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Brief update
Hello all!
The last several days, all of my blogs have been things that I wrote last week and post-dated to come up later. I've been in non-stop mode and knew I wouldn't be able to write. Thursday I spent pretty much all day packing, then did the same thing Friday plus drove to my mom's. I had a somewhat easy day on Saturday, just lazing around and visiting an aunt who's selling her home and moving into a nursing home before driving to Cleveland for Elliot's wedding reception, where I had a good time and caroused about Cleveland until late in the night. Crashed in someone's hotel room and left relatively early Sunday morning to drive first to Rochester NY to pick up my best friend who's helping me move, then to Buffalo to pick up my mother where she'd visited a college friend and left her car. Then we drove back to western PA and spend much of the evening/night packing more of my stuff. We got up Monday morning and finished up packing, then I went with a buddy to get the 22' truck from Penske which we first used to pick up a four-poster canopy bed for him and then used to pack all of my worldly belongings.
The truck was huge, and I got the honor of driving it from Podunk, PA to Providence, RI over the next two days. Leaving was hard. A lot of my friends from the school had also come out to help me pack up the truck and it was (rather unexpectedly) a very emotional farewell. These have been some of my closest friends over the past 5 years and it finally sunk in that I'm leaving them and all of the daily acts of friendship that I share with them. Even as I write that, I feel a pang for it. The future is no doubt bright, but so was the past and I'm going to miss them dearly.
We had some good luck. We drove as far as New Jersey or New York last night, leaving 3 1/2 hours to Providence today. When we arrived (after I made a wrong exit from the highway but knew just enough of Providence's geography that it wasn't fatal), I went to pick up my keys. Before the woman could go look for them, a guy came into the office to turn in his keys. Including the keys to my new apartment. Good thing we didn't get up any earlier this morning!
It was hot today in Providence. One weatherman said that with the humidity it would feel like between 105 and 115. I'm here to tell you it did. The guy who was leaving not only left his apartment in a state of immaculate cleanliness, he also left on the air conditioning unit (which I didn't realize would be included at all), so at least it was cool inside. At least, that is, until the guy from the power company came and turned off the power to my apartment. Whoops. I forgot to call and have it hooked up (which probably would have meant that it would have stayed hooked up); instead, they're coming tomorrow to turn me on. So to speak. We learned some odd facts, however. First, the ceiling fan in my new living room is evidently on the electric bill of my upstairs neighbors, because it is the only electric working in my whole apartment. Second, the upstairs neighbors offered a brilliant plan to help us survive (unfortunately, the plan didn't arrive until evening, but whatever). You see, my apartment is right next to the school's campus, and the drive that runs next to our lot is lined with street lights. It seems that these have some sort of outlets which always have power. So my neighbor kindly ran an extension cord from there into my apartment so we could run the AC and not melt.
Are you picking up on the fact that my upstairs neighbors and I are getting off to a good start? Maybe you would have if I'd have remembered to mention that the wife of the family helped us unload the truck. They also have an adorable bassett hound. The neighbor who shares a small parking lot with us, I also met him and his wife. He seems like a very nice guy too. I guess someone else is moving into an apartment in that house as well, but so far my neighbors seem excellent.
I am positively in love with the nearby Whole Foods store. I just went in to get ice cream (my mom and friend helping me move were jones-ing for ice cream), but I took the opportunity to look around. I should explain that for the past five years, our nearby grocery store had a selection of roughly a half dozen fruits and vegetables, all of which looked as though they'd been grown halfway around the world and unceremoniously shipped here--literally, shipped here by boat. They weren't fresh, and they didn't look like they'd be that good if they were. On the other hand, I am in awe of the selection at Whole Foods. Ditto the seafood (of course, we are just off the ocean). Ditto the meat. Double ditto the cheeses. It just looks like a wonderful, wonderful store.
My mom and best friend and I got a fair bit of unpacking done and the apartment is starting to take shape. I think this is likely to quickly become my favorite of the now five apartments that I have ever lived in. It has more counter space in the kitchen than I've ever seen, just enough closet space, and relatively large rooms throughout. So far, other than lacking electricity, I love it. And the rent, I'm not thrilled about that, but I'm making enough money to more than cover it, I guess. As much as we've gotten a fair bit of unpacking done, there is also a lot of stuff that I just can't find. Some of it worries me. I had an envelope set aside of "important things." Naturally, this envelope ended up getting put somewhere, and now I don't know where it is. It had, for instance, my checkbook, with which I planned to write a check for my first month's rent, before I start getting paid and can have it withdrawn directly from my check. I like to think it doesn't hurt as much that way. Anyway, I'd like to find my checkbook. And the other things in there, as well as an assortment of other things that have gone missing.
As it happens, I will be gone all day tomorrow (when my electric is turned on!) taking my mother to Buffalo and my friend to Rochester (where I'll spend the night). I'll be back on Thursday at some point. However, I already had blogs planned for Wednesday and Thursday (Think 'n' Share) so those will go off without me. As the blogs have been doing for the last several days. I'll be back soon and get caught up on all the other blogs I've missed. Hope you're all doing well!
Oh, I've also pretty well caught up with responding to comments for the time being. Good for me. Good for you if you care about that sort of thing.