Well, the bumps in the road continued...
Shortly after we arrived in Boulder we received some sad news - Ryan's grandmother had yet another stroke and this one looked like it was near the end. We began preparing for the possibility of having to fly back to WI for the funeral.
Now that we live in Boulder we decided to get new drivers licenses and register our vehicle. Interesting that it is not possible to take care of both of these in the same location. After waiting for at least an hour and a half for our drivers licenses we were told that WI is one of the few states that does not require proof of citizenship in order to obtain a drivers license, but Colorado does require this. So we had to go home and get our passports and come back. Next stop - vehicle registration, of course it was the same thing here, we needed a Colorado emissions test and a VIN verification in addition to the title and proof of insurance. Needless to say Ryan was not a happy camper. Jamie took care of the emissions test and VIN verification, but Ryan's name is the only name on the title (due to Jamie throwing him a surprise party the day that he decided we needed to purchase a new car) so he had to do the actual registering of the vehicle. This whole process took two days rather than a couple of hours - UGH!!
Soon after we moved in Ryan began complaining about bug bites on his legs. He wondered if maybe something got into our sheets from the move. Jamie washed the sheets to rule out the possibility of bugs in our sheets - we both continued to get bug bites. Jamie noticed a tiny little bug, kind of like a fruit fly that jumped instead of flew, on her one day. Ryan assembled a grill on our back patio one night and was eaten alive by these same small black bugs. When he came in the house he'd have about 30+ on his white socks (he counted as he killed them). We tried to find out if our neighbors had similar problems or if it was just us. No one else seemed to know what we were talking about. After pondering what these strange Colorado black bugs could be, Jamie wondered if they might be fleas. Ryan agreed and Jamie started researching online. Sure enough, it sounded like we had unknowingly brought fleas from our back patio into our house.
The next morning Jamie spoke with the resident manager and mentioned the possibility of fleas. The resident manager immediately contacted maintenance and they sent someone over while we were out to lunch. The next morning the bug guy came back to assess the situation and confirmed our fear of fleas. He suggested that we move to another unit. The possibility of moving yet again during her eighth month of pregnancy caused Jamie to break down. The bug guy came back to spray the back patio and front yard with an organic spray and Ryan talked to him about other options. The bug guy said if we had the carpets and rugs steam cleaned immediately that it might take care of the potential problem brewing inside of our new home (apparently fleas lay their eggs in carpets). Ryan was on the phone nearly all day with different offices from campus to help us resolve this problem. In addition to this we received a call that morning telling us that Ryan's grandmother died and we would need to travel back to WI the following week.
Sadly, the story does not end there. After about a week and a half of unpacking boxes and rearranging furniture (multiple times) we had finally felt that we were making progress and getting settled. Unfortunately when you have your carpets steam cleaned you have to move everything off the carpet from one side of the room to the other and then back again. And after all that it takes two or three days for the carpets to dry and then you can move your furniture back into place. Around 1:30pm some people from maintenance came to clean the carpets - they only spoke Spanish. Apparently they didn't know what they were doing, Ryan had to talk on the phone to the gentleman's son, who was also his boss, in order to translate. After only a short period of time, there was a bright spark and a pop - the steam cleaning machine had shorted out the wiring. They left to get a new machine. A few hours later two different ladies came back with a new machine and one spoke some English. These ladies did a much better job and knew what they were doing. Ryan helped move the furniture from one side of the room to the other for each room they cleaned. Around 7pm the cleaning was finally finished - unfortunately the smell was rather overwhelming and not a great place to spend the night. The university has a couple of "hotel" rooms in one of the dorms and offered to put us up in one. We picked up the key and then went to get some dinner. When we went to the dorm with all of our stuff for the night (around 9pm) we were thoroughly exhausted. Ryan turned the key and opened the door only to surprise someone that was already staying there as she came out of the bathroom (Ryan was quite surprised too). By now the housing office was closed, so we contacted the resident manager of that dorm. We tried another room in the dorm, but it had not been cleaned since the last time it had been used. We were then authorized (with many appologies) to get a hotel room for the night. We checked into the hotel and got to our room around 10pm. It was rather musty smelling and humid in the room (very rare for such a dry climate) the AC was on full blast, but not doing a thing. We were so tired we decided to try and deal with it. After laying down and practically sticking to the sheets we opted to call the front desk. They switched us to a new room - the AC worked a little better and it did not smell in the room.
We were able to get a little bit of sleep before heading back to our damp carpets the next day. As mentioned earlier, Boulder is typically a very dry climate - of course the day our carpets were drying it happened to be one of the most humid days they've experienced in awhile. Ryan quickly went to work putting the furniture back into place while Jamie washed all the bedding and anything else that had been on the floor (five loads). Ryan also vacuumed all of the furniture.
The rearranging of our things back into place actually re-motivated us to unpack more boxes. We were now getting more settled in, but the fun did not stop there...
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