A moving story, Part 1

So, I've been hinting about telling you all this story for a long time. The problem with it is that it's a really long story, even by my standards, and so I am simultaneously too lazy to write it and worried if I write something that long, no one will read it. Probably, I need to do this in parts.
So, here goes.
There is a moving and storage company up here that my family has some history with. In general, they have done a great job of both moving and storing our stuff. It was, until recently, owned by a guy we'll call The Guy and a woman we'll call His Business Partner. His Business Partner is, in addition to being a good business person, from a family my family has known for generations, though we don't know her personally all that well. So when I was moving from city to country, I hardly shopped around at all. I called around a little and found that these people we trust were actually at the low end, pricewise, of the normal range.
So, naturally, I hired them to move me.
I dealt entirely with The Guy and a woman who will get a name soon enough, but not His Business Partner. There were some things that I thought of as sort of country quaintness to our business dealings, that in retrospect were giant red flags.

• There was no contract.
• He had to keep calling to ask for my address.
• He asked for a list of my stuff, and then, when I gave it to him, said he wasn't sure the truck he was planning on using would be big enough (So? You're a moving company. Bring a bigger truck.).

But whatever. He was a known quantity and he knew the area I'd be moving to.
We made a plan. The movers would show up at my house between 8 and 8:30 on a Friday. They'd be able to move me out in about an hour and a half (which I thought was optimistic, and so rounded up to three hours) and then hit the road. I would spend the rest of the day cleaning my apartment with a friend (we'll call her Bread Truck Grrl) who'd fly down to help me drive my car up. Then I'd go out to dinner with two of my close friends, BTG and I would crash at their house, and we'd hit the road bright and early Saturday morning. My new job would start on Tuesday, I'd close on my house on Wednesday, my things would be delivered on the following Saturday. Callooh, callay. Perfect.

Watch this space for Part 2.