Other Moving Fiascos

The other moving fiascos we ran into are oddly along the same theme: money, and people trying to screw us out of what is ours. Neither Aaron nor I are cheap. But we're not willing to be bilked either:

--- I'm going to be gentle, since this is a public forum and stranger things have been known to happen. However, there ended up being a three-week-long battle over an escrow. The situation was resolved today, totally in our favor, but I loathe the people who thought they could take advantage of us and I'm working on forgiving them.

--- Along those lines, I'm extending my ill will toward subcontractors who try to take advantage of homeowners. I had a very ubiquitous local plumbing outfit in to my home to find out why the central Air Conditioning unit in the basement was leaking. I was told by one person that we could service the unit, but that would cost a couple grand, and the coil was filthy, and the previous owners hadn't serviced it in forever. So it was better to just replace the whole thing. For between 7k and 10k. Yeah, go fuck yourself.

Another guy from the same outfit opined that it might not be the AC causing the leak, but a cracked floor drain. But I'd need a videocamera and a jackhammer to record where the water was seeping in from, and to determine exactly where the crack was coming from. Do I look stupid, or do they do this to everyone? I almost threw him bodily out of my house.

Then my wonderful cousin Angelo came over and determined that it was a broken condensate pump (an $80 part) and it's an easy fix. So I called Superior Comfort from Bristol, Rhode Island. I will name Superior Comfort here because I would recommend them to anyone. Two hours and $257 later, I got a new condensate pump, a freshly scrubbed coil, and a little silicone to repair a small crack in a pipe. Problem SOLVED. No more water leaking all over the floor.

--- The upshot of these two stories is that people are always trying to screw other people. So you get defensive and try to screw before you get screwed. Or at least just try to not get screwed. But seriously, it's hateful. Is it because so much money is involved in buying and selling houses that it brings out the worst in people? Is it because our homes are also invested with emotion for us? Or is the emotional connection tied up with the expense that turns it, synergistically, into something larger than just feelings and finances?

It's probably all of these things. All I know is that selling Aaron's condo and buying this house has been going on for months, during the same period in time during which I've started a new job, planned and threw a wedding weekend extravaganza, and moved --- all the while growing a baby. No sooner do we survive the actual physical move than we're dealing with this.

And I wonder why I haven't blogged in weeks.