to offer, but rather just want to identify more with what is, honestly, a none-too-detailed, yet significant, experience in your life.

I also like your other fancy writin's on this hyah propitty.

Okay, back to the ever-needy g/f: I'm picking up 'Dear John' at the RedBox for our viewing pleasure tonight, ain't love grand? *dry heaves*

but I'll check back if you feel up to elaborating a bit - I mean, shit, I lost some pretty valuable (to me) stuff in a similar situation, but two decades have kind of softened the blow.

Take care, and don't let bitter memories cling to you- and when/if you ever ask yourself, "Was it me? It was them, right??"

Yes, you're right, it was them, fuckin' assholes.

Within the next month, I have to move... exactly 30 feet.

Long story short: I moved in with my parents about 6 years ago when my dad got sick to help with care, bills, etc. They have a 4/4house, so I had my own room, private bath, and an office. Pops died a few months ago, my sis is getting divorced, and her kid's having issues at school, so she and my nephew are moving in with us. I'm condensing my office and bedroom into one large room on the other side of the house.

It'll be great for me, because I'll have some much needed privacy. But moving such a short distance is even more complicated than when I moved from NYC to LA. Maybe because there's small part of my brain that yells, "This is a waste of time!" Maybe because there's a slightly smaller part of me that was looking forward to some peace a quiet. Mom and I are very much alike, which is to say, we both value privacy and are pretty much content with brief interactions at breakfast a few times a week, then escaping to our rooms for some solace. Sis, on the other hand, loves noise, lots of people, activity, and parties all the time. In her eyes, we aren't a real family unless we do everything together all the time (my dad was the same way, so she gets it honest).

Anyway, in addition to grieving, re-starting my personal life (caring for a dying parent puts a damper on the dating thing) and re-booting my career, moving is way low on my priority list. Especially since it's such a short distance.

I moved a few times before I was five. Then I lived in the same house from 5 to 17. That's when I left home for college. In five years at college (same town), I had four addresses.

Then I graduated and moved to Georgia. That was sort of an exciting move. Not because of the destination so much. But because I had never lived outside of Texas, my husband and I were newlyweds, and I had a newly rolled up degree in a tube and EVERYTHING we owned was in a small Ryder truck with our one car rolling on the back. We moved there with one couch, a bed, clothes, and various household items. That's it. Not even a TV.

Four years later, when we left to go back to Texas, we had to rent a MUCH bigger truck, had one car on the back of that and another adult driving the other car. We had probably tripled the amount of our shit. And we had a baby and a cat. Quite a difference. (The baby accounted for most of the new shit.)

I'm very good at the stuff that comes before moving. Give me a bunch of boxes, paper, some tape and a texta, and I'll have your whole damn house packed brilliantly. It's a combination of years of Tetris and my own anal-retentiveness.
It's probably also due to moving at two very different jobs. First, the Golfclub I worked at decided to rebuild the clubhouse, so the whole thing was moved out to 'temporary' arrangements, then back into the shiny new building. Then, my lab relocated. That was fun. Especially the couple having sex on their balcony exactly opposite our new tearoom. That livened up the Saturday morning spent waiting for the movers to arrive.

The day I moved into this house was a whole 'nother matter. We'd been due to move in for six months, then finally got notice of settlement a week beforehand, right when I was in the middle of a study that required ten hour days and weekend work. So despite the fact I'd had a wall of boxes covering my damn window for six months, I still wasn't anywhere near ready.
Then it started to rain. No, that's not entirely accurate: it started to deluge. Whole fucking state's been in a drought for a decade, and we got nearly an INCH of fucking water that day.
Oddly, our rain's been a bit more reliable since then. So sure, the mattress, half our furniture and all our wonderful friends got soaked, but at least we can tell everyone we broke the drought.

One time I helped my friend move across town. We had a group of people, so it wasn't too bad, but the guy had an amazing amount of stuff for one person. In particular, he had tons of unmarked, heavy boxes that took us forever to get moved. Upon finishing the move and having some beers, we find out that he had had us move his collection of every single issue of maxim magazine (apparently he believed he could get money for them on ebay or something). Bastard.

When I lived outside of the US, all I took were clothes, so I can't really count that as moving. My husband and I have moved twice around Atlanta in the past four years, but we are lucky to have friends willing to help for some beers.

