Nick of Time, Aug. 5, 2010

A Philadelphia story

Boy oh boy is moving tough.

I was on “vacation” this past week helping my girlfriend Lisa move into her new apartment in Philadelphia. She moved from Tokyo to attend the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business for the next two years.

Because she came from Tokyo and the 14 hour time difference, I was in charge of many of the moving arrangements.

Prior to leaving, I had been in contact with both the cable provider and the landlord. It was assumed everything was arranged. Well, you know the saying about assumptions.

I left the Cedar Rapids airport last Tuesday at 7 a.m. and arrived at Chicago’s O’Hare airport by 8:30 a.m. Just to make sure everything was in place, I called the apartment manager. Lisa needed to send proof of renter’s insurance to her real estate agent before she would release the key to the apartment manager.

Well, when I talked to Diane, the apartment manager, Tuesday morning, she had yet to receive the key. Lisa wanted to move in Wednesday. Diane said I would have to talk to Ilana, the agent. I called Ilana. She said she had yet to receive the proof of insurance.

Now, here is where the wonders of modern technology comes into play.

Lisa had contacted the insurance agent the week before and they had an e-mail exchange in which the agent, Arlene, had confirmed her insurance agreement. Lisa had forwarded this e-mail exchange on to me.

This e-mail was still filed away on my Blackberry phone. With my cell phone, I was able to send an e-mail to Arlene requesting that she send proof of Lisa’s insurance to Ilana ASAP.

Now, this is where the wonders of modern technology failed. Apparently Arlene doesn’t check e-mail. By the time I had reached Philadelphia at 2:30 p.m., Arlene had yet to respond.

Her phone number was located at the bottom of the e-mail exchange, so I reverted to “antique” technology and just called her.

However, Arlene had no idea what I was talking about. I tried to tell her Lisa had been in contact with her the prior week and they had an agreement for renter’s insurance.

Arlene told me she could set this up right away, only she needed Lisa’s address in Tokyo, her Social Security number and all sorts of information I did not have readily at hand. Plus, at this time Lisa was on a plane from Tokyo and there was no way I could call her.

So I told Arlene, “Look, Lisa already sent all of this information to you. Just check your e-mail.”

During the course of the conversation, I instructed her to check her e-mail at least three times. Which I think she finally did, because she said, “Oh, here it is. I will call you back.”

And she hung up.

Lisa’s plane wasn’t to arrive until 6 p.m. I had three and a half hours to wait for her. I had to wait an hour and a half for Arlene to call me back.

But when she did, she had good news. The proof of insurance was sent and we were good to go.

“Where are you all from?” Arlene asked.

“I’m from Iowa,” I said.

“You are just the nicest people to deal with,” she said.

I got the feeling that most of the people Arlene dealt with ended up not being very nice.

SERENDIPITOUS ENCOUNTER

With the first obstacle cleared before even leaving the airport, little did I know many more were on the way.

Lisa’s plane was 15 minutes late, and I waited even longer for her at my baggage claim. I waited, and waited, before it dawned on me that there might be more than one baggage claim area at the Philadelphia airport. It was a little bigger than Cedar Rapids, after all.

So I found a map at the information center, and sure enough, I was at baggage claim A and Lisa was at baggage claim D, a five minute walk away.

I hightailed it through the airport, receiving a call from Lisa halfway. I finally found her, and we had a very exhausted greeting.

Then Lisa says, “Isn’t that Carl?”

I was about to say, “No way,” when I turned around, and sure enough, Marengo’s own Carl Schumacher strolled through the sliding glass door.

Carl now lives 30 minutes north of Philadelphia and he was at the airport to pick up his wife who was visiting family.

Small freakin’ world.

We weren’t able to chat as long as we liked, because as it turned out, the airline had lost Lisa’s luggage. Actually, they didn’t lose it. They said her bag was too heavy for the flight from Detroit to Philly, so they would ship it on a later flight.

We made a promise to meet up with Carl and his wife Jess the next time I was in Philadelphia and parted ways.

SETTING UP

The next day Lisa and I hiked the six blocks from our hotel to her apartment building, dragging our luggage along the way (the airline did deliver her lost luggage to the hotel the night before).

Lisa is living in a very swanky area of Philadelphia. Her company is paying her rent, so she went upscale. When we walked up with our luggage, a doorman greeted us and helped us carry our load to the elevator.

Lisa lives on the 12th floor of a 34-story building. It is a two-bedroom apartment with a large kitchen, dining room, two bathrooms, plenty of closet space and an amazing view of downtown Philly.

