How many soccer teams do you know that are fielding 50 year-old men?

[Ed. note: This post now seems ridiculously outdated, as it's almost a week old. But I've got issues going on these days, so give me a break.]

So Wednesday night I got home and immediately started watching the Arsenal/Liverpool Champions league quarterfinal game. In the second half, I was walking near the front of our entertainment center, and I noticed the right speaker wasn’t working. The middle and left were pumping it out loud and proud, but the right was dead. So I started to try to figure out what the heck was going on. I checked the wires into the speaker, and they were connected correctly. I took them out, put them back in, and still nothing. I then pulled out the middle console a bit to get into the back of the receiver to check those connections. Pulling out the middle part of the entertainment center isn’t easy, as the TV sits on the bottom part, and the TV weighs 200 pounds. I was able to slide it a bit, but then it caught on a piece of the hardwood floor that I guess isn’t 100% level, and I couldn’t move it out any more. Either way, it was enough for me to look back there and get my hands into the back of the receiver where the speaker wires connect. I double checked those connections, unhooked them , re-connected them, still no sound. Now I’m really getting annoyed. I have a couple extra speakers that I use when I have the surround sound set up (which I don’t in the new house yet), so I tried one of those. Still it didn’t’ work, so I know it’s not the speaker. Then I tried different wires to/from the receiver and speaker. That didn’t work, so I know the problem isn’t the wire. So now I think that either a) the receiver connections in the back are busted, which would piss me off, or b) I hit one of the several buttons on the front of the receiver that I have no clue what they do, and that has turned off the right side speakers for some reason. Either way, I just want to watch my game, so I said forget it, I’ll worry about this later, and I’m just going to sit down and watch the TV. So I sit down, and realize that the TV isn’t straight because I didn’t push back the middle console. To visualize what happens next, you need to know that the middle part of the center console is two pieces: the bottom is flat and holds the TV, while the top part sits on and around the bottom, and holds the receiver, dvd player, etc. In my haste I forgot the cardinal rule of the middle console, which is always push/pull it by the bottom, since the top pretty much just sits on the bottom. So as I pushed the top part, of course the entire thing started to tip. I heard Sage gasp (“GASP!”), and realized what I was doing too late. The top part didn’t fall over, but as it fell back into place, the really nice New Hampshire clock we have on top (which normally is on the wall above the TV, but I haven’t gotten around to putting up a hook yet) fell loudly behind everything, crashing between the wall and the TV/Entertainment center. As it landed, the sound went out completely.

At this point I’m really ready to lose it. All I want is to sit down and watch my football game, for crying out loud! I’m able to extract the clock from behind the console, but the cords are all plugged into a power strip which is really only reachable from the OTHER side of the middle console. So this requires me to: a) move the left console out of the way; b) pull out the middle console (by the bottom this time) enough to reach into the back; and c) sift through the maze of wires and cables that all congregate behind said console to figure out what is what. This wasn’t too difficult, and I saw that the receiver was unplugged. So I plugged it back in, put the cords back, pushed the middle console back (by the bottom), put the left console back into place, and turned on the receiver.

And as soon as I did that, the right speaker was working again.

That’s my way of prefacing my short comments about the Arsenal game Wednesday night, which ended up as a 1-1 draw. It seemed that no matter what Arsenal did, especially in the 2^nd half, everything they tried, everything they threw at Liverpool, they just couldn’t get it into the back of the net. First, an obvious penalty on Liverpool was not called. (And it turns out the referee grew up in a town in The Netherlands only 5 minutes from where the Liverpool player who committed the un-called foul is from. Conspiracy!) Then, one of Arsenal’s own players deflected a certain goal for Arsenal off of Liverpool’s goal line when he couldn’t get out of his own way. (Though replays showed that the linesman called offsides on that play – WHEN ANOTHER LIVERPOOL PLAYER WAS ALSO ON THE GOAL LINE! I have no idea if that linesman just didn’t see the other player, of if was paid to throw the game as well as the ref.) So Liverpool gets a precious away goal heading to next week’s leg at Anfield. Arsenal has to score at least one goal to move on – something Liverpool is extremely adapt at preventing in home European matches. But we went to Milan and won 2-0 earlier this year, the first EVER English football club to beat AC Milan at the San Siro. So all hope isn’t lost yet.

And since I’m on a roll here, I thought I’d also pass along the fun parts of our move to MA.

