Mission Accomplished

Moving our crap to the new apartment, that is. Loading started Friday night and continued on through Saturday morning. Seven co-workers, friends, and relatives showed up to help me pack and load the truck on Friday night. Three more came back the next day to finish up the loading and drive down to the Windy City for the unloading. We got on the road about noon on Saturday, with me driving the sixteen-foot moving truck packed to the gills. And by the way, I highly recommend going with Budget for a one-way move. They were much cheaper than the competition and I had no problems with my pickup, drop-off, or charges. The sixteen-foot truck only cost me about $60 in gas for the drive, which came out to around three hours and fifteen minutes. I thought unloading on the other end might be a real bear. My new apartment is on the second floor of a courtyard building, on the end closest to the street. To move in, everything had to be carried from the alley end of the building to my back stairs and then up one and a half flights of stairs. It actually went really well, which I have to attribute to the friends who drove down with me. The weather was also cooperative, since it was only around 70 degrees instead of the 90 degrees it had been a few days previously, and it didn't rain after having rained for the past several days there. Dropping off the truck was a bit of an adventure, since I got to the drop-off place only to find that they had no lot of any kind. Yes, dear readers, I had to parallel-park a sixteen-foot moving truck on a busy city street. That was interesting. Upon returning to the apartment after dropping off the truck, I ran into a fellow incoming first-year doctoral student in my program who had just pulled up in his own Budget truck and was surveying the territory for his move-in. By an astounding coincidence, he was moving into the apartment immediately downstairs from my own! My movers and I were able to get back on the road around 7 p.m. local time, which got us home about 11 p.m. because of the time change. I still had to drive out to my parents' house in the sticks, where I'm staying for this week, so I didn't get to bed until about 11:30. I slept until after nine the next morning, got up long enough to attend to my personal hygiene and eat a light breakfast, and had almost dozed off again by the time my parents returned from church. I got up long enough to eat the incredibly nasty Midwestern German Sunday dinner of sauerkraut, whole potatoes, and pork ribs my mother had prepared and then took a "nap" for another four hours or so. When I got up at 5, I actually stayed up the rest of the evening until 11 and then slept like the dead again. By yesterday, I was feeling pretty much recuperated from the move, other than the spectacular constellation of bruises in various stages of healing all over my arms and legs. No big deal. I have a busy week planned right through Friday night, between the last few errands I have to do to tie up my affairs here and all the social activities I have planned to enjoy my last few days with friends I won't see quite so much after Saturday. Monday I start orientations for my graduate program.