The absolute worst move I ever had happened when I was six and my brother was two. My family was moving from California to Georgia, and we were scheduled to fly until my brother, and then I, got the chicken pox. What was supposed to be only a few hours in the air turned into a week driving across the country with a colicky toddler and a severely annoyed first-grader. We also had two cats in the station wagon with us. I remember that week as being absolutely miserable, so I can only imagine what it was like for my parents. To top it all off, my father was fired from his job a few weeks later. Did I mention that the entire reason for the move was because he was transferred?

I think I have moved 2 dozen times or so since starting college. Not counting end of semester moves home and then back to school, I tend to change cities (and often continents) every 2-4 years.

My most recent big move was from Prague Czech Republic to Hawaii. It was a long move, but it was actually really broken up. I shipped a lot of stuff to my parents so I didn't have to carry it with me. Anyway, I left Prague, visited a friend in England, flew with her to another friends wedding in California. We landed in LA, I spent some time with her family and then they drove me to Mammoth Mountain. From Mammoth I got a lift from another friend to Sacramento who I stayed with for a few days and then got a lift with to San Fransisco where I boarded another plane to Colorado. All this while carrying a large number amount of crap from Prague. Anywho, spent some time with family in Value, and then flew to DC where I spent even more time with different family, before finally getting on a place to Honolulu. All told, that move took me about a month and a half. But it was great getting to spend time with people I hadn't seen in years.

As far as my worst move, that was having to move from my one bed room apartment to my friends basement where I worked as a nanny. Company down sizing was a bitch. It wasn't bad in the sense of losing shit or horrid people, but bad in that it was the one time I had a whole apartment worth of crap that I had bought, that then had to be either moved, put in storage, or sold. I actually miss a lot of that stuff. I had a queen sized temprapetic mattress which I still miss, not to mention some very nice kitchen knives.

The thing I would never leave behind? Assuming that non-human people (AKA my dog) are also exempt, I'd have to say my pageant crown. I know, it's really dumb, and it's just in a box in a cabinet right now, but I'd be really sad if I didn't get to bust it out and practice my pageant wave every now and then.

I have moved a lot in my life. We've lived in the same house now for 4 years and it's weirding me out. I'm ready to at least get out of this house, if not this town.

The craziest move was when we moved from Houston, Texas to Haarlem, the Netherlands in 2002. The craziest part was that I'd just had my first baby 5 weeks before. I don't know why this seemed like a sane idea at the time. Here I was a brand new mother with a baby who didn't eat or sleep well yet (and it took him several months before we got the sleeping down) and we moved far far away from any other friends or family. And Houston to Haarlem is no small adjustment even without adjusting to new parenthood at the same time. To this day I don't know how we did it. Luckily there were no great horrors in the move other than the fact that it took at least 4 months for all our stuff to arrive from Texas--including the baby's crib. The baby ended up co-sleeping with us even though I'd never planned to do so much co-sleeping.

Oh yeah, I remember now that we actually had to go to London for a few days almost immediately after arriving in Haarlem. It was my first time in London but I was mainly stuck in the hotel room with a newborn trying to get him to nurse while my husband went to work meetings. I didn't even have a stroller with me so I had to carry him in his carseat if I wanted to go anywhere. I don't know why I didn't at least have my Baby Bjorn front carrier at least. Maybe it was because I was still postpartum and didn't feel comfortable with it yet. Yikes. I didn't see much of London on that trip. Luckily it was the next place we lived (2 years later).

I haven't moved that much. My parents still own the house I grew up in, so moving for me did not begin until college. Since then, I've moved 9 times (around Michigan, Indiana and Georgia) and am now stranded in a condo that is (according to the real estate market) nearly worthless.
I have been fortunate that I have not had any major moving mishaps. The worst thing that happened was moving with two roommates. One of the roommates was from the area and her family came to help us move. Basically, we moved all her stuff (with the family's help), then, once her stuff was moved they left the other roommate and me to unload everything else ourselves.
I've hauled a bunch of stuff from move to move that I can't seem to part with: a rocking chair from when I was a baby, a black velvet Elvis painting, and a set of my grandmother's dishes, to name a few.

1) moved from CA to Singapore when I was 2
3) moved from Singapore to Illinois when I was 12
3) drove from Illinois to CA with my mom when I was 13. That was a long-ass drive.
4) moved from CA to NY when 18 for college.

