DAY ONE

Huge thanks go out to:

Courtney, Michael, Andy, Whitney, Sean, Derek, and Josh for cashing in their "good karma" chips and helping me move all the stuff out of the house.

For those of you unfamiliar with Good Karma Chips, they are the imaginary tokens you spend, giving you good karma.  Essentially, the more Chips you spend, the more you get back.  You just never know how or when they are coming back to you.

Since I am the one everyone chose to spend theirs on, I increase my chances of something awful happening to me.  I don't suppose I'm exacerbating my own chances of that by walking into Cleveland to cheer for the Minnesota Twins.  Nah.

The greatest of the Karma Chips was spent by Melissa's mom Karen.  Long story follows:

Midway through the packing process Saturday morning, Andy and I looked at the 17-foot U-Haul truck that we had already filled 1/3 of the way up, and realized there was no way the rest of the furniture was going to make it in.  In subsequent phone calls with Melissa, we came to two conclusions.  I unload the truck and return it for a new (larger) one, or Karen drives up from Lincoln with a 8-foot trailer.  Weighing all the options, I came to a couple of conclusions.  One, if I told the group at my house (working for free beer and not much else.  Good Karma Chips.  That’s it.) that we’d have to unload everything they did while I drove the 45 minutes to the Uhaul place and the 45 minutes back, I’d probably come back to find a note that said “Karma’s a fickle bitch, Neil, and I’m not ready to gamble it all on you.”  Two, we’d fill the whole truck up and gamble that the trailer would hold the rest.

Since Melissa’s folks had offered multiple times to drive up and help, I felt okay about asking... and Karen was awesome.  She took off directly from work with the trailer in tow, and rolled into Minneapolis at about 12:45 am.

Derek and Josh showed up at 8:00 am to help finish off the loading.  Here’s the amazing result:

What you’re not seeing in the video is the grill and four dining room chairs inside the van.  Not bad.  Not bad us.

Once in Lincoln, Brett, Jo, and Brad jumped right in to help unload.  Everything that I brought to be stored at Brett & Jo’s ended up there, and all of it incredibly left the truck in less than an hour.  Brad then helped unload the rest of the NY stuff into their garage, in preparation for the new Uhaul Monday.  Phew.  So, oh yeah, the Rosenbergers all have so much karma it’s ridiculous.

A day like this helps you really appreciate all the people in your life who are willing to jump in, no questions asked.  I was asleep at 10:30, exhausted but relieved, and slept dreamless sleep all the way through the night.  Thanks again, everybody.