I felt a little out of place. This was definitely not a place where someone like me belongs.

One thing Lisa had enough foresight to do was purchase the furniture from the previous tenants. They left a bed, sofa, flat-screen TV and several miscellaneous items. Except they left no tools, which would later prove to be a large hindrance.

The next three days was spent running errands and waiting on hold on the telephone. The cable company came to set up the cable and Internet.

However, I had set up the wireless router and the next day the Internet quit working. I spent 20 minutes on hold while the IT guy figured out what was wrong with the modem. He said we would have to call NetGear to find out what was wrong with the wireless router. Well, after talking to the first guy, the modem worked when plugged in directly to one computer, but would not work when connected to the second computer. So I called the cable company back, waited 20 more minutes, and finally had somebody tell me this could be easily corrected and soon we had both computers working as well as our wireless.

We also spent an hour at the bank setting up an account for Lisa, only to find out she wouldn’t be able to transfer her money into her new account for seven to 10 business days, even though she had to pay rent and tuition within four days.

We spent two hours at the AT&T store purchasing an iPhone.

Then we went to Target.

THE DRIVE

I rented a car for one day to help carry groceries and other home items.

We drove to Target, which was clear across town. (Interesting sidenote: we met a Japanese couple who were also moving into Lisa’s apartment building. They had gone shopping at Ikea, and had never heard of Target.)

Surprisingly, driving in Philadelphia wasn’t nearly has harrowing as I anticipated. Even though the streets were narrow and traffic was dense, it was fairly easy getting around. Other drivers were courteous and let you in when you needed to change lanes and people waved you across at four-way stops.

I still kept the doors locked as we drove.

At Target, the load in our shopping cart grew as we went down each aisle. I kept eyeballing Lisa’s shopping list, and it didn’t seem to get any smaller. We had waste baskets, laundry hampers, shelving systems, lamps, everything that could take up as much space as possible. My anxiety grew with each additional item. I was mentally preparing how we were going to get this load from the car to the apartment building.

Sure enough, my anxiety was warranted. Lisa’s apartment is on Walnut Street, and it is a feeder to Highway 76, one of the main thoroughfares leading out of Philadelphia.

We reached Walnut Street at rush hour, which meant it took 15 minutes to drive two blocks and it was illegal to park anywhere on the street.

As I said, I had prepared for this, and I had loaded the car in five easy-to carry packages. The plan was for me to pull over quickly and for Lisa to hop out with one load and sprint for the apartment building. I was to drive around the block and deliver another package.

The first lap ran smooth, and on the second lap we were struck with some luck. Some lady had illegally parked right in front of Lisa’s building, blocking traffic from that lane. I pulled behind this car and put on the emergency flashers as Lisa and I unloaded the car as quickly as possible, with help from the doorman.

I was able to return the rental car heart-attack free.

We spent the rest of day organizing the apartment. Lisa applied shelf paper to the bathroom cabinets while I assembled her new furniture from Target.

To those of you who have purchased Target furniture before, you know that they build these appliances so a monkey could put them together.

Well, any monkey could get a C in shop class. I got a D for effort.

While putting together Lisa’s new shelves, I realized we never bought any new tools. I had already successfully assembled a shoe rack without the use of tools, and with a little liquid bravado, I assumed I could put together a shelf without tools.

I decided to use scissors to screw in the Phillips head screws. This worked, sort of. The screw heads were completely stripped, and I told Lisa I hope she never has to disassemble the cabinet.

Next, I had to attach the back of the shelving cabinet. This piece was essentially cardboard, and the nails were basically thumbtacks. In my infinite wisdom I decided to find some heavy household object to use as a hammer.

The first thing I found: a bottle of Glade air freshener.

Without thinking, I grabbed the bottle and began whacking away at these tiny nails. The first five went in with ease.

Then Lisa jinxed the whole project by saying, “Should you be using that?”

“Don’t worry,” I said.

The second the words left my lips, the Glade bottle exploded like a fire extinguisher.

Air freshener jetted out in one white stream like a potpourri scented garden hose.

I ran for the bathroom, hurdling boxes and furniture, followed by a stream of fragrant mist.

Lisa has never laughed so hard at my expense.

The next day I went and bought tools.

All in all, by the time I left Saturday Lisa’s apartment was liveable. I felt bad for the foreign exchange students just moving in on Friday. They had a lot of work ahead of them.

Lucky for them, I had done most of the hard work already.

Saturday night Lisa called me to ask me where I put her new hammer. One of her friends needed to borrow it.

I wonder what they tried first.