Here's a link to the eBay auction of the star wars piece. Wish us luck.
http://cgi.ebay.com/STAR-WARS-VIDEO-DISPLAY-STANDEE-EARLY-1980S-NO-RESV_W0QQitemZ180121443459QQihZ008QQcategoryZ2322QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Friday, May 25, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
uh oh
As we get closer to being finished with packing (though new things still keep popping up!) we see that the mover's estimate was way off. He estimated that we would have 187 indiviudal items (boxes, furniture pieces, etc) to be moved.
It is looking like we will have more like 230-240! They guaranteed their price, but that was based on us not adding any items to our move other than what we told him during his walkthrough. And we have added items.
Of course, we added maybe 5-10 items worth, not 40-50, which it now seems his estimate was off by. It should be interesting to see what happens. We have heard so many horror stories about movers that we have been expecting some hassle relating to it. Now it would seem all the more likely.
Any suggestions?
It is looking like we will have more like 230-240! They guaranteed their price, but that was based on us not adding any items to our move other than what we told him during his walkthrough. And we have added items.
Of course, we added maybe 5-10 items worth, not 40-50, which it now seems his estimate was off by. It should be interesting to see what happens. We have heard so many horror stories about movers that we have been expecting some hassle relating to it. Now it would seem all the more likely.
Any suggestions?
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Thanks, Friends!
Last night we went to Levi and Julie's house to celebrate Levi's birthday. Turns out that when we got there, a group of close friends had gathered for a send-off celebration! How sweet.
Bittersweet, really. It was such a wonderful evening, with our good friends, camaraderie and delicious (really delicious -- you guys were clearly trying to prove that Berkeley is not the only "foodie" land!) food, but of course it was sad, too, to remember what we are leaving behind.
When I think of the positives of going to CA, it is very pleasing, but then I think of all we are leaving behind, and it is quite sad and difficult: family, friends, a school Aliyah has loved and is comfortable at, her friends, an area we know like the back of our hands and have really enjoyed (okay, except for the cold winters!), a wonderful house, a synagogue we have loved -- so much to leave behind.
We really hope that people will come visit us, and we will come back to visit, and with e-mail and especially IM (everybody, sign-up for AIM, and give us your "buddy name" - it's free and a great way to stay in touch!), we hope to stay connected, but we don't delude ourselves -- it will be different to not be here. And that is quite sad.
Bittersweet, really. It was such a wonderful evening, with our good friends, camaraderie and delicious (really delicious -- you guys were clearly trying to prove that Berkeley is not the only "foodie" land!) food, but of course it was sad, too, to remember what we are leaving behind.
When I think of the positives of going to CA, it is very pleasing, but then I think of all we are leaving behind, and it is quite sad and difficult: family, friends, a school Aliyah has loved and is comfortable at, her friends, an area we know like the back of our hands and have really enjoyed (okay, except for the cold winters!), a wonderful house, a synagogue we have loved -- so much to leave behind.
We really hope that people will come visit us, and we will come back to visit, and with e-mail and especially IM (everybody, sign-up for AIM, and give us your "buddy name" - it's free and a great way to stay in touch!), we hope to stay connected, but we don't delude ourselves -- it will be different to not be here. And that is quite sad.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Sad Star Wars Update
So, the Star Wars dealer e-mailed after receiving the promotional piece we sent him for consignment. It turns out it is not a "Lobby Card" from 1977 which would have been worth a lot of money, but instead a display piece made for a video store of the 1980's and is pretty much worthless!
Less than worthless if you count the $27 it took to ship it to the dealer. He will auction it on eBay anyway, but told us not to expect too much.
Oh well, it was a fun game.
Our goal when we started selling things off was to make enough to pay for the movers and, ideally, the costs of our cross-country drive. I think we pretty nearly accomplished that, so who am I to complain? Oh yeah, that's never stopped me in the past!
Less than worthless if you count the $27 it took to ship it to the dealer. He will auction it on eBay anyway, but told us not to expect too much.
Oh well, it was a fun game.
Our goal when we started selling things off was to make enough to pay for the movers and, ideally, the costs of our cross-country drive. I think we pretty nearly accomplished that, so who am I to complain? Oh yeah, that's never stopped me in the past!
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Itchin'
We are less than a month away from the move, and we are getting itchy.
Since we had so much time to prepare for this, we got a huge head start. I mean, how many people have more than a year to pack, etc and already have a house they know they'll be moving to.
Despite all this, we are starting to feel the pressure of the move breathing down on us. There seems like there is so much to do, plus there is daily life. Oh well, we will be fine, of course -- just tackle things one at a time.
