cww.blog!

Here I am, living in the Big Apple.

I spent most of last week involved in some aspect of moving here, thankfully with my dad's help. He flew up and stayed for nearly a week, assisting me with packing, driving, and everything else. The time constraints ended up being so tight that there's no way I could have done it without him in the end. Hooray for my dad!

The movers, on the other hand, were absolutely awful. They were slow, rude, and almost didn't take my patio furniture from Pittsburgh. It was only after I complained to their dispatcher that they (spent 15 minutes arguing with the dispatcher and) decided to disassemble the patio table for storage in the truck and then move the chairs in the truck's cab.

When the movers arrived here, a day late, they extorted unnecessary money (about $300) from me before they would even start moving my stuff from the truck. As it was Saturday, their dispatcher was out of the office, so I had no immediate recourse. Tomorrow, I will start the complaint process with a call to the moving company and move up the regulatory chain to the Better Business Bureau and even the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Apparently, "hostage freight" is a felony, and the FMCSA has authority over that sort of thing.

Enough bad news! Today, I sort of started my new "job". The enrollment process involves a number of forms, a cashier's check, a notarized document, and a fingerprint card, which I spent an hour or two getting settled while walking swiftly up and down countless blocks of Broadway in lower Manhattan. Can you believe I had to visit five banks before I found a notary? In Manhattan's financial district!

Now that the forms are complete and on their way to the company's main office in Phoenix, I get to spend the next four weeks studying for the Series 7 exam. Exciting.

If any of you feel like visiting any time in the next four weeks, I'm sure my study materials and I will appreciate the company!