How to move

1. Buy a house sight unseen
2. Trust wonderful friend's judgment after she saw said house briefly
3. Hire moving company based on firm estimate
4. Husband accepts job 2 hours away from said house less than 2 weeks before closing
5. Pack all things and label anally so as not to have any issues with customs
6. Get unreasonably excited about Mayflower providing a Canadian truck driver who clearly understands the ins and outs of international moves
7. Follow all protocol at both US and Canadian borders - turn in I-94 cards, have passports stamped, get inventory list stamped, etc.
8. Find out that truck driver got stopped at customs in Windsor
9. Remind self that there is a reason to cross at Port Huron/Sarnia instead of Detroit/Windsor
10. Find out that poor truck driver was made to sit in a chair at the customs office for 16+ hours while a customs crew unloaded every single item from all 3 shipments off of his truck
11. Find out that the shipment bound for Mississauga was going to a storage warehouse, belonged to a family named Mohammed AND contained a bucket of white powder laundry detergent
12. Don't even bother to feign surprise at the customs search upon discovering this (seriously, who is stupid enough to pack white powder to cross the border?!!? Laura, this is why you have all of my white substances!!!)
13. Point out to blog readers that while you clearly harbour no ill will toward the Mohammed family, unfortunately racial profiling is alive and well since no-one really believes that this was a random check
14. Movers arrive on schedule on Tuesday to unload our things. Too bad for them that customs did a crappy job reloading and things got mixed up between shipments. It's interesting to note that our boxes were less messed with than the Mohammeds'.
15. Sign off on forms acknowledging that one box seems to be missing. Discover later that you are also missing 2 shelves from your armoire.
16. Receive call from truck driver 3 days later saying that he has your missing shelves. No mention of the potentially missing box.
17. Explain to blog readers that no-one is 100% sure that there is a missing box. Its inventory tag number was not found on anything else that came in to the house, but until everything is unpacked it won't be known for sure whether it was one of the untagged cartons or not.
18. Sit down to blog about moving adventures, because that's obviously more fun than unpacking all of the remaining boxes in the house!