One of the things that Clancy and I decided we wanted to do while we were here is pick up some furniture for the move. It’s kind of risky and not necessarily cheap because we’re having to get extra moving truck space, but there is a wealth of stuff available here on Craigslist where there is no counterpart in Arapaho. The two big things we wanted were a recliner and a sofa. We’ve been hobbling along on a single recliner throughout our time in Cascadia when we left my old one behind in Estacado (may it rest in peace) as it fell apart.

This was particularly inconvenient because our other piece of living room furniture, the futon, did not survive the trip. I mean, it didn’t break into a million pieces, but the wood panel on the bottom broke and so the futon sagged somethin’ fierce and was not easy to get in and out of with any real ease. Well, I guess gravity assisted with the “in”, but since you land on the injured would, you have to live with the guilt that each time you sit down, you’re making it more difficult to get back up. It’s a tough burden, man.

A couple months ago, a neighbor was getting rid of his loveseat and was asking a woman who lived across the alley if she wanted it. I volunteered to take it on the spot. I shifted the living room around a bit and we had the futon which had been transferred to stuff receptical duty and a coach one step away from the graveyard. Clancy says that there is a minor smell on Not-Futon, though I can’t smell it. There are a couple of minor tears. The idea was that we would take the couch cover from The Futon and put it on Not-Futon. Still, though, it was not something we were going to want to display prominently in our future living room. Still loads better than The Futon.

So we set out on Craigslist for some new furniture and ran across a La-Z-Boy recliner. Now, LZBs are not the most comfortable of chairs, but they’re still not bad. Clancy’s recliner is a La-Z-Boy and we like it fair enough. The big thing, though, for packing purposes is that the top comes off and that makes transfer easy. And what do you know? We’re transferring stuff in a few days. Someday I’m going to want the recliner of my dreams, but it’ll do for a while yet.

Searching for a sofa was a little bit harder. The hangup was that we found the perfect sofa/love-seat early on and couldn’t get our minds off of it. Nothing else came close. It was more than we wanted to spend and it came with a love seat, but the biggest issue is that we would have to pick it up from Western Shores, a rich-person community a couple of hours from here. Setting aside my distinct lack of enthusiasm about driving for five hours a couple days before driving for a dozen, that made the vehicle rental situation much more difficult.

UHaul has those nice signs on their trucks that say $19.99 or somesuch, but in small print is “plus mileage.” In fact, with a 50-mile minimum and required insurance (unless you have a $10k credit line), there’s no way that you can get out of there paying less than $60. However, we were looking at far above and beyond the minimum mileage. And at 60c a mile, it was going to get really expensive, really quick. Budget was the same way except that they charged more for mileage. So we went with Enterprise.

Enterprise, it turns out, has a bizarre definition of the word “reservation” and “confirmation.” Whereas I interpret these words to mean “You are confirmed! You have a reservation for a truck with us!” what they mean is “Oh, we may or may not actually have the truck we confirmed with you. And if we don’t, well, that’s just tough luck” because they feel absolutely no obligation to live up to the reservation. They refused to upgrade us for the same price, which is what businesses typically do. They called around, but when they found one, it was too much trouble to have it transferred to their location. And it was more expensive than our reservation and they would not compensate the difference. So for the honor of using Enterprise (which was, prior to this week, my rental agency of choice) we would have to drive half an hour to pick it up and we would be paying $10 more a day than what we had reserved.

Sadly, this was still better than our alternatives. Enterprise charges a lot more by the day, but gives you unlimited in-state miles. Since we were going to be putting some serious miles on it, they could have charged us a lot more and still been cheaper than UHaul or Budget. That being said, getting an Enterprise through the website is a really bad idea. Apparently, they make reservations without regard to availability. This was a real sore point in the Paulsboro Enterprise, even though in this case they had what we wanted. It would have been a sore point at their Soundview Location, if they’d cared. I’ve noticed this before with Enterprise in that I will reserve one model and end up with another in the same class. As long as they have something, I don’t care about the particulars. This was different.

What Enterprise does not have is CD players in their vehicles. Clancy warned me about this, but it was still odd to see a car – any car – without CD players. I mean, how much could it possibly cost to have one installed and though most people won’t care, for some people it means spending hours in the car in between municipalities with no entertainment. Some people like me.

Last move, I kind of bugged my mother-in-law with my need to burn a bunch of audiobooks for the trip at the last minute. It was actually one of those things that was supposed to take only a few minutes but because of technical difficulties distracted me for a couple hours. This time she wasn’t around while I was scrambling to set up my audio entertainment. I took one of my old Pocket PCs and transferred the audio books to it and I’ll listen on bluetooth on the drive. I managed to mostly do this while resting in between taking boxes out, but man it would have been easier with a CD player.

So yesterday I picked up the recliner, which turned out to be closer than the one that we originally decided on. We had initially decided on one that was nearly the exact same as the one we had, but it was out in Enterprise City (no relation to the rental agency). Then one opened up at the next town over and that was more appealing. It was a different color, but I actually decided that I liked that because it wouldn’t look weird if they were two shades of faded.

Later today I’m driving out to Western Shores to pick up the couch and love seat. I’ll be wishing and hoping and praying that it will all fit into the cargo van. I think it will. I packed up most of my clothes yesterday, so I’m sort of slumming it today. The impression I get from these people and where they live and their wonderful couch that they’re getting rid of that these people have money and lots of it. I’m oddly self-conscious about it. Like I’m not worthy of the couch that they are bestowing upon me. Okay, not really. But sort of. No, not really. A little. I never claimed to be entirely rational.