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Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Although we were able to obtain the services of a moving company for the bulk of the materials, they were not able to schedule our pickup until November 29. Since the packing would be done well before then and living in motels was causing much mental distress, we needed a way to get some essential furniture and items to Ruston in advance of the major move. Toward that end, I arranged for a U-Haul rental on line with the idea of picking the truck up in the morning, loading it in the afternoon, driving it up, unloading it and having it back within 24 hours. However, when the U-Haul agent called to confirm a pickup time and I told him about my plans, he said that trucks rented for "In-Town" use (i.e. pickup and return to the same location) could not leave town because the engines were too old. Therefore my plan to start the move on Thursday would not be possible.

In this experience, I learned how U-Haul rotates their equipment. New truck are devoted to intercity (i.e. one-way) service. After they reach a certain mileage, they are retired to low mileage intercity service. I had assumed that renting a truck one-way would be more expensive than driving the round trip, however when I inquired, it ended up being somewhat cheaper after mileage charges and gasoline were figured in. The one-way rate also included two days of rental, allowing a more relaxed moving schedule than the round-trip option. Armed with this new knowledge I reserved a truck for Saturday pickup.

The high winds of the previous night continued during the day and my mother mentioned that she was noticing a strong flapping noise. I initially dismissed it as being caused by the poor job I did securing it to the roof. When I did go outside to investigate, it turned out that the tarp had blown off the Northeast side of the house, also explaining why there was water leakage in the sewing room. Because I did not have slats to secure the tarp, the heavy winds simply lifted the roofing tacks out of the roofing plywood. A quick trip to Lowe's (my new favorite store) yielded some 1x2s that I used to reattach the tarp.

Wednesday was also notable for my mother completing the cleanout of her packed, mold-damaged walk-in closet.

Next: Thursday, November 17, 2005