Day 135: The beauty of chaos (i.e. moving day in Cambridge)

There is a sort of beauty about moving, even within a city.  A sadness that comes with leaving something behind (at least a partial sadness, even if there's also something good in that); and an excitement for some uncertainty in the future.  Presumably moving usually entails moving forward, and that's a good thing.

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.

Day 106: The Last Hurrah

 
Some time ago, possibly the day of the most epic photo scavenger hunt known to man (or at least to this hu-man), I ran across a bar called The Last Hurrah.  Even then it spoke to me of the parting of the ways of the four tenants of Jack In The Box (as our place is called), and when I mentioned it to V., she was enthusiastic about it being a part of her last night out in Cambridge. Er, Boston.

So tonight, we went.  I arrived there on the on-time/early side, and E. was already there and well into drink 1.  I joined him at the bar and quickly we were joined by others, and ceded our spots to move to a larger table.  We migrated once more to move to a spot which happened to be directly in front of the television that was broadcasting the Olympics. Luckily the patrons who seemed interested in watching both a) were very nice and b) departed shortly after.

The portion of the night held at the Last Hurrah was (fortunately) fairly short-lived and involved a lot of talk about water conservation.  We relocated to one of my favorite Cantabrigian bars, River Gods, not too far into the night.  On the way we passed a lovely sign entreating us to shred any suspicious evidence [so weird; see above photograph], and once there we were greeted by many summertime lovelies in the form of butterflies hanging from the ceiling and such (River Gods always has bizarre creatures hanging around to celebrate whatever season it may be).

The point: Good-byes are terrible, but a part of life.  I don't know why you say good-bye, I say hello...