Overall, the move went as well as could be expected. I mean, moving is never fun, and while this one could have gone better, it could always be worse as well. We’ve moved a lot in the past 10 years, and most times when we move it takes about 3-4 hours. The move from MD to NC took 4 hours to load the truck, and that was with 4 men. We had set up our move for a Monday, and normally movers like to show up as early as possible and get going. I assumed these guys would get here by 9:00 am at the latest and take 4-5 hours. We also wanted to get the place cleaned after the move, so we set up cleaners for 2:00 pm. We figured that would take 1-2 hours, and we’d be on our way to Steve’s by 4:30 at the latest. The first problem was when the movers called the Friday prior and said they would show up between 9 and 10. I told them, “Please, you can arrive earlier if you want. THE EARLIER THE BETTER.” I have no idea if that message ever got passed on to the driver and movers, as they didn’t show up until 9:55 am. So now I figure I’m really about to push my schedule, but they showed up with 5 people, so I was hopeful the extra person would make a difference, and 4 hours would be achievable.

That was not meant to be. First, because we were moving one of our cars on the truck, that took some time to get it loaded, locked in, and build a platform around it so they can stack boxes on top of it. The next problem occurred when the driver, who almost always runs the moving crew, said he had to leave for an hour or so to get another truck for the drive up to New England. So he disconnected the trailer, and left. As soon as he did, the “moving” ground to a halt. There was 1 guy in the house who was putting their stickers on everything, and wrapping up all the furniture in pads as if they were French antiques. Meanwhile, the other 3 guys were in the truck, “stacking boxes”. And by “stacking boxes”, I mean 1 guy was stacking, 1 guy was telling him how he should do it, and the 3^rd guy was telling him how he shouldn’t do it.

By 11:30 I could tell these guys were not going to be done by 2, so I called the cleaner and asked if they could come later. He said no problem, he was running late anyway, and would show up around 3. I figured if worse came to worse, I could have the movers at least get half the house done, and I could start the cleaners on that part while the movers finished the rest. But then things didn’t move along any faster, and the driver ended up taking 2 ½ hours to go get his new truck. Things were moving slower than lava flow in the house, so at 1:00 I got an idea: Let’s see if my real estate agent could come over the next couple of days, let the cleaners in, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about it, and we could get to Steve’s at a reasonable hour. So I called our agent Nancy and asked her if she could. Absolutely, she replied, and we set it up so that I wrote a check to the cleaners and left it in one of the kitchen drawers, and she said she’d call the cleaners and set it up around her schedule. I then called the cleaners and asked if that was okay, and they said absolutely, it actually worked better for them. We left our last bag of trash in the living room, along with some cardboard that the recycling people said was “too big” to take, and we felt good about the new arrangement.

But the movers were still working as slow as possible. They finally got everything packed up, their stuff cleaned up, and driving down the road at 4:15 pm – almost 6 ½ hours after they arrived. Absolutely ridiculous timing, considering they had 5 men on the crew. But at least we were able to leave by 4:30 (Goodbye Durham – hopefully we’ll be back soon to close on that house!), and were able to get to Steve’s in 5 hours.

But an epilogue to the story: So I hadn’t heard back from either the cleaners or my agent the rest of the week. So I emailed Nancy over the weekend and asked if everything got done okay. Her response? “I totally dropped the ball on this.” So that lovely bag of trash that we assumed would be sitting there no more than 2 days has been there a week! And who knows how many people came to look at the house, with it all dirty as well. (Nancy, I doubt you’ll ever read this, but if you do, know that we really do think you’re a great agent – but this did not make us happy.) Anyway, she dropped by on Monday to at least get the bag of trash out of there, and hopefully it’s been done by now. No offers yet, but hopefully with Spring here, it’ll pick up.

The move-in up in Mass. Went a tad better, but the driver only brought one other worker, plus his 14 year old son, who ended up sitting in the cab for half the time. But everything showed up without a scratch, and now we’re working on getting partially unpacked. Since we hope to be buying a house up here within a year, we don’t want to unpack everything. The shot glasses and most books are staying packed (oops, I guess I need a new shot glass blog one of these days), so hopefully packing again next year will be a lot easier.

The new house is really good, for the most part. Sage went nuts as the house wasn’t really clean when we moved in, so she spent a lot of time trying to get rid of the inches and inches of dust. Our new kitchen is UNBELIEVABLE. For 2 people, we have a lot of kitchen stuff, and it always seems that we never have enough cabinet space in kitchens that we have. This place has a TON of room, it has great counter space, and is just overall humongous. As I said last weekend, “this is now the kitchen that all other kitchens will be judged against”. The biggest downside is the stove is electric. Once you cook with gas, going back to electric feels like living in the stone age. Our living room is a bit smaller than we had before, and some of our furniture there doesn’t fit. The garage will solely be storage, so we have to keep both cars outside. Not a huge deal – until next winter. But the worst part we’ve come to deal with are mice. The house is kind of old, and while it’s been updated a lot, there seem to be a lot of “access” to the crawl space, and the other day Sage found droppings in almost every room – and this was AFTER she had vacuumed the entire house. So I went out and got the heavy hitting D-Con – hopefully that’ll keep them at bay.

And that’s about it. The new job is going, the area we’re living in is really quiet and peaceful, and the commute hasn’t been horrible (yet). More blogs to come next week, I hope, with some book & movie updates.