First Day At Work!

I felt like I was getting my kid ready for their first day of school this morning (-: Mike finally returned to work today after a month's leave. Today he's reporting into his new unit, Commander Naval Air Force Atlantic (COMNAVAIRFORLANT). I think he's only working for like half the day and won't start actually checking in till Monday. Actually I'm not even sure he'll even find where he works... I assume he has, seeing how he's been gone for like a hour and a half and I haven't received a phone call yet. Anywayz, I added a pic of the proud Sergeant and his dilapidated bootcamp documents folder... Maybe Santa will bring him a new one that ISN'T falling apart... Ok... Now I need to get back to unpacking the house before the internet and phone guy shows up.

FINALLY in our new house... Oh and what an ordeal it was.

Ok so it all starts our with some shady Chinese food we ate on Monday... We woke up with food poisoning on Tuesday... And when I say "we" I mean not only Me and Mike but ALSO poor Makayla. So on top of all the stress we have to go through of moving EVERYTHING into our new house on Tuesday we get to deal with being sick as dogs. So we had scheduled to pick up our keys, have our furniture/boxes, and direct TV installed all on the same day... I think was was mistake #1 cuz we couldn't pick up the keys till 9am and the firnature got here about 8:15... I don't know if that irritated the packers or what... But they seriously just didn't give a crap about anything. I mean we've never done a PCS move before, and I don't know exactly how it's supposed to go... But literally every person I had talked to that had been through one said that we would have a check list with corasponding numbers that have been taped on our boxes so we can check off everything as it's going in the house. Well we didn't have that... I mean I stood here tellin the guys where to put what and I mean they flat out idnored me. I mean I expected a few boxes to be out of place... But I mean, if they decided that a box was too heavy to carry upstairs they'd just leave it down stairs for us to deal with. THEN the thing that really irritated me, they took things apart that should have NEVER been disassembled. I mean like our living room furniture, dining room table and freakin a 40+ year old bamboo [computer] desk NONE of which should have ever been disassimbled. I mean ALL of it was in one piece when we bought it... In the 23 years I've had that bamboo firnature it had NEVER been taken apart... But apparently the movers took it upon themselves to dissemble it. But the thing that makes me real mad was we were NOT told they would be doing this. They put that stuff in the truck WHOLE... I watched them put it in the truck and it was all in once piece. Somewhere between the truck and the storage unit and the storage unit and here, someone took it upon themselves to just dissemble it for WHATEVER reason. THEN when Mike tells the guys that they need to put all the stuff that was taken apart back together, they want to argue with him and clame that it's not their job. So Mike got them to put the diningroom table and the livingroom furnature back together but we've got the do the rest. OH and we had been told by the company AND signed a piece of paper saying that we wanted our boxes "unpacked" and the packing supplies removed. So when the guys had empied the truck and started to leave, Mike asked them if they were going to be unpacking the boxes and they once again said no, that it wasn't their job. Mike informed them that we had indicated on the paper that we wished for them to unpack atleast some of the boxes and remove the packing supplies and they TRIED to explain that the little box on our Packing Sheet that said "Do you wish to wave the unpacking and removal of debre" meant that we'd be waving them unpacking everything from THE TRUCK! Heh, really, now does that even make any since? So whatever, they didn't unpack a thing or remove any of the empty boxes... We've just got a huge pile of paper and crap in the garage that we have no idea what to do with.

Oh and on top of all that... Of course things got broken... Most I don't care about... I had a cake platter that was smashed to pieces, a spoon holder that had been broken in half, 2 lamps that were broke, missing pieces to our living room end tables, a dresser got it's knobs broken off... But the thing that I can NOT get over... The thing that makes me the MOST mad... I had a terracotta pot Marine that I had made... Those in Yuma, I'm sure remember it, it sat right next to my front door for the 2 years I lived on base. Well I was talking to Mike about taking it in the car and finding room for it when one of the movers over heard me. I told him I was REALLY afraid it was gunna get broken and he stood there and swore up and down that he would make sure it got bubble wrapped and taken care of and that they would be REALLY careful. Well we get it... It HAD NOT been bubble wrapped, it HAD NOT even been placed in a box... In fact, they purposely chiseled it apart to stack the terracotta pots in each other AND THEN just lightly wrapped it in brown paper and tossed it in the truck. So of course, it's freakin broken... And you wanna know how much freakin TMO's gunna pay me? Nuthin more then a couple bucks for the stupid pots and MAYBE the cost of the paint (So probably about $10) I am soooo incredibly irritated at the moving company right now. I'll be calling down there here in the next couple days, once we figure out exactly what's broken or "missing" and file a formal complaint.