Yesterday we got rid of our second of two sleeper sofas, and can only think of one more large item (a computer armoire) that we need to divest ourselves of. We have been giving the items away for free on Craigslist -- the time of working to raise funds for the move has long passed, so if any of you want (and can transport) a computer armoire, now's the time.
It has been fun to give away items. Yesterday's sleeper sofa went to a young woman who had just bought her first home in southwest Philly and you would have thought she had won the lottery, she was so happy. We ended up giving her some additional items (an old TV, folding table, etc.). Made us feel good to help her get started.
For those of you who wondered what happened with the Star Wars display piece, we gave it on consignment to a dealer who specializes in such items. He'll take 25% of what it sells for, which could be from very little to several hundred. We'll see what happens.
Since we had so much time to prepare for this, we got a huge head start. I mean, how many people have more than a year to pack, etc and already have a house they know they'll be moving to.
Despite all this, we are starting to feel the pressure of the move breathing down on us. There seems like there is so much to do, plus there is daily life. Oh well, we will be fine, of course -- just tackle things one at a time.
Yesterday we got rid of our second of two sleeper sofas, and can only think of one more large item (a computer armoire) that we need to divest ourselves of. We have been giving the items away for free on Craigslist -- the time of working to raise funds for the move has long passed, so if any of you want (and can transport) a computer armoire, now's the time.
It has been fun to give away items. Yesterday's sleeper sofa went to a young woman who had just bought her first home in southwest Philly and you would have thought she had won the lottery, she was so happy. We ended up giving her some additional items (an old TV, folding table, etc.). Made us feel good to help her get started.
For those of you who wondered what happened with the Star Wars display piece, we gave it on consignment to a dealer who specializes in such items. He'll take 25% of what it sells for, which could be from very little to several hundred. We'll see what happens.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Bed Fiasco
A couple days ago I Craigslisted our old queen size mattress set. We didn't need it, we thought, because we had already purchased a new one in Berkeley (which we have been using on our trips out there) and because we figured we would just move Josh's set onto our bedframe in the meantime since it is coming with us to Berkeley for him anyway.
Yesterday, our old set was hauled away by the Craigslist respondents. We then went to move Josh's onto our bedframe, which was made a little bit easier because his box spring was split (two half-sections instead of one larger one).
We get his set up on our bedframe, and, after we remake the bed, we climb up and turn on our video. After about a half-hour, we feel the bed shake and make a curious "settling" noise. We're not in Berkeley yet, so we rule out earthquake as a likely candidate, and bright cookies that we are we figure "hmmm, bet it has to do with the mattress/box spring swap."
Upon examining underneath the bed, we can see that the slats that hold up the box spring are bending in the middle. After a little internet exploration we find that, indeed, we have screwed up. You are only supposed to use a split box spring on a bedframe with a center support. Otherwise, there is nothing to really support the split box spring where the two sections come together in the middle. With neither of us being the "sharpest knife in the drawer", how a bedframe must work in harmony with the immutable laws of physics just hadn't been quite apparent to us.
So now, our bedroom looks like this: We have a fully set-up (but mattress-less) beautiful Thos. Moser Bed (it was too hard to disassemble it last night) taking up 40% of the floorspace, and jammed up right next to it, taking up the lion's share of the remaining floorspace, is the now-sitting-on-the-floor box spring/mattress set.
Only one month to go! (By the way, it seems no lasting damage was done to the Thos. Moser bed!)
Yesterday, our old set was hauled away by the Craigslist respondents. We then went to move Josh's onto our bedframe, which was made a little bit easier because his box spring was split (two half-sections instead of one larger one).
We get his set up on our bedframe, and, after we remake the bed, we climb up and turn on our video. After about a half-hour, we feel the bed shake and make a curious "settling" noise. We're not in Berkeley yet, so we rule out earthquake as a likely candidate, and bright cookies that we are we figure "hmmm, bet it has to do with the mattress/box spring swap."
Upon examining underneath the bed, we can see that the slats that hold up the box spring are bending in the middle. After a little internet exploration we find that, indeed, we have screwed up. You are only supposed to use a split box spring on a bedframe with a center support. Otherwise, there is nothing to really support the split box spring where the two sections come together in the middle. With neither of us being the "sharpest knife in the drawer", how a bedframe must work in harmony with the immutable laws of physics just hadn't been quite apparent to us.
So now, our bedroom looks like this: We have a fully set-up (but mattress-less) beautiful Thos. Moser Bed (it was too hard to disassemble it last night) taking up 40% of the floorspace, and jammed up right next to it, taking up the lion's share of the remaining floorspace, is the now-sitting-on-the-floor box spring/mattress set.
