Barrel Day!

So after nearly a month of waiting, our barrels finally arrived last night! We were so excited! One of the big things was that we needed the part for Ryan's computer. Originally it didn't seem that bad... only two weeks of sharing. Then the barrels were delayed shipping out (we had to wait for things we ordered to arrive at the house) and it took longer than we thought to arrange pick-up. So there was some extra time there. Then Tropical Shipping claimed they'd never recieved our paperwork, and the barrels spent two weeks sitting in Miami. That was ridiculous. They knew enough to pick the barrels up in Massachusetts and truck them to New Jersey, and then put them on a train to Miami, so obviously they had our paperwork at SOME point. The bad thing was that they didn't call us and say that they'd lost our barrels... they just let our barrels sit there!

Arranging for our barrels to be picked up was a bit of a hassle as well. I had really wanted to call Ren, who's a great bus driver used by a lot of the spouses. But since we live at the bottom of the hill of death, and I knew that Ren's van would never be able to make it back up, I had to try to make reservations with one of the taxi companies who have pick-up trucks. A pick-up truck could make it back up the hill, I figured.

Well, I originally had reservations with a company called A1 (yup, just like the one in Oneonta), but then they told me they were unable to pick up the barrel till Friday. Since I went on a trip today, that wouldn't have worked. So instead I called Alexis taxi.

Alexis taxi told me that they'd call at some point in the morning with a rough estimate of the drop off time. I waited till 11:30 and then gave them a call. I'd run a few errands earlier in the morning, but I'd been reluctant to run too many since I wanted to stay close to home in case the barrels came. At 11:30 they told me that they'd drop the barrel off by five at the latest.

Ryan came home for dinner about 5:30. I'd wanted to wait to cook something from the barrel, but since it hadn't even shown up, I couldn't do much. We gave Alexis another call and poor Ryan had to turn right around and go to the Alexis taxi office so that he could pay. The barrels were in Picard! And, despite my efforts, they still had to move the barrels down the hill by hand. The truck Alexis took to pick up the barrels was a big flat-bed truck that would have spent the rest of it's life at the bottom of our hill. I gave the poor driver a glass of water- he needed it!

We stayed strong and waited to unpack until we'd eaten dinner. The actual unpacking didn't take very long at all, so Ryan hung around for that. The putting away took awhile, but it was alright. Ryan was busy studying so it was nice to have a project. We took a few photos of the unpacking, so you can see some of our goodies. It's so nice to have full cupboards and shelves... and it's all food I didn't have to carry for a mile or two from the store home!

Some of the more exciting things we got were two pairs of snorkeling gear, some loaf pans and pizza pans and a skillet and griddle, Ryan's power supply, lots and LOTS of food (much of which we can't get down here), Ryan's dress clothes, and some coffee mugs for Ryan (which I think really made his day!). It was very tiring to put it all away, but now it's all done, which is a great feeling!