More housing issues...

Ok so this whole housing thing is gettin soooooo irritating!!! So just to recap... We originally thought we would be moving to VA without a house... So I had all my mail forwarded from our Yuma house to to a friend's house who lived the next building over. Then a couple days before we moved, we were offered a house in VA and given the address so I THEN had my mail forwarded from my friends house to our VA address... Well I guess that confused the postal lady cuz she continued to deliver all our mail to my friends house but told her she couldn't deliver anything with my maiden name on it so God only knows where any of that mail ended up. Well after movin into the mold covered house and deaming it unlivable they placed us in a hotel room for a night, then moved us to a temporary house where we're currently staying. Since it's fully furnished, we had to have ALL our boxes and furnature and stuff put in government storage till we got a permanent place to live. So THEN the housing office called us a few days ago and told us that they had found a NEW house for us and gave us the address and everything. So we spent all yesterday changing our address YET AGAIN with the post office, changing our order to have our phone, TV and internet all hooked up and changed the address on our bank accounts and credit cards AND setting up an apt to have both our boxes and furniture removed from gov storage AND have some new La-Z-Boy furniture delivered... THEN this after noon as we're drivin to Cleveland I get a call from some chick in the housing office saying that there's been a mistake and she accidentally gave us the wrong address... So ontop of having to refill-out and resign the lease we now have to change our address (among changing our address with all our other services) for the freakin 5th time in 3 weeks!!! Well I guess the house we NOW have , has got pretty much the same floor plan as the one they told us we were gettin a couple days ago but instead of a triplex, it's a duplex. Oh, and SOMEWHERE there's a couple hundred extra sq feet... I really don't know what we're gunna do with all this extra room... I mean the house we had in Yuma had 1200 some off sq ft... This house has 2062! I'm just super happy that we're gettin a 2 car garage cuz the original house we had when we got here DIDN'T even have assigned or covered parking and it was IMPOSSIBLE to get a spot even remotely close to our house. But I'm totally stoked about this whole double garage thing. Well so far, we're still set to move in on the 27th... And if we can keep our same apt dates that we JUST made with the moving company they should be delivering all our stuff and Direct TV should be hookin up our TV the same day we get our keys, and then La-Z-Boy should be commin the following day, AND I think Mike said the phone and internet guys were commin on the 30th to hook that stuff up... Oh man, I just can't wait to have all my crap back... And to finally have the internet hooked up and crap so I can go on it whenever I want and no longer have to steel random people's wireless internet... Anyway, if you're interested, below is a floor plan and sketch of our house... We won't be able to go see it in person till we get back to VA on Sunday/Monday.

Our new house!

So i'm excited... We finally got our address and signed the lease and all today... We'll be movin in the 27th and FINALLY have our internet and whatnots turned

Housing woes...

So we moved in Thursday around 3:30 PM. The house was totally trashed, completely FILTHY! It had not been cleaned since the previous tenets left a week prior. The district manager wanted to do the walk through with us cuz it was so bad. Well she listed some things that she personally wanted fixed or replaced like the kitchen counter tops, she wanted the old tenets garbage removed from the front yard and she wanted a general cleaning done of the place. Well all this crap irritated me enough... As far as we knew at the time, the only things wrong with the house were comedic. I expected to move into a house of the same quality and cleanliness as the one we moved out of in Yuma... But obviously that wasn't the case. So we were told that someone would be by that day or the next to pick up the trash and to install new blinds on one of our front windows since it was missing and EVERYONE can see into the house.

Well Friday morning I got up to shower and while trying to clean some black gunk out of the master bathtub I discovered that the drain was so clogged that it wasn't draining at all. So I called Mike in to screw off the top of the drain and MAN it was disgusting! Not only was the thing COMPLETELY clogged with hair, there was that clear green grass like the kind used in Easter Baskets, toilet paper and what looked like fake moss (like used in fake plants). So when the cleaning folks came over that morning we had them remove that and clean the bathrooms. We also told them that there was mold on the stairs that needed to be scrubbed off and the floor downstairs was completely filthy (looked like it had never been moped before). Well the cleaners didn't really do much, they scrubbed a few stains that were on the hard wood floor and like we thought, they couldn't be removed. The lady tried gettin all the mold on the stairs up but said we'd have to talk to housing about that cut it was IN the wood... And then she said there wasn't much she could do for the downstairs floor... She said it was too old, and scratched up and just needed to be replaced.

