This week has not been the best. This morning I was so frustrated that I actually pulled my own hair. (This was after my email program decided to eat half my inbox, as well as about 3 years worth of archived mail, and I found out that the phones that I thought were finally being installed today actually aren’t going to be installed before we print all our new letterhead and business cards. The phone company, who by the way was not the source of the problem, has assured me that we are “100% guaranteed” of getting the numbers they’ve issued us.)

Here are some other challenges from this week:

• After our insurance agent here told us a few months ago that he could handle our insurance change to AZ, he now suddenly said we were on our own. After calling Aetna, we found out that we have to start all over and reapply from the beginning. And it was *so* much fun the first time (especially for Brad).
• Our printer of 7+ years is no longer in the printing business.
• We thought we found a good solution to moving the books, but it doesn’t seem to be panning out. We’ve decided to just rent a truck and do it ourselves
• We’ve continued to look for an architect, only to be told that apparently no one in Portal has ever used an architect. Everyone just draws plans themselves. (This is usually followed by some insinuation that we must be either rich or stupid or most likely, both.)
• We found out that no used pickup trucks in LA have 4WD. (However, contrary to what you may have heard, everyone is VERY happy to finance any purchase we’d like to make, especially for a big new shiny truck.)
• Banks don’t finance owner-builder construction. (It took me about 3 weeks of unreturned phone calls to finally find this out.) Apparently, to get around this, everyone hires a contractor to say they’re the contractor (even though they’re not) so they can get financing. We’re probably going to just forego the whole thing.
• Verizon used to have a department who would verify that you are a business customer of theirs, but they don’t anymore, so you’re on your own. This took me almost 2 hours on the phone to find out. Verizon reminds me of Wells Fargo. It’s amazing that these companies can function at all.

On the other hand, here are a few good things that have happened:

• We got the final water test results, and we may have the purest water in America.
• I told our landlord and a couple of our LA customers (the only customers who could possibly care, since we’ll be closer to everyone else) that we are moving the business.
• We made arrangements to get a table at the local swap meet in a couple weeks to sell some stuff we don’t want to move.
• We have gotten moving boxes, put some stuff up for sale on eBay, and started getting rid of stuff we’ll never need.
• We heard from one of our neighbors about all the wildlife he’s seen this week….bobcats, owls, hawks, etc. Very nice. We can’t wait to get there.

Little steps. Next week will probably be better.