The Good & The Bad

I feel like Ryan and I haven't been in Kansas for long, but we've definitely already seen & experienced some of the good the bad of KC.

The Good 

1. Cost of living.  Enough said!

2. People are friendly.  AND they do their jobs.  One of the first nights we were here, we went to dinner where the server tried up-selling us.  Also, the lady who helped us with our apartment has been so incredibly nice since we got here and has gone above & beyond with EVERYTHING.

3. Food & Shopping EVERYWHERE!  Convenience is definitely a plus about living here too.  Living in MD, I would have to plan at least an hour just to take a trip to Michael's.  Here, we have a movie theater, Walgreen's and food less than a mile away.  If we need a mall to go to, there's an indoor mall about 5 minutes away.

4.  Drive Thru's EVERYWHERE.  Have you ever seen a China Panda drive thru before?  Yeah, we hadn't either.  Amazing!

5. Family friendly.  We aren't ready for kids yet, but if we do decide to settle down here and buy a house, this is definitely a great place to raise kids when we're ready.

6.  Everything is easy to find.  For Ryan and I, this is big.  We tend to get lost even using TomTom & Garmin (our GPS' - Ryan won't admit to this).   All of the streets here are in a grid lock, so it's easy to know if you're going the right way or not.

7.  Clean. And peaceful.  You can tell that everybody here just really takes care of their stuff, and all of the houses and businesses are well maintained.  We were at the bank and it looked so new, I asked the lady who was helping us when they opened.  She let me know they had been open for 10 YEARS.  Seriously?

8. Super Targets.  Everywhere. I could spend my life in a Super Target, even though I've already spent about 3 years of my life in a Target store working.  Love. Them.

The Bad

1. The obvious: No family and friends around.  We didn't have a lot of family and friends around us in Maryland, but we had enough to keep us comfortable and entertained (ahem:: Chris & Emily, Jim & Shannon, Justin & Amanda ::ahem). I had the convenience of driving 2 hours to see most of my friends & family, and I'm already really, really missing that convenience.

2. No squirrels.  Well, I lie.  I've spotted 2 since we've been here.  For Zoe, that's not nearly enough for her squirrel chasing lifestyle.

3. No Rio Grande Cafe.   That place has the best fajitas ever known to man, and the closest one is in TX.  Not okay.

4. Jobs for me. It's only been a couple of weeks, and even though I'm trying to enjoy my time to sleep in, do everything on my own schedule and allow my sweet husband to be my employer, it's very frustrating.  I'm trying to enter the nonprofit industry and find a job in animal welfare where I can really feel like I'm making a difference in something I'm passionate about, but there are NO jobs!  I spend hours scouring website after website and hardly anything new opens up.  I'm hoping this gets better after the New Year. Ryan and I want friends here, but that's hard to do when I spend almost all of my day in the house!  I'm starting to volunteer and making attempts to attend any networking opps I have, so I'm staying positive and hoping something will pop up sooner than later!  Until then, Ellen & Oprah are my best friends and I'm okay with that!!!

Sorry, I know this post is pretty boring.  I'm going to put pics up of our apartment next week, once I get all of the Christmas decorations up. :) :)

Just say NO

Victory Van Lines, thank you for making Ryan and I's life a whole lot harder the last 2 weeks.

I won't ramble about the things that they did wrong since the time we booked them as our movers.

Instead, I'll make this a positive post so if anyone else thinks about booking movers, they'll know what to look for.

When we found out that we would be moving, Ryan started doing a LOT of research.  He's a very analytical guy, so it wasn't unlike Ryan to search all moving websites, look at complaints and comments on the Better Business Bureau website, and ask colleagues about who to go with.  SO, needless to say, we were very surprised that we had so many issues with Victory Van Lines.

So, some genuine advice:

1)  There is a federal law that says you shouldn't expect to pay more than 10% of what the on-site estimate is.  Our on-site estimate was 4500 lbs.  After they weighed the truck, we were told that our actual weight was 7000 lbs.  Shady, huh?

2)  This leads me to my next point.  If you book your movers, do not sign anything that is blank.  We signed something assuming it was for the on-site estimate weight, which we found out later was not the case.  They took the paper we signed and filled in the truck weight 3 days after they told us they would have the truck weighed.  Shady?  We thought so too.

3) Stay with the crew who is packing your stuff.  If you let them out of site, they will not wrap any of your fragile items.  Instead, they would throw ALL of your stuff in one huge box.  When you are around, they will wrap everything carefully and place about 2 items in a box that could hold a Smart Car. Can we say sketchy?

4) Hold the movers to the date they tell you are going to deliver your items.  When you're told by your movers that "it is what it is" when it comes to the weight of the truck, the very same phrase can be held to the movers when you're told that the truck broke down and no longer have a delivery date for you. Weird? Yes.  Unlucky? Absolutely.  Unreasonable?  YUP.

5) Don't accept a discount of $125 when your items are delivered 4 days after the very latest day you were told your items would be delivered.  When the delivery crew refuses to give you your items because you haven't paid the full amount, call the cops. Is it sketchy that a delivery would be refused?  Undeniably yes.

6) When your main contact at the moving company doesn't call you when he says he will and starts screening your calls, keep calling.  Use *67.  Call the office every 5 minutes every day.  Email him until you get the response you want. A respectable company will not screen your calls days on end, and then pretend not to get your voicemail's when you finally do in touch with him.  Can I get a S? a H? an A? a D? and a Y? What does that spell? SHADY.

So, kiddos, what did we learn tonight??

JUST SAY NO

TO

It's the right thing to do.  ;)


By the way, it's a very special lady's birthday today.  Happy Birthday, Marian.  Miss you all the time <3 

We have our stuff....

...but it didn't come easy!

The movers finally showed up on Sunday - 4 days after the very latest they said they would arrive. I'm still not ready to talk about all of the issues we had with them because there's too much anger to be blogging about it right now, but that post will still come soon. :P

We were living like this for almost 2 weeks:

An air mattress is not at all fun to sleep on, and it's even better when your air mattress gets a hole in it!! There's nothing like waking up every couple of hours to inflate your bed again!

Regardless, we survived. The movers showed up with a LOT more boxes than we thought that we had. This is what I'll be unpacking all of this week:

I spent all day today just working on the kitchen. We kept all of our old stuff and brought all of our new wedding gifts. If you mix old AND new stuff with a kitchen about the half of the size as your old kitchen, you get a kitchen with NO SPACE! I'm still struggling with where to put stuff, but I guess that's not a bad problem to have!

We've only been here for a couple of weeks now, but there is one thing we have learned about the area that we're living in. Overland Park, KS LOVES their soccer. We live right across the street from a huge soccer complex. 12 fields, lighted, heated, concessions, everything. There are a couple of soccer fields right across the street. See for yourself:

My dreams about being a soccer coach are crushed. With soccer being this intense, there's no way there are teams that are looking for a coach!! I'll write more about our new home & moving troubles later. :)