In the greater Boston area, Moving Day is a Thing. Although it is not impossible to get an apartment at various points throughout the year, it is almost certain that if you are going to move out at the end of the summer / move in at the beginning of fall (read: the school year), you are going to be moving out on August 31 and moving in on September 1. It's a Thing to the extent that radio stations talk about it and multiple friends of mine posted status messages on Facebook on how it was the best scavenging-for-furniture-on-the-side-of-the-road day of the year. And oh, boy, did we (mostly I) ever help contribute to that.
For me, this moving day mostly meant making sure that 1) all of my things were safely out of my apartment and into my mom's Jeep by the end of the night and 2) making sure that our apartment was moderately clean. But first, I had to also make sure that three pieces of furniture (two desks and an enormous bookshelf) were removed from the apartment and deposited at three different locations (three very lovely friends') houses.
For my roommates (the boys that is) and their three other roomies-to-be, it also meant moving 1) furniture and belongings from our house; 2) belongings from a friend's house where two of them are currently staying; 3) furniture and belongings from G's house; and 4) a couch and many belongings that were currently being stored at MIT. And that meant that they had to 1) retrieve a truck from Penske in Medford, 2) load it with all those things (after they helped me out by driving around some of my bigger pieces), 3) park the truck in Belmont at a friend's place, and 4) somehow get back to Cambridge before 5) retrieving truck from Belmont tomorrow and 6) unloading it at their new place and returning it in Medford.
I'll spare you any further details, but somehow all of today's work was accomplished (with a lot of fun Penske-truck-riding by me and Penske-truck-driving by G, and a lot of interim driving by me; note the analog "GPS" in my car pictured above, for part of the journey). There were some really fun bits (D. stopped by and somehow procured dinner #1 for some of us; dinner #2 was served later thanks to my mom, who remotely bought us food!; E. was around for a while during the time I was packing up tiny things and having to make lots of decisions about what would stay and what would go; etc.). There were also some really sad bits (making those decisions; looking at the pile of my belongings that was accumulating outside beside the dumpster and watching things being taken; the final moments after Z. and I finished up with the cleaning and took our final picture in the place...). And then there were some amazing bits -- mostly the fact that my mom's Jeep, now named Red Yoshi by E. and me, is a miracle machine and can fit extraordinary amounts of things inside it. I didn't crack yet -- no tears -- but I can tell it's coming. Luckily I have a four-to-five-day drive in which to worry about such things :-/.
Good-bye to 905, and until soon, Jack in the Box.
