Move-In Day Is Over

I wrote this on Saturday. I am back online.

The move-in went much more smoothly than the exodus from Beaumont.
There were a couple of negative occurrences; but for the most part the
day went well. I left the hotel at 7 AM. I knew it was much too early,
but I wanted to go to the house. I called my driver around 8 AM and
left a voice mail for him to avoid Lebanon Road and go north to Main
Street and then go back on FM423 to Frisco Lakes. He would never have
made the turn onto FM 423 in that monster truck.

While I was waiting I went outside and sat on my front step. A nice
lady and her little dog were walking by. She had moved in last week.
She mentioned that she had noticed my house had plantation shutters.
She said she also was getting shutters. I invited her in to see mine.
She says she goes for a walk every morning and invited me to join her.
I love to walk. I am going to take her up on that. She told me she has
already had AT&T come out and install the package. She is having a
problem with the WiFi network. Upon questioning I found she had to put
an adapter in her PC and that was the problem. I should not have that
kind of problem because my PC has been using WiFi networks for several
years.

My driver called around 8:30 and said he got my message and would stay
away from Lebanon Road. He showed up about a quarter to ten. It was a
good thing that I had the Saturday move-in because there were fewer
construction vehicles on the street. There were about four trucks that
belonged to bricklayers. None of them spoke English. When my van
finally showed up on Frisco Lakes Dr., I walked out to the van and
told my driver his Spanish was going to be useful today. I told him to
tell the workers to move their vehicles. He managed to get the streets
cleared and get into the cul-de-sac. He actually had enough room to
turn the truck around so that it was facing back out of the cul-de
sac.

The driver gave me the inventory sheet for me to check off the numbers
of the boxes and furniture items as they were brought in. I couldn't
find time to go to the bathroom because I had to keep checking off
numbers. My neighbor brought over a cooler with the cold drinks. She
gave me her cell phone number to call when it was time to get the
lunches. The crew worked until 1 PM. I told them that the neighbor
lady was going to get our lunches, but they had spotted a mobile taco
stand that comes around to the construction site. They insisted that
was what they wanted. I called my neighbor and told her to forget the
lunches for the moving crew but I could use a salad.

A little while after I got the salad Sears showed up with the washer,
dryer and refrigerator. This is when things went downhill. They
actually had the refrigerator. Then it would not roll under the
cabinet over the refrigerator space. The refrigerator was one-quarter
to one-half inch too tall. I had written down the model number of the
GE Profile refrigerator in the Walden model home. I found this
refrigerator on the GE website and printed out the drawing with all
the critical dimensions. Then when I selected the model that I wanted,
I again printed out the drawing with all the dimensions. The
dimensions were identical to the refrigerator in the Walden model
home. I can only conclude that the cabinet was hung a little too low
in my house. I hated to call Meagan, my customer service manager and
Gary, the construction superintendent on a Saturday. The call was
dropped when I got a hold of Gary and when I tried again I just got
voice mail. I thought this is typical of the way builders treat their
homebuyers. Boy was I wrong. Gary called back later in the day and was
very apologetic. He said he was trying to figure out a way to rectify
the situation over the weekend. Meagan had also called me back and
said it would be taken care of. The Sears delivery man had the
refrigerator running and the ice-maker is hooked up. The problem is it
can't be rolled under the cabinet. I told Gary the refrigerator was
running, and he need not try to fix the problem over the weekend. It
can wait until Monday.

The movers finished around 4 o'clock. I had not eaten and felt like I
was going to faint. There were a few items I had not checked on the
inventory sheet. We checked around the house and found the items that
I had not checked off. The crew did a few things that irritated me.
The driver refused to remove the crate from the grandfather clock. He
said that was not his job. The last time I moved the crew took the
clock out of the crate and took the crate away. I am going to call my
estimator at Wald in Houston first thing Monday morning. There was a
small mar put on the top of my dresser. I had a very hard time
communicating with the youngest member of the crew. His English was
very limited. He could not understand me when I would tell him to
center a piece of furniture, move it left or right or away from the
wall or closer to it.

When I was really at my low point, my friend Mary and her husband
showed up. She brought me something to eat. I hope she can forgive me
for being so rude. I did not even look in the bag until an hour after
the movers left. She went to the CheeseCake Factory and bought me one
of those wicked cheesecakes with all the whip cream. Just writing
about it makes me want to run to the refrigerator right now and start
devouring it.

After the movers left I kept starting to do one thing and something
else would catch my eye before I finished the first. I finally forced
myself to sit down and eat the salad my neighbor had bought for me.
There is something about a Del Webb community that attracts very nice
people. I can remember when my parents moved to Sun City West that
they had very nice neighbors. The experience certainly is repeating
here in Frisco Lakes.

After I ate the salad, I vacuumed the top of my mattress. It was
fortunate that I knew where my canister vacuum was located. I then
located the box with my bedding that I had used my last night in
Beaumont. I made up my bed. I had brought my Bose Wave radio with me
on the last trip from Beaumont. I plugged it in. The battery backup
had kept the clock set with the correct time since I unplugged it
Tuesday morning. I tuned it to KERA which is the strong NPR radio
station in Dallas. They have three NPR stations. I also had the cable
I use to use to attach the iPod to the radio. I listened to a couple
of podcasts I had downloaded before leaving the hotel this morning.

I then decided to take a bath in the whirlpool tub. Now I am a couple
of additional complaints. It is hard to climb into the tub, and almost
impossible to bend over the side of the tub to clean it. Also I found
that the hot water is not hot. It is only lukewarm. I do not if it is
just a matter of setting a higher temperature or if the hot water
heater has a problem.

Overall I really like the house. With the exception of the
refrigerator everything fit in the way I expected it to. The delivery
man ran the new washer through a cycle. I noticed there was a light on
the washer. It said clean. I lifted the lid and the light went out. It
is going to take me some time to learn how to use my new appliances. I
am really glad I got the refrigerator that I wanted. I hope the
cabinet can be raised without too much difficulty and only minor paint
touch up.

Considering the way Meagan and Gary responded today, I can see why
Pulte gets the J. D. Powers award for customer satisfaction in the
Dallas area year after year. With my previous houses it has always
been a hassle to get the builder to correct faults.

The first thing I am going to do tomorrow is unload all the papers
from the trunk of my car. I kept the folders in order in the boxes so
it should be fairly simple to put them back in the filing cabinet.
When the car is empty, I am going to the storage unit. The first thing
I am going to retrieve is Henry. He needs to get acquainted with his
new home.

The house really has a nice homey feel to it. Now if I could only
figure out where the light switches are located.

P.S. Mary, I am eating the cheesecake now. I have burned so many
calories for the past week that I do not feel at all guilty about
eating the whole thing.