Moving/Driving Day 1

Last night's hotel: Ramada Inn Pikesville
Pros: super cheap ($80), amazing water pressure, fridge/microwave
Cons: kind of dirty, extremely uncomfortable beds (seriously, how can people like extra firm mattresses?), loud construction vehicles outside, 'continental breakfast' was a small pastry case that was empty
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Today we drove 300 miles (out of almost 3000...eek!), which is gravy because today was a 'bonus' driving day.  We got on the road later than expected because it took forever to vacuum the apartment - I know Jeff is excited to get a new vacuum!  Look how clean our apartment is!  I am going to miss those walk-in closets and huge living room, but I am SO EXCITED to upgrade from 1 BR, 1 bath to 3 BR, 2 baths!

Bedroom

Bedroom

Closet #1

Closet #2

Foyer

Kitchen

Kitchen/Laundry

Living Room

Dining Room, and crappy vacuum

Despite the late start, we made it to our hotel at a reasonable time and ate dinner around 8 (as opposed to last night, when we wolfed down Ledo at 9:30 pm).   It was cool to pass TWO state lines, and we also hit 70k on our odometer.

I'm sad this is so fuzzy, but it's the 70k mark!

 

Terrible picture of the 'Welcome to Ohio' sign.

Our hotel is super swanky, now I'm going to show off our awesome hotel room.  Pretty sure you don't need captions :)  I had no clue it was going to be so nice, we had a hard time finding ANY rooms in Ohio so we did spend a little more than we'd hoped, but it wasn't insane.  I quite enjoyed the whirlpool tub, I would loooove to have one someday.  Between that and the compression stockings I finally broke down and bought, I am one happy pregnant lady.

 It's comical watching us come in because we have SO many bags; even though we're only staying one night, there's a lot of stuff we have with us that can't sit in a hot car - three laptops, a bag of medications, toiletries, snacks, our cooler with water...it's absurd!   We did consolidate a few things so it won't be so bad next time (we have two huge duffel bags of clothes, too, but in the future we're just going to grab the clothes we need for that night).

So overall, the day went really well.  The one wrench in the works is that ABF apparently didn't pick up our cubes.  :-/  I am hoping that the tracking info just hasn't been updated, because otherwise they won't be getting them til Monday at the earliest (they'd BETTER get them Monday!), and it's highly unlikely they will make the estimate delivery date of next Friday.  Considering we have baby class Saturday, I have an OB appointment and an interview Monday, and Jeff starts work on Monday, we reallllly wanted the cubes to be here Friday.  We will live, but it sucks that we would have to spend at least 3 extra nights in a hotel, and I plan on trying to get them to at least partially cover our expenses if that happens.  Reading our contract, we're actually eligible for a reduction because they were over two hours late delivering the cube (window of 8-12, they showed up after 2).  It REALLY bugs me when this happens, I have to be home for FOUR hours and you can't even make it then?  Or at least CALL?  And of course if we had somewhere to be, we'd have to cancel.  I sent an e-mail inquiring about the pickup, but they're closed over the weekend so I will have to wait :(   Normally I wouldn't even try to get any money for the late drop-off, but I am really annoyed about this situation.  Even a cheap hotel will set us back quite a bit for an extra three nights, and I have to buy interview clothes since I don't have any with me in the car.  Le sigh.