We wanted the movers to deliver our belongings on a weekend. I didn't want to take time off in my first week at work, and a delivery on Saturday or Sunday would be the easiest.

We spoke with quite a few moving companies, but most could not garantuee delivery on the weekend. However, a sales person at Nationwide Relocation Services said this would not be a problem. We spend a lot of time on the phone to make sure they could garantuee it, and they confirmed: "not a problem, it will be either Saturday or Sunday".

A long story short: when the movers came on Friday to pick up our things they told us that it would be impossible to deliver the next day or Sunday, and they wondered why the sales department had told us otherwise? When we called Nationwide, they said that the delivery would probably be Wednesday or Thursday.

On Monday I received a phone call around 1.00 pm from an unknown number: "hi -- we're your movers, and we're on the highway on our way from Virginia now". I asked them to give me a call 30 minutes before they arrived in Durham, so I could leave work and meet them. They didn't, so a few hours later they called me and asked me where I was: the truck had arrived and they wanted to unload it. Luckily, the apartment manager let them in, and I had to leave early, at 4 pm on my first working day.

When I came home there was a huge truck parked in the street at our apartment. The movers, a sub contractor to Nation Wide unloaded the truck in a few hours and brought everything up the stairs. They were on their way to Georgia with the rest of the load.

There was some significant inconvenience when the movers wanted to have the remaining balance paid in cash -- no checks or credit cards. This would be hard because all banks were already closed. I c called Nation Wide if they couldn't help me by performing a credit card transaction instead but they said there was nothing they could do. A couple of phone calls later I managed to get the money, and I decided never to do business with Nationwide Relocation Services ever again.

The actual move itself was executed well. We did have a little bit of damage, and 1 broken lamp, but over-all our stuff was in good shape and nothing was missing. I'm glad I didn't have to carry everything up the stairs to our new house.

On the same day that I got my drivers license the movers came to pick up our furniture. So on Friday night we slept in a virtually empty apartment. Everything that remained in the house we would have to take with us by plane. Our only piece of furniture was a large inflatable mattress.

On Sunday I flew to North Carolina, where I would stay for a few days in a hotel until our furniture arrived and I could move to our own house. The traveling didn't go as planned -- I had booked a ticket for a flight at noon, but that got cancelled and American rebooked me for a flight at 4 pm. Because of bad weather this flight was delayed and I finally arrived at RDU around 7 pm.

I picked up my rental car, a white Dodge Stratus, and immediately got lost in the area around the airport. My original plan was to check into the hotel, and then drive to work to see how to get there in the morning, but it somehow it took me over 2 hours to get to the hotel (it should have been no more than 30 minutes). I drove on many, many roads in Cary, and even when I finally found the right street, it took me a long time to locate the hotel, it because it wasn't very visible from the road and it was dark already. I quickly learned how to drive on a 4 lane highway after sunset.

I was staying in a Red Roof Inn in Cary, very close to where I work now. When I arrived there it was close to 10.00 pm and I didn't even have dinner yet, so I drove to downtown Cary and picked got some Chinese for take out. I also visited Kinko's to read my e-mail and print the Google map directions from my hotel to work. Driving from the Red Roof Inn to my work turned out to be really easy, and the next morning I arrived safe and on time at my new job.

On Friday July 21st the moving company came to pick up our furniture and belongings.

There were 3 guys and a large truck, and it took about 4 hours to move everything. They wrapped all the furniture in blankets and bubble wrap.

The last time we moved, from DC to Arlington, we hardly had any furniture and just a couple of suitcases and boxes, so it was much easier. After two years living in Arlington, we have collected a lot of stuff so it took a couple of hours to load everything in the truck.

After the mover's left, this is all we had.