A Tale of Two Cities

There's lots of choreography involved in moving from one state to another.

Lots.

From prepping, showing, selling the house and all that entailed, to packing and moving, to closing off utilities, getting final readings and bills, and unbundling a cell phone from a quad package and keeping the phone # that everyone already knows. Ending homeowner's and getting renter's insurance, dealing with car and health insurance.

It takes some doing to bridge 2 cities when you don't actually have a house to  move to. At the closing, I had to provide a new address.

Getting an address over the phone that's not a PO box was pretty easy. Shockingly easy actually, but maybe it's just New York that's so tuned up for terrorists. At a UPS store, Hickory (yes, that is his first name) helped me out, and after faxing an application and my drivers license I had a street address, and a place to get and send packages. I met Hickory once I got to town and was thrilled to get a whole pile of mail---seamless synergy between USPS in NYC and UPS in NC. We can play nicely together! Turns out Hickory's moving to New York, "Either Brooklyn or Albany." He's in a band and he said that they treat him like Elvis in New York. Hey, good luck with that.

Banking went well, too, but I got some odd advice. My NY bank has no presence in NC, so I needed to know the timing for last use of an ATM card, bill paying, etc... and where I'd be depositing net proceeds from the sale of my home. With my atty, in escrow, and to be wired to me in NC? That seemed convoluted.

I approached the Customer Service Desk with my timeline and the woman leaned toward me, looked around, then whispered...

"When I was a little girl, in India, my mother and my grandmother used to carry a lot of gold." She looked around again, then continued, "What you do is, you take a piece of fabric, and you sew sew sew..." You sew it into your panties!"

OK. Where am I? What year is this? Am I on Candid Camera? A Customer Service rep at a major bank is suggesting that I carry my money in my undies? I was thinking some cash to hold me over, then I dunno, a certified check when I closed out my accounts?

I thanked her, and went to the window, closed out and followed my own advice. No panties! Back at home I googled the major banks in NC. They have plenty of lobby service and ATM's in NYC as well as NC. I opened an account over the phone and I'm good to go.

Next up, re-registering the car. I might wait on that--changing a UPS address to my actual street address on a license would be a nightmare in ANY state.