Moving

As promised, a rundown of the moving process, now that things have finally come together here in our new apartment.

Steve and I got a moving cube through ABF shipping--the company drops it off at your house, you load it up, they move it for you. Our cube was delivered last Tuesday, and of course it was delivered three hours late. We were only able to start loading around 1:30 in the afternoon, finished around 3:00, and then had several other errands to run. In the end, we left Santa Fe at 5:30 in the evening and still drove five hours, which took us to Vega, Texas.

Wednesday was a long driving day on I-40 and then I-44 all the way through Oklahoma and Missouri. We stopped just outside of St. Louis Wednesday night. Thursday we went across Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, stopping in western Pennsylvania. Then Friday we just had a short three hour trek into Gettysburg.

When we arrived, our apartment was... well, perhaps the best word for it is depressing. It's quite small, but we knew it would be; the real problem is how blindingly unattractive it is. The design style for the apartment is something like country rustic meets seventies, which is a problem when Steve likes Asian decorating styles and I like New Mexican. The carpet is green. If you're designing an apartment which will see many tenants over the years, wouldn't you put in a neutral color of carpeting? Maybe? Likewise with the hideous blue-green tile in the bathroom. To walk in the door of the apartment and see literally nothing but green carpet, blue-green tile, and fake wood cabinets was hard on the psyche.

Since then, it's been nonstop work for us. We've made two trips down the Baltimore (an hour and a half drive) to get to the nearest IKEA store to buy furniture. (If it weren't already obvious that this is our first apartment, that would give it away.) It seems that every day we come up with some day-long project that sends us wandering over the countryside of south-central Pennsylvania and Maryland. One big project was buying a mattress and box spring (no bed frame as yet), which was a high priority since we were sleeping on the floor until then. On Monday, we rented a U-Haul and went to pick up our things from the moving cube, and the boxes are finally all unpacked. That means we actually have pots and pans to cook on in our kitchen, and a bed to sleep in. After our most recent trip to IKEA and a long night of furniture building and rearranging, the apartment is finally coming together. We covered up a large portion of the carpet with an area rug, bought a lamp to lighten up the room, and a few pieces of furniture to make it more livable. Once we get curtains over the windows and pictures on the walls, it should be just about perfect.

Classes start after Labor Day, since we're not doing summer Greek with the other new students. Coming up soon: getting a cat and buying books for class. Stay tuned!