So once 1PM hit and the office came back from lunch, Mike went down there with a list of EVERYTHING that needed to be fixed in the house:

• Oven leaking
• Oven/Stove exhaust vent missing cover
• Oven covers NASTY & caked in crap!
• Dishwasher sitting completely crooked
• Kitchen sink drips
• Replace kitchen counter tops (previously used as a cutting board and stained)
• The bottom of the front door frame is COMPLETELY rotted
• Replace ALL vinal flooring downstairs (DEEP scratches, stained and covered in holes)
• Light over laundry room burn out
• Backyard lights burn
• Front storage room light burnt out
• Wooden door knobs NOT painted (paint white)
• Bottom step completely chewed by dog
• Mold growing on stairs
• Rail on stairs filthy and marked with permanent marker. (sand and refinish)
• Master bath door rotted on bottom
• Master bathroom bench covered in stairs and marks (stain and refinish)
• Stains and deep scratches in floor of master bedroom
• DEEP scratches in upstairs hall
• Upstairs bath, broken bathtub faucet knob
• Upstairs bath, shower head clogged with hard water (hardly works)
• 2nd bedroom closet off track.
• 3rd bedroom door knob broken (wont lock in door)
• 3rd bedroom closet door wont close.
• PICK UP TRASH!!!

Most of it they said they would fix... But as far as the mold on the stair case (which was a huge concern of mine) they said they couldn't really do much cuz "it's on the s tairs" WTF kinda excuse is that??? A lot of the stuff they said they'd send the maintenance manager over Tuesday to look at but they promised that they'd send someone over before the end of the day (3:30pm) to remove the garbage from the front of our house... Well 3:30pm came and went and the garbage is STILL sitting there. Ugh, it was soooooo nasty and there are soooo many flys all over our downstairs and it STINKS! Yuck!


Ok, so Saturday was an interesting day... There was nuthin much we could do about everything wrong with our house since every one had a 3 day weekend. So we decided to go furniture shopping... So I got up and showered in the master bath, then Mike got up and showered while I went downstairs to fix the baby some food. Well when I walked downstairs I saw a HUGE Puddle of water in front of the front door (BTW, it had been sprinkling all night)... So I went upstairs, told Mike to hurry up with his shower and to come look at the door that was leaking. Well we ended up having to call the 1800 number cuz the dripping wouldn't stop even though it had stopped leaking outside. When the after hours maintenance guy came by, he said that the water wasn't from the rain outside, that it was from the piping that leads to the master bath, but that there was nuthin he could do for us, that we'd have to just not use that shower and wait till Tuesday when the plummer was workin. UGH!

Well later last night Mike was in the master bathroom and noticed that a lower part of the wall between the bathtub and the door looked different then the rest... Like it had been plastered and sloppily painted.So he poked at it and surprise surprise it was completely damp and his finger went through. So he pulled it out, and pulled the wet part of the plaster off and low and behold MOLD!!!

Well I was livid at this point... First mold on the stairs they they try to brush off as "it house and it's on the stairs, there's nuthin we can do about it" But now it's been proven that the stupid bathrooms leaking and it obviously has been for a while cuz that mold didn' looking for some sign on mold on that wall... Well yesterday I went to close the air vents (they're on the floor) and NASTYNESS black MOLD!!! all over the one in the master bedroom... So that right there proved to me that there's mold all in that front wall but the leak it's self was about 15 feet away from where the vent appear within a few hrs. Well I just KNEW it was all in the wall (it's the front wall of the house) I kept looking andt is... YUCK! I can't wait till Tuesday..'s an old. We're goin down to the office and demanding a new house cuz there's NO WAY that they can properly isolate, remove and dispose of the mold that's infesting that front wall with us living here! They have till Thursday to find us a new house... I've already had to reschedule our Direct TV set up, and our furniture delivery (We bought some new La-Z-Boy furniture Saturday) but our unaccompanied baggage (furniture, boxes, etc) is scheduled to arrive some time Thursday and that I CAN NOT RESCHEDULE!

