Moooooovation!

Star moved today, and I helped! We picked up the Uhaul truck at 1 and then drove it back to the Glen to load up all her schmooze then drove it to her new house on Thomas street in west Oly.

Ben holding Lil' Hauler, one of Uhaul's two stuffed Uhaul trucks available for purchase at your nearest Uhaul establishment. The discovery of Lil' Hauler was a great start to a pretty good day of moving furniture.

The lawn gnomes in front of the Uhaul store on 4th Ave.
This one is special.
The Uhaul all packed up and in action with Star at the wheel. Don't worry, I was stopped when I took this so I'm not TOTALLY reckless when it comes to driving.
The front of Strizzles new house which is right across the street from a park and tennis courts. Way cool.
Maneuvering the Uhual into the parking area behind the house, a venture that really wasn't successful at all and ended in the mauling of a bush. Good times though.

Ok, so there's a story in all of this. It was just Ben, Star and I and we managed to wrangle everything into the Uhaul without incident. Star's new house, however, is a bit of an engineering conundrum. The staircase isn't to code, not in the least... and Star's new room is at the top of said stairs. Plus the door we'd been using to get furniture into the house opens up so that the door blocks the foot of the stairs so when you bring something in you have to squeeze in, turn around and close the door and then squeeze back onto the stairs which are super steep (see video below). Anyway, we had enough trouble trying to get her dresser up there when it became clear that the mattress was going to be an issue. In order to get it up these dubious stairs it was going to have to be bent double. Unfortunately this is a brand new mattress equipped with reasonably stiff springs, metal, etc. Ben took the door off it's hinges so that it would be a straight shot up the stairs.
Ben taking the hinges off.
And then we tried to get the mattress up.

And this is what happened.
And this is Ben's "puzzled, strained and stressed" face once it became clear that with our muscle power that mattress wasn't going anywhere. I think we got it to move about 3 inches in 30 minutes after lots of sweating, grunting and "Squeeze it Ben! PUSH!" It sounded like someone was going into labor, or a Lamaze class.

This is Star's "stressed, freaked out and tired" look. At one point she yelled up the stairs "What are we going to do Ben? This whole plan hinges on having the bed upstairs!"

Finally Johann (one of Star's new roommates) remembers that he has one of those cinching straps and got the idea that we could use it to help the mattress bend. After two tries we got it around and squeezed (it looked like it was wearing a corset and non too happy about it either) the mattress upstairs.
It sounded like a birth. "We did it!" "Oh you were so good Ben!" "Oh I'm so happy!" "I need a cigarette." It was almost a perfect Lifetime movie happy-ending script.

Here's a video of the house, the stuff and some of the pets (just some, not all).