Those were the big moves. Since I've been in New York, I've moved 7 times. I've lived here for a little less than 5 years.

You know, now that I'm putting numbers to it, it seems like an awful lot but we had to stay in a different dorm every year at my college, and when we got out for the summer, i would sublet an apartment for a couple months... and this is we do a lot - it's not unheard of.

Also, Robert, I'm sorry you had terrible roommates at NYU. I lucked out and became great friends with 3 of my roommates (from 3 different dorms). I had maybe only one completely insane one but even she wasn't that bad. She just had no sense of humor, played weird German techno in the morning when everyone was still asleep, was so passive aggressive I have no idea how she functioned practically in life, and stole our weed (it was three of us in one room.)

Worst moving experience? When my freshman year roommate and I moved out of the dorms for the summer and to Bushwick together. We were so poor that we didn't want to take a cab to haul our stuff there so we made several trips back and forth on the subway with our luggage and boxes and filled and refilled our backpacks. In the humid NYC summer heat wave. Thank god we didn't have furniture.

Wait, do we not count student housing? I hate moving so much (of any sort) that I would totally count student housing...

Well, in that case, I've only moved maybe three times in NYC. That's still a lot for like 4+ years.

Hope ur blasting your ipod out loud as you're both packing up. It's the last time to annoy your neighbours.

It's the packing up I can't stand, suddenly you realise the crap you've accumulated and the back breaking job of loading up and unloading. However I love unpacking, it's like wow didnt know I had that.

First time moving was to uni then back to a flat which was helped by my dearest brother who charged me for petrol for two return trips. Did I say that was the last money on me. Damn!

Unfortunately I'm gonna do it again. Moving again in 3 weeks time, across the road this time so no brotherly rip off.

When I was a kid, my family moved about 5 or 6 times from birth to school. The biggest move was NY to FL but I was only a fetal passenger on that one. Since I've been living in NY (3.5 years), I have lived in 3 different apartments and am moving into a fourth next month. God help me. There's also my crappy dorm rooms and boarding school moves but the worst move I had to do myself was when I was leaving a fancy-schmancy high-rise and absolutely had to be out of the apartment by midnight or be charged a huge fee. My roommate-to-be was out of town so I had her landlady's phone number.

Everything was so last-minute that reputable movers were all booked, and the guys I found on craigslist "got stuck in traffic." For eight hours. Right. I spent all afternoon alternately trying to find someone else and freaking out by myself, since both of my roommates had already moved days prior, and luckily I found a couple of movers who could make it there in an hour (8 pm at this point). I called the landlady to apologize and let her know I would be coming in a couple of hours and SHE REFUSED TO LET ME MOVE IN THAT NIGHT.

Apparently even though I signed something with the leasing office, nobody officially told her I was approved, and she also thought I wasn't moving in until 2 days later. Why she thought I would be moving on the 3rd of the month is beyond me, but she was old and weird and had bad hearing.

I started crying and essentially begged her to let me move in. I literally would have been homeless otherwise. She finally agreed, the movers came, I had to leave tons of random crap by the trash since there was only time for one trip, and when we got to the apartment, the landlady oversaw everything in her dressing gown. She stood in my living room and constantly commented on how much stuff I had and asked me how I was going to fit everything and if I was going to get a storage unit. I did not have that much stuff, and the moving guys felt so bad for me that they started defending me to her. They got their reward when they gypped me out of 100 extra bucks, though. The landlady also eventually got her revenge by constantly calling me Emily and asking how it was working out with "the new girl."

Then I had to run back and meet my exhausted ex-roommate and her new husband to help get rid of the final things I was going to take from them but couldn't fit (a crappy chair, cleaning supplies, etc) around 11:30. We dropped off our keys at exactly 11:58, two minutes early, and avoided the huge fee.

... Why am I moving again?

I've moved a lot, and it is never fun. Here are some examples:

Roommate fled town, bouncing the check for her part of the rent. Why? To flee the violent boyfriend she left in my apartment. I didn't go home until I was sure he wasn't there, and I packed in three hours and had movers take my stuff six blocks to a boarding house, using up the rest of my money and ensuring I didn't eat for a week. Why? Because I was on crutches and therefore couldn't move a damned thing on my own.