Only one month to go! (By the way, it seems no lasting damage was done to the Thos. Moser bed!)
Oops, yes you can comment!
Well, I guess I sort of blew it. Here I am saying "feel free to comment", but I had the blog set up to only accept comments from members. It's fixed now. At least I think so (let me know if I still haven't figured out these new-fangled thangs).
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Unexpected Delights? We hope!
So, I thought over the next number of posts, as we wait our trip's start, I would talk about some of our expectations of the trip.
I guess the main expectation is getting the 3 of us, our car and our rats (yes, they are traveling with us!) across the country. If we get that accomplished, and we're still in tact as a family, we'll have achieved the most basic objective! Beyond that, we really want to get a sense of the country -- seeing it as we drive.
Of course, there are some spots that are amazing destinations -- destinations that most Americans would love to see (Yellowstone comes first to mind). But then there are some spots that I am pretty interested to see. Maybe I'll end up being disappointed, but I'm hoping not.
Places like Wisconsin -- visit to a cheese factory and the very beautiful geology of the Wisconsin Dells. I've actually done that trip in my college days and it was very fun.
And perhaps the most intriguing to me of the "non-destination" stops is Winnemucca, Nevada. Winnemucca is this western town which is supposed to have a significant Basque population, and has Basque restaurants, etc. Even the hotel we chose is owned by Basque people, who came over to America during Franco's reign and decided to stay. They have decorated the hotel with items from their people's history, and supposedly are glad to talk about their culture.
One restaurant has been mentioned on a few websites as one of the best Basque restaurants in the country, and we do love to adventure with food!
If you can believe it, for $68, the hotel gives you a room with two queen beds,refrigerator, microwave, wireless internet, and a pool. Maybe we shouldn't have bought a house in Berkeley, and just lived there!
As we write these posts, please feel free to comment if you have any ideas we should be aware of, or know anything we "shouldn't miss" as we go on the trip.
I guess the main expectation is getting the 3 of us, our car and our rats (yes, they are traveling with us!) across the country. If we get that accomplished, and we're still in tact as a family, we'll have achieved the most basic objective! Beyond that, we really want to get a sense of the country -- seeing it as we drive.
Of course, there are some spots that are amazing destinations -- destinations that most Americans would love to see (Yellowstone comes first to mind). But then there are some spots that I am pretty interested to see. Maybe I'll end up being disappointed, but I'm hoping not.
Places like Wisconsin -- visit to a cheese factory and the very beautiful geology of the Wisconsin Dells. I've actually done that trip in my college days and it was very fun.
And perhaps the most intriguing to me of the "non-destination" stops is Winnemucca, Nevada. Winnemucca is this western town which is supposed to have a significant Basque population, and has Basque restaurants, etc. Even the hotel we chose is owned by Basque people, who came over to America during Franco's reign and decided to stay. They have decorated the hotel with items from their people's history, and supposedly are glad to talk about their culture.
One restaurant has been mentioned on a few websites as one of the best Basque restaurants in the country, and we do love to adventure with food!
If you can believe it, for $68, the hotel gives you a room with two queen beds,refrigerator, microwave, wireless internet, and a pool. Maybe we shouldn't have bought a house in Berkeley, and just lived there!
As we write these posts, please feel free to comment if you have any ideas we should be aware of, or know anything we "shouldn't miss" as we go on the trip.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Trip Plan
So, here's the plan for where we'll be stopping as we cross America (some places we will stop just for the night, others for longer):
--Lancaster, PA
--Pittsburgh
--Fremont, IN
--Chicago
--Madison/Wisconsin Dells
--Minneapolis
--Mitchell, SD
--Badlands National Park
--Spearfish, SD
--Cody, WY
--Grand Teton National Park
--Yellowstone National Park
--Salt Lake City
--Winnemucca, NV
The total trip should take 3 weeks. We tried to balance our time in Nature with some city fun, and make sure that we didn't drive so much that we were miserable (and let's face it -- we are pretty much wimps when it comes to long drives).
Our daily drive should never exceed 7 hours, and the projected breakdown is as follows (not in this order, though):
2 days we will drive 7 hours
3 days we will drive 6 hours
1 day we will drive 5 hours
2 days we will drive 4 hours
5 days we will drive around 3 hours
2 days we will drive around 1-2 hours
6 days we have no required driving (though we may drive locally on those days)
It seems pretty manageable on paper at least, and so many of the places seem just delightful to visit. We have tried to book hotels with internet access and pools as much as we could -- as we are hoping to have plenty of just relaxing time in addition to our sightseeing. As you may know, we are not energizer bunny types. And there is naptime to consider!