Oh yeah, and they've still yet to pick up the garbage that the previous tenets left!

PCSing - So you made it to your duty station!

You will be given the telephone number of the transportation office (TMO) at your new duty station. Your Marine should contact the office as soon as possible, and provide them with a phone number where the member or designated representative may be reached.

Arrange for phone, gas, and electricity to be connected.

Check the pilot lights on the stove, water heater, incinerator and furnace.

If you are moving to a new state, register your car and get a new driver's license as soon as possible.

Register your children in school.

You will need to visit the DEERS/TriCare office to resister at your local medical center, or depending on new duty station, possibly change TriCare reagons.

Before the moving van arrives, clean the hard-to-reach places in your new residence.

When the movers arrive, check their inventory against the one you made prior to departure -- they should match.

Know in advance where to place each piece of furniture. The mover is required to place each piece only one time.
At time of delivery, you are entitled to the reassembly of all items that were disassembled by the carrier.

In addition, you are entitled to have everything unpacked, with packing materials removed from the residence, unless you specifically waive this service.

If you discover that you are missing some items or items have been damaged in transit, you must list these items on your DD Form 1840. You should ensure that three legible copies of this form are received. This is not a claim, only a record of loss or damage. Any additional loss or damage discovered after the carrier has completed delivery should be noted on the reverse side of DD Form 1840, which is DD Form 1840R.

Well we made it!

Well we made it to Norfolk this afternoon and checked into housing... We weren't supposed to move into the house till tomorrow morning but we talked them into lettin us pick up the keys today... It's kinda dirty and not quite what we expected... But here's a few pics!

PCSing - The Big DAy (part 2)

The movers must seal everything in crates before they leave your house. Do not let them take un-crated boxes and tell you they will crate them at the warehouse! You should witness them seal the crates, and the seal numbers go on the paperwork.

Trust me, I learned this the hard way. On our last PCS move the movers told us they were just stacking everything in the truck since they weren't being put into storage they wouldn't need to be crated. Well as everyone should know, "things come up" and we ended up not having a house as soon as we should have at our new duty station and out household goods ended up needing to be stored for a month. Well let me tell you it was a HUGE shock when I received my furniture in PIECES!!! And not because they broke them accidentally... But because they took it upon themselves to TAKE THEM APART! And I'm not talkin $50 Wal-Mart furniture... My pooooooor Antique Hawaiian bamboo desk, my dining room taable and livingroom coffee and end tables that I didn't even know came apart!

Just trust me here, it's a lot easer to just make sure they crate them.

PCSing - The Big Day (part 1)

Have your own inventory of all your items, and list the serial numbers for those things that have them. Take pictures of all of your belongings. If it's electronic, show that it works... Take a video of your washer and dryer working to prove it IS infact in working condition since they won't check that when they come to pack. If you have to file a claim and you have a picture, you are much more likely to get replacement value instead of depreciation value. For items that are high value but you would not have receipts for (such as wedding china), you may also submit a letter from a third party (such as a friend or relative) certifying that these items were in your possession and they saw them in your house. The reason for this is because boxes will not be labeled “12 place settings of Noritake china, Gold Ring Pattern with 5 piece serving set”. They are more likely to be labeled “China”.

The packers will note the condition of items on their inventory; for instance, if the couch is worn, or a dresser is scratched. I honest to God think it is just standard to list "scratched, soiled, dinted" on all sides... Seriously, check the invintory list, they don't just list it as ""scratched" they list a code next to it... Probably to confuse you. Really, it would be in your best interest to go through and question every code before you sign that paper and have them correct it. If you have problems with this, or concerns about how the packers are noting the condition of many of your household items, call the Traffic Management Office and ask them to send an inspector out. This is probably the #1 problem servicemembers have with packers.

PCSing - The Movers

I love this comic!

Trust me, put the items you DON’T want packed in a empty closet marked “DO NOT PACK”, or lock them in your car.

Packers will pack anything not nailed down. If you don’t want the trash in your trash can shipped to your new base, be sure to empty it before the packers come! Put the pet’s food and water bowls aside or they’ll get packed, too. Some of the active duty member’s records must be hand-carried. And if you got a newcomer’s welcome package about your new base from your sponsor don’t let the packers box that up, either. The info in that package will come in handy as soon as you arrive at your new base!