Years later, I had emergency surgery two weeks before I had to move, and they kept me in the hospital for five days. It was the last time my friend moved anyone, and he did it only because half my supposed moving brigade failed to show. It took two whole days to get my stuff moved because, again, I was unable to help and had been incapacitated without warning right before the move.

After I got married, my husband and I spent a couple months apart. He went to survival school and got settled in at his base. I packed up my stuff and worked a show (for which I'd long been contracted). When he came to get me, I had a raging case of strep throat, so the entire trip across country was a feverish blur of pain (mine) and exhaustion (his), coupled with the distinct scent of my fabulous dog, who was relegated to the floor because I was stretched out on the bench seat of the U-Haul. It is amazing that I am still married, but such is my husband's patience.

The things I cannot leave behind are on a bookshelf everyone says looks like an altar, only I'm not religious. They are pieces of my life - things given to me out of love or purchased because they spoke to me - all small, but significant. They pack up into a small tote.

I have moved eight times in the last seventeen years. But besides those, my husband and I have also helped numerous friends and relatives move, including one of his brothers no less than six times and his parents seven (they are "hobby builders").

Probably the most amusing (and still a favorite family anecdote) occurrence was while moving my bil across the rather large city of Calgary. Husband was driving his dad's truck, mattress strapped into the back, down the Deerfoot (which is equivalent to what Americans call a freeway) doing about 50mph. Suddenly one of the straps snapped, and as my husband checked his mirrors to see where he could pull over... out sailed the mattress, bouncing half a dozen times before coming to rest in the middle of the road.

Thankfully there wasn't much traffic, and the car behind my husband was able to swerve around, no harm no foul... the driver got out and thanked my husband for giving him the best laugh he'd had all week.

Around the curve comes a cop car. Told my husband he would otherwise have given him a ticket for hauling an unsecured load, but he too was laughing too hard, given that no damage had been done.

My bil did have to get a new mattress though.

I lived in one house my entire childhood (with one major remodel). Then I moved about 6 hours away for college (and back and forth during summers), so I didn't have too many problems packing up a car each time.

However, I understand the short moves, because psychologically you wonder whats the point. Sophomore year of college my friend switched to my school, and we setup to room together. But the school screwed up and puts us in separate rooms across campus. We raised hell (hah, we're dorks, we politely asked), and two days later they tell us we have a day to get out of our rooms and into a new one. The new place was downstairs for me, so for about 2 hours I just went up and down the stairs, at first I was trying to do boxes and things. Then I realized there was no point, and made literal hobo bundles to escort shit back and forth.

Apparently this is a theme for me. I had a friend out in Missouri for college, and he needed to move back here to Albuquerque. He lived in a house and it was selling, so we had like a week to get out there and pack an entire house of crap he and an ex-gf had collected. He had nothing packed, me and another friend drove with him there in a straight shot. Like above, things started out well, sorting and packing and cleaning (Including things like a giant CRT TV that weighed 200 pounds). But after a full day it became clear this wouldn't be finished in time, especially since he had other paperwork/official crap to do while he was there. We got the go ahead to just start throwing crap out, or literally pushing things off shelves into backs and throwing them in the U-haul. We got it done and once again drove straight back. I guess it wasn't terrible as much exhausting, but we were proud.

Sadly My boyfriend and I broke up weeks ago… i'm young ,beautiful,lonely and still hurting.i maybe need someone to love..still.. My friends told me about —Blackwhiteromance.com —It's the best place to meet black boyfriend. ..So i got a username(Anna rose) there in order to find a new boyfriend.i just don’t know if it's right !!!! !!!! oooo @@@@@@

May, 1998: I was moving out of my dorm room at the close of the spring semester of my sophomore year at college. I was basically the last person on campus, moving myself out with no help. 90 degree weather in a veritable ghost town. Super depressed because I was expecting a forthcoming academic dismissal; a terrible student, I'd spent the preceding days not packing up & trading goodbyes with friends, but writing late papers, because damnit I really need that "C." Finally finished loading up the Suburban at some godawful hour, & started on my drive of shame: Driving home to move in with my dad & retake Economics at community college, summer term. I'm sure I had tears in my eyes for the entirety of the 2 hour drive home, & thus began a truly bogus summer.