--Lancaster, PA
--Pittsburgh
--Fremont, IN
--Chicago
--Madison/Wisconsin Dells
--Minneapolis
--Mitchell, SD
--Badlands National Park
--Spearfish, SD
--Cody, WY
--Grand Teton National Park
--Yellowstone National Park
--Salt Lake City
--Winnemucca, NV
The total trip should take 3 weeks. We tried to balance our time in Nature with some city fun, and make sure that we didn't drive so much that we were miserable (and let's face it -- we are pretty much wimps when it comes to long drives).
Our daily drive should never exceed 7 hours, and the projected breakdown is as follows (not in this order, though):
2 days we will drive 7 hours
3 days we will drive 6 hours
1 day we will drive 5 hours
2 days we will drive 4 hours
5 days we will drive around 3 hours
2 days we will drive around 1-2 hours
6 days we have no required driving (though we may drive locally on those days)
It seems pretty manageable on paper at least, and so many of the places seem just delightful to visit. We have tried to book hotels with internet access and pools as much as we could -- as we are hoping to have plenty of just relaxing time in addition to our sightseeing. As you may know, we are not energizer bunny types. And there is naptime to consider!
Blog Rolling
This is the first entry of our TravelinFam blog -- it's primary purpose to update family and friends about our journey to California. Of course, we don't leave for 6 more weeks, but I wanted to get the blog set-up and give it a test run.
We have been busy packing and selling and giving things away, and we are starting to get down to the end of all that. Of course, we still have to pack things which we need to leave out because we will be using them over the next several weeks, but we have about 50 boxes packed already. And the movers will pack breakable things, so we are getting down there.
It has been a difficult but good process. In a way, we were lucky to have so much time to prepare, although that has led it to seem endless in some ways. It has been interesting to see, as we sell off various items, just how crazy everything is. Some things, which I considered to be really nice, we had trouble giving away or got very little for (e.g. we had to finally take $350 for our treadmill which we origianlly paid $2300 for), and other things surprised the living daylights out of me in a positive way.
The current surprise is a promotional display piece from the original Star Wars movie -- what they call a "Lobby Card", which was used to promote the movie in theaters. We guessed that it should be worth something, but with so much on our plates, we didn't really take time to look into it, and we asked just $15 for it when we held our moving sale a few weeks ago.
Not a soul was interested. On day two of our moving sale, we slashed prices by 50%, so we were asking just $7.50 for the Star Wars piece. Not a soul was interested. By the end of that day, we were basically offering things for free to people, just to get rid of them. Still no takers. So the Star Wars item just has been sitting on our mantle awaiting its fate.
Yesterday, for the first time, I had enough time to go on-line and try to research such items. While I still don't have a final outcome, what I found was that some original Star Wars promotional items seem to sell for hundreds (and in some cases thousands!) of dollars. I sent out about a dozen e-mails to dealers to see what they would offer me, and, though I've only heard back from two, it is clear that I should be able to sell it for at least $100-200. And, of course, now that I know it's worth something, I think I should get significantly more for the item that a few days ago I couldn't give away!
We have been busy packing and selling and giving things away, and we are starting to get down to the end of all that. Of course, we still have to pack things which we need to leave out because we will be using them over the next several weeks, but we have about 50 boxes packed already. And the movers will pack breakable things, so we are getting down there.
It has been a difficult but good process. In a way, we were lucky to have so much time to prepare, although that has led it to seem endless in some ways. It has been interesting to see, as we sell off various items, just how crazy everything is. Some things, which I considered to be really nice, we had trouble giving away or got very little for (e.g. we had to finally take $350 for our treadmill which we origianlly paid $2300 for), and other things surprised the living daylights out of me in a positive way.
The current surprise is a promotional display piece from the original Star Wars movie -- what they call a "Lobby Card", which was used to promote the movie in theaters. We guessed that it should be worth something, but with so much on our plates, we didn't really take time to look into it, and we asked just $15 for it when we held our moving sale a few weeks ago.
Not a soul was interested. On day two of our moving sale, we slashed prices by 50%, so we were asking just $7.50 for the Star Wars piece. Not a soul was interested. By the end of that day, we were basically offering things for free to people, just to get rid of them. Still no takers. So the Star Wars item just has been sitting on our mantle awaiting its fate.
Yesterday, for the first time, I had enough time to go on-line and try to research such items. While I still don't have a final outcome, what I found was that some original Star Wars promotional items seem to sell for hundreds (and in some cases thousands!) of dollars. I sent out about a dozen e-mails to dealers to see what they would offer me, and, though I've only heard back from two, it is clear that I should be able to sell it for at least $100-200. And, of course, now that I know it's worth something, I think I should get significantly more for the item that a few days ago I couldn't give away!
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