Who knew moving could be so complicated...

After packing up all our stuff, selling our house, finding an apartment on the other side of the country, driving all the way out here, and finally unloading and organizing everything, I thought all the complicated stuff was over. I was wrong. It turns out that registering a car and getting new licences in Massachusetts are no small task.

I first started to figure this out back in Utah when we were looking for renters insurance out here. I figured I would just call all the big insurance companies, get a few quotes, and pick the best one. So I called Statefarm, Allstate, and Nationwide. They don't do ANY insurance in Massachusetts, not renters, not car insurance, nothing. Luckily, Geico does renters insurance, but not auto. We later found out that Massachusetts insurance premiums are set by the government. Companies are only allowed to offer discounts for certain things and the big guys want to set their own prices to be competitive.

So last week we go to the DMV to do all car stuff. Turns out you can't register a car without Massachusetts insurance (not a bad idea to prevent all those uninsured motorists, but they forgot to mention it on their website). Also, you have to have about 15 documents proving your identity (okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it was a lot more extensive that I was expecting). On our second trip back and over an hour of total wait time, we finally got new plates and temporary licences. After all this, I only had to wait another hour to get it inspected (the first place I tried had an hour and 45 minute wait).

One more random thing...The other day we were driving through "downtown" Sunderland (meaning a post office, library, church and a Subway sandwich shop) when we saw a BYU Idaho bus driving through! We could not possibly think of a reason why they would be all the way out here. It was fun to see though.