the press is home, safe and sound. yay!!!
me? ...not so much.
I am now short one third fingernail, thankfully NOT on my drawing hand, but more on that later.
Holy crap, moving a 1200lb press is HARD. The Beast was in a storage unit in Lynn, MA and needed to make the one hour trek to its new home in my garage. Thankfully there were no stairs or narrow hallways to deal with, but the job still required a moving truck, two pallet jacks, several dollies, a gate lift, and four grown men. Oh and me, having a bazillion panic attacks.
After calling 5 or 6 different moving companies for estimates, we hired
Micheal's Movers out of Boston, MA. They seemed to know their stuff and happily worked to meet our budget. Three burly men (OK, one burly who looked remarkably like A-Rod, and two normal sized) met us promptly at the scheduled time of 8am. The men that Micheal's sent were fabulous, they cared about my press, were thoughtful and polite. The Beast loaded up and on its way by about 9am.
OK, I made that sound way too easy.... it wasn't. Every move had to be carefully planned out, even a 1 inch step was a chore, requiring multiple moves between the pallet jack and dollies. It took 45 minutes just to figure out how to get it on the gate lift!!
seriously... 45 min to get up that tiny little incline?!?
After getting The Beast onto the gate lift, the four men positioned themselves at the rear of the truck in press-catching position and I manned the control switch. Palms sweating, I hit "up", as the lift lurched into motion the top-heavy press started to lean backwards. The movers yelled for me to lower the lift so they could reposition and add more strapping. I hit "down". Nothing. For some reason (they blamed the cold) the down wasn't working, so we had no choice but to continue up, with the 1200lb press leaning over my husband and A-Rod and those other two.
gah!!!!
Thankfully when we arrived home "down" decided to join the party, but then the pallet jack broke!! Our construction company owning neighbor was summoned to help. After some fruitless tinkering he suggested trying True Value for a rental and even offered to go get it with his ginormous truck.
yay for nice neighbors!
So with our SECOND pallet jack of the day we brought The Beast to what I learned would be it's final resting place, because my dear husband told me we are NEVER GOING THROUGH THAT AGAIN.
The nice moving men left, our neighbor returned home, and Jason and I we loaded the rented pallet jack into The Matrix (and added it the list of amazing shit I can fit in my car).
pallet jack, CHECK!
We arrived at True Value and as we lifted the pallet jack out of the back, that's when it happened. I was lowering my end to the ground and holy mother of god something just ate half my finger. I really don't know how it happened, maybe the wheel pinched it? All I know is that if anyone wants to clone me there is sufficient blood to do so located in the True Value parking lot.
So there you have it, the press is home, and I'm beyond excited. Unfortunately, I'm still nursing an injured finger that gets all angry and swells up whenever I bump it (which seems to be every time I set foot near the press) so things are progressing slowly. I think it's going to be a loooong journey to get printing.
And seriously peeps, what is up with the blogger editing? Things seem to just be magically moving and shifting on their own! Makes Holly ANGRY!!!!
