the ongoing move (and associated complications)

The original plan, which is almost hard to recollect at this point, as it's been deviated from many times since, was to move from my downtown house to a brand new one on James Island three weeks ago. I was ready. I was on vacation, and I cut my visit with my dad in Florida short by a day to allow extra packing time.

My information about wtf is going on all comes third hand through my roommate, whose parents own both homes. Actually, despite the fact that she is a 20-year-old college student, the $300k new home has been placed in her name and she is responsible for the mortgage payments, collecting rent, etc. Um, right. Fabulous idea. She doesn't even have a job. I'm sure she's up to the challenge.

The first issue was apparently the inspection, which took longer than expected because "the guy is an asshole." Okay, fine. I had additional time off at the end of the month.

We ended up moving most of my crap except for the essentials (TV, mattress, clothes, coffee pot, cat) because I was concerned I'd have to fly out with none of my things moved. I went ahead and switched my landline phone service to the new residence, believing with all of my naive heart that soon I would follow.

This time, we were waiting for SCE&G to turn on the power, which has always been simple in my experience. You call them, bam, you're frying bacon the next morning. I've inferred from this last debacle that hooking it up to a just-built home is tantamount to the coming of the Apocalypse. You'd think we'd asked the damn electrician to find us the Holy Grail and spit-shine it.

Anyway, that was last Tuesday, and we fully expected power by the end of the day. Nope. We even moved my mattress over there and had to bring it back! Their customer service department, who spoke to my roommate's parents, said something about three weeks. They argued them down to Monday (today). Do we have power there? I sincerely fucking doubt it. And I am on call with my job right now. I could be leaving for parts unknown at any given moment. And I'm still sleeping on a fucking mattress on the floor of the old nasty house.

My latest concern cropped up yesterday, when I was Armorall-ing my dash and decided to rifle through my glovebox. Whoops. Registration's expired. I paid my taxes on time, but I gave them the address to the new house, which I'm beginning to believe is ruled by some dark and hateful nameless power because it refuses to receive mail.
So I'm driving with expired tags too. Our mailbox is actually more like a PO Box on the side of the road with such dubious labelling that my roommate, when describing it to me, had to tell me it was next to one with a sticker of a starfish on it. What?!?

I realize she is young and inexperienced, but my roommate is now officially my landlord and she needs to get this fucking shit done. She and the other roommate, her boyfriend, don't get important mail because they have no real responsibilities beyond whatever dumb college courses they're taking. Do I sound bitchy? Yeah, part of that is they turned the AC off when they left for school this morning and it was 78 degrees in here when I woke up. Fuckers.

Plus, I wanted to watch Grey's Anatomy from last night, but I couldn't because my Tivo ran out of program information because there's now no phoneline here.

Stay tuned. My homicidal urges may actually come to fruition this time.