Boston or Bust! (but first, finding a home and moving's a must!)

Back to last spring...

Two weeks after my nervous-break-down-of-a-trip last June when I failed to find us an apartment in Cambridge, Trevor was back in the Boston area for another conference.  I had 3 days with nothing to do but look at all the apartments I could possibly handle (which ended up being two) and came home empty handed.  Trevor had 4 days to look at as many apartments as he could possibly handle (which ended up being around 10) on top of having to attend a conference all day long.  He also came home empty handed, however, the very next day after his return we were offered the first apartment he looked at (Trevor 1; Julie 0).

Hooray, Hoorah!  Crisis averted!  After beating out 31 other applicants, and after offering to sign a 2 year lease, and after offering to pay and extra $100 a month, we have a new home!!!  Whoopeeeee!!!  Now we can focus on other things....like this wedding... We still need to figure out what the bridesmaids are wearing, and what Trevor and his brother are wearing, and what kind of food there will be, and who will be the DJ, and where will we put the tent, and what will we do if it rains, and where are we going to get a dance floor, and what will be our first dance song, and whether or not we going to have a cake, and figure out how to make this legal, and write this ceremony, and make a bouquet, and block off more hotel rooms, and find a shuttle bus, and figure out a rehearsal dinner venue....(!)  First things first though, we need to move across this great big country in the next month!

Planning the move was probably the easiest piece of this chaotic pie.  Things are easy when you blatantly do not do them.  Trevor and I had briefly chatted here and there about the best route and who we wanted to see and what we wanted to do.  I suspect he put a lot more effort into actually planning it than I did.  I was overly consumed with angst about everything else and was especially worried about not having a job (or more importantly a reliable income).  So  I wanted to work up until the very last day.  We decided we would leave Santa Barbara on a Saturday.  Therefore my last day of work would be the Friday before.

We got rid of most of our big furniture during our last week there.

Including this gem of a couch that came from Trevor's undergrad Rutgers apartment where 6+ dudes and 2 kittens lived.  I also believe it drops rat poop out of it when you shake it.  We sold it to college guys for $50.  It is going back to live and hopefully die in college housing.  Such a happy moment.

I said my sad good-byes to my co-workers and walked my box of cubicle nick knacks out the front door with tears in my eyes.  

I didn't have too much time to cry because on my way home I had to stop by the U-Haul store to pick up the trailer.  The U-Haul man shockingly tells me our 2004 Toyota Corolla cannot drag a trailer across the country.  I tell him we did it before in 2006.  He asks if we had any problems?  I say no.  He hooks it up.

Meanwhile, back at the apartment the place looks exactly how it looked when I left home that morning:

This "tree," which Trevor calls a weed, was not in our backyard when we moved in.

The apartment quickly deteriorates into boxes stacked everywhere, kitchen cabinets and closets all open, garbage bags, shoes, bikes, heaps of trash, guitars, clothes, pots and pans, books and cleaning supplies strewn all over the floor... one big mess.  Luckily our very good friends came by with In-and-Out Burgers and Miguel helped Trevor pack the trailer while Ichiko helped me pack the last of the boxes and clean the kitchen.  They hung out till after midnight which was way more than generous.  At that time, Trevor says he has to go pack up some of the "things" in his office.  He leaves, while I continue packing and move on to, you guessed it, more cleaning...

He returns shortly after.  Wow, that was quick!  Yea, well uh, he got to school, but couldn't find his keys, so...... This is after we have locked the 4x8x4ft trailer full of unmarked boxes containing everything under the sun that we have ever possibly owned.  If you don't have your keys...  Where the heck are they!?  In the trailer!?!

 Forget about the keys, we move on to cleaning out the cabinets, scrubbing down the tub and the toilet, dusting all the window sills, vacuuming the carpets, mopping the floors, cleaning out the oven, washing the scuff marks off the walls...

At 4am we lay down on the floor in what once was our bedroom for a four hour nap.  At 8am we awake to clean out the refrigerator, take out the trash, and meet with our landlord.  Then we leave our empty apartment for the last time...

We stop at our friends' house for brunch (about 3 hours later than anticipated) and say some more fond farewells...  But again, there is not much time for crying (just a little bit of crying), because we still have to figure out how to get into Trevor's office to pack up "some things."

Trevor calls his soon-to-be-former-office-mate and we stop by his house to borrow his office key.  Then we drive to Trevor's office and park our whole life in the UCSB parking lot.  We both trudge up to his office, open the door, and alas there are his keys, right on his desk where he left them.  We start cleaning out "some things" which actually means cleaning out his whole entire office.  One file cabinet, a huge bookcase, 5 huge garbage bags of paper waste, 6 trips to and from the car, and one twenty minute nap on a pile of old economic textbooks later and we are ready to hit the road!....8 hours later than anticipated.

Good-Bye SB!