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Dangerous Dave
Sep. 1st, 2006 11:45 pmOn Monday I embarked upon the most dangerous journey of my life. When Whitney, her brother and I went down to the U-Haul place to rent a moving van, we quickly found that there were only two seats in the front of the car, and the remaining one of us would have to ride seatbeltless in the back. Cameron couldn't do that because he was the only one qualified to drive, and Whitney got out of it by being a woman (there's always an excuse), so I climbed in, hunched down on the rubber-ribbed floor so that I couldn't be seen by any passing police cars, and read the sign on the door warning of serious injury or death as we sped off through the traffic.
As it turns out, Boston roads are among the worst in the world to drive on, and it seemed we couldn't move for emergency vehicles zooming past us at every junction. You would have thought that once we got the mattress things would be slightly better, but ironically it was even worse on the way back because I was being squashed by a ton of diagonally-packed springs and padding which dug further into me every time we started from a set of traffic lights. Being killed by a mattress would have just been embarrassing, I feel.
After we'd hauled all that into the flat, the next trip was to IKEA to get our furniture. Or most of it, anyway - they didn't have the sofa we wanted, so we chose to go without for a while. This time we had brought a couple of pillows to sit on to make the cargo area slightly more comfortable, but that was easily offset by the sixteen or so flat-packs that were shifting dangerously from side to side during the journey. And it didn't help when I stumbled out when we stopped only to discover that we had got turned around and were eight miles away from our flat.
That's about all I want to recall about the furniture trips, apart from noting that putting together an IKEA bed at eleven at night quietly is next to impossible, even when you decide to ignore the requirement for a hammer and use your bare hands instead. You can still see the circular indents. The rest of it was easy enough, with the exception of the dresser, for which the drawers in the box didn't fit together. We're getting it replaced. I'm not quite sure how yet.
With trips to a couple of household stores now done as well, the flat is beginning to look like an actual flat rather than a big empty room with some cables scattered around. Because of its unbelievable enormity as I noted in the last entry, it still looks a little empty - we have two desks, a coffee table with TV, a dining table and a big bookshelf in the living room and it still isn't even half full. But the 5th is the day when most everything arrives, including sofas, a couple of bedside tables, and importantly, the bits for my new computer.
It's weird to think that unlike every other move so far, this isn't temporary - it's setting up home for real, and will lead to me getting a job (although judging by the residence application progress so far, that's a long way off yet) and genuinely living together.
As it turns out, Boston roads are among the worst in the world to drive on, and it seemed we couldn't move for emergency vehicles zooming past us at every junction. You would have thought that once we got the mattress things would be slightly better, but ironically it was even worse on the way back because I was being squashed by a ton of diagonally-packed springs and padding which dug further into me every time we started from a set of traffic lights. Being killed by a mattress would have just been embarrassing, I feel.
After we'd hauled all that into the flat, the next trip was to IKEA to get our furniture. Or most of it, anyway - they didn't have the sofa we wanted, so we chose to go without for a while. This time we had brought a couple of pillows to sit on to make the cargo area slightly more comfortable, but that was easily offset by the sixteen or so flat-packs that were shifting dangerously from side to side during the journey. And it didn't help when I stumbled out when we stopped only to discover that we had got turned around and were eight miles away from our flat.
That's about all I want to recall about the furniture trips, apart from noting that putting together an IKEA bed at eleven at night quietly is next to impossible, even when you decide to ignore the requirement for a hammer and use your bare hands instead. You can still see the circular indents. The rest of it was easy enough, with the exception of the dresser, for which the drawers in the box didn't fit together. We're getting it replaced. I'm not quite sure how yet.
With trips to a couple of household stores now done as well, the flat is beginning to look like an actual flat rather than a big empty room with some cables scattered around. Because of its unbelievable enormity as I noted in the last entry, it still looks a little empty - we have two desks, a coffee table with TV, a dining table and a big bookshelf in the living room and it still isn't even half full. But the 5th is the day when most everything arrives, including sofas, a couple of bedside tables, and importantly, the bits for my new computer.
It's weird to think that unlike every other move so far, this isn't temporary - it's setting up home for real, and will lead to me getting a job (although judging by the residence application progress so far, that's a long way off yet) and genuinely living together.
