London, Baby

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Dear Diary,

Moving is a freaking pain in the ass. It’s less of a pain when five Mexican guys show up at your door, willing to professionally wrap and box every single item in your entire apartment (thanks Rigo, Julio, Gino, Freddy, and Angel). But it’s still a pain in the ass.

That’s your cue to say, “Tell us Brian, why was it such a pain in the ass?”

Glad you asked.

The most annoying thing about moving is all the things that just break/go wrong/make you want to explode like an atom bomb. The things that SHOULD work but don’t.

1. The computers you spend minutes agonizing over making sure you switched to 220 voltage but still won’t turn on (and have your only installation of iTunes) when you plug them in.
2. The things you can’t buy because the stupid retail system in the UK is wired to do a credit check for every 10-pound data plan and for some reason yours fails every time.
3. The banks that don’t let you sign up a joint account unless both of you are working (yes, I’m looking at you Barclays).
4. The iPad data plan (that you have to use Pay-As-You-Go because you failed the credit check) that won’t work because you have to connect your iPad to your iTunes (which you can’t do because your stupid computer [which you air shipped over the ocean] won’t turn on.

And hanging over our heads through all of this is the fact that my work visa, which was good for 3 years, expires in one month and I have to go through a 50-page application, and so does Robyn, to renew it. The 50-page application isn’t the real problem. The real problem is ridiculous requirements like: “You must show us 12 months of bank statements showing how rich you are and the logo of the bank must be on EVERY page of each statement.” Sorry, but Bank of America, retards that they are, only print their logo on the first page. What am I supposed to do about that?

Equally frustrating is trying to arrange for someone to move into our apartment from overseas, and having to deal with the building’s management company, who insist on paperwork that we simply cannot get the bank to provide. Yes, I know I signed a paper saying I would get the bank to state that I can sublet without breaking any clause in my mortgage, and after six calls to customer service they all agree: “We don’t have any problem, there’s nothing in your note that says you can’t sublet, but we don’t have an official communication that says this and we can only give out official communications.”

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

I keep telling myself, “woooosaah, woooosah,” and I keep telling Robyn, “Don’t worry, I’m sure they will accept all this paperwork.” But honestly, this has been the most annoying move I have ever done. Even the move to the Netherlands was not as difficult as this, and there every government form was in a foreing language.

Also adding to my annoyance is the fact I let the sales woman at Joseph A Banks talk me into the wrong suit size and now my suit is going to cost almost 200 dollars in alterations to get it to fit correctly, which is almost as much as it cost to buy, thanks to the expensive London skilled labor that I am going to have to hire to basically cut it into an entirely different suit.

AAAAAAARRRRGGGHHH

The only thing that has helped through all this is that Robyn has been a fantastic partner. She has used her time to sign up all our utilities, make appointments with banks, go shopping for home wares, buy food (from the tiny “express” supermarkets that are near us), and generally be an awesome force for calm and stability in my life.

Thank you baby.

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