My new apartment is to the point where I’m not entirely ashamed of its appearance anymore. It’s still a mess of moving boxes, and we don’t have a couch, but I took some pictures anyway. Click through for photos. (Read the article)
I moved into Boston. I now live in the back bay - no more crappy suburbs. More news to come as I start having time to breathe again :-P
Sorry I haven’t posted since the 23rd; it’s been pretty busy. We finally did make it to Ashland - here’s the route we ended up taking in the end, more or less. We left Sandwich on Thursday morning, stopped in Sturgis, MI to have a late lunch with my family there, drove all the way to Rochester, NY that evening, and somehow managed to make it to Ashland, MA by noon on Friday. It was pretty exhausting, and that wasn’t anywhere near the end of the turmoil. The movers had arrived at the new apartment before us, as had our realtor, and they were all anxious to get things … well, “moving”. So, despite running on something like 3 or 4 hours of sleep, (this is the point my mother calls me on the phone to scold me upon reading this post) we took posession of our new apartment for the first time and directed the moving-in operation.
Of course, there was one little problem. The carpets in the new place were utterly filthy. So filthy that we couldn’t even walk around in our socks on them, because our socks would end up black on the bottom. It took a few days of fighting with our landlord before we got them to agree to pay for a thorough carpet cleaning. It was truly one of the most stressful and annoying things I’ve ever had to deal with, and I wasn’t even the one doing most of the work!
The good news is that our carpets are now clean (ChemDry did an amazing job on them, but they were quite expensive…), so we finally managed to settle in a bit and unpack some of the boxes. There’s been plenty of other turmoil, of course:
I posted some various bad photos of the new apartment from the day we moved in, some less-bad photos from the drive from San Francisco to Boston, and some completely unrelated photos from the week we were on Maui.
Here’s the currently planned route, including where we’ve stopped so far. We’re at my mom’s place in Sturgis, MI as of now, and we’re planning (perhaps unwisely) to get as far as Schenectady, NY tonight. Wish us luck!
My road trip is now well under-way. We’ve come 1158 miles, give or take a few, in two days of driving. The first night we stayed in Elko, NV, and last night in Laramie, WY. Exciting places, both of them. We’ve been making a feeble attempt to find good places to eat using Roadfood, but that has yet to actually work out. They need more spots along I80!
We’re about to ship out again for the day … the cats are in their carriers (much to their disliking, of course), and our stuff is packed up. Jenny is scolding me for using the computer instead of carrying stuff down to the car, just like every morning when we travel. We’re hoping to get to Des Moines, IA - about 9 hours of driving time, and then tomorrow in theory we should get to our parents houses in Stavanger and Sandwich, IL. I’m looking forward to being in Sandwich for a couple of days.
Time to go!
Stuff done:
Stuff remaining:
Three days left til I move. The moving truck comes friday. I finally heard back from the director of engineering in Cambridge, and he is pleased to have me transfer there, which is a huge relief. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to sort any of the bureaucracy out until after I had physically relocated, which would have made things awkward. I still need to convince the HR department that I’m moving, but in theory that shouldn’t be too difficult - just some paperwork, more or less.
Things remaining to do:
I still really don’t want to go, but I’m always super apprehensive about big changes like this. Knowing that I’ll actually have a place to sit and a computer to use when I get to the office in Cambridge makes me feel better, at least. Until today the only people on the east coast who really understood that I am coming there were a pair of managers in New York and one helpdesk employee in Boston.
You read that right. I’m moving to Boston at the end of this week. I’m absolutely terrified, of course. I’ve sold and generally gotten rid of a whole lot of stuff, which will definitely make moving easier. I think I’ll be rid of all the crappy “college” furniture after this move - that is to say, the crappy particle-board stuff that I never should have taken with me to California in the first place, such as the $25 Wal*Mart bookshelf whose structural integrity was dependent on the tallest books in the shelves. I still need to find new homes for all my plants though, as well as arranging for my car to be shipped. Oh, and I should really get my car to the mechanic before moving too, so they can fix the air conditioner, which they broke the last time I had it in their shop.
I really don’t want to move. I’m going to miss this place!
In case you haven’t heard by now, I’m definitely moving to boston. It’s official as of today - I just dropped a security deposit check in the mail for a townhouse in Ashland. The new place sounds like it will be really nice - it’s like $200 less per month than my current apartment in Mountain View, but it’s more than twice the size, plus it has an attached garage and an extra room. It is quite scary putting down money on a place without seeing it first, but I’ve seen plenty of photographs and I’ve been working with a real estate agent who went to check the place out for me. I’m crossing my fingers.
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