"I'm in that Volvo puffin on that la-la, duckin' from the po-po every time I drive by..."

Aug 18, 2008 23:54

So the move went ok. I was left bedless for about 4 or 5 nights because the stupid Sears delivery people couldn't differentiate between door A and door B when both were clearly labeled. But after all my bitching and moaning they gave me $200 back. So I got a bed that'd normally be $1,200 for $600 (there was a discount on it when I bought it). :D

In retrospect, I should have just taken a Uhaul or something to Pittsburgh with some of my furniture. Furniture is a lot more expensive out here. Couches at Goodwill go for $200-$300 dollars, and I'm not paying that much for a second-hand couch. I eventually settled on a leather couch with two recliners that was on clearance for $440. I think it was a nice buy, the only problem is that when you sit on it with no shirt you tend to stick to the damn leather. :(

My whole place isn't too large, but it's a single bedroom place. I have a decent sized kitchen, a decent sized living room, a good sized bedroom, and a small bathroom. The lighting around here is terrible because about 8-10 feet from my window is another building. I'm not sure how well my plants are going to fare in here, but I'll see how far I can get with them.

The character of this city is awesome. Every section of the city has a distinct personality and lends itself to different people and functions. I live in Shadyside, which seems like the affluent and wannabe-cultured district. There are a ton of coffee shops, some little museums, a shopping district, and a ton of residential zoning.

South of Shadyside is Squirrel Hill, which is like Shadyside, but with less shopping and a giant park in the middle of it.

Oakland is downtown, and I swear, scrubs are a fashion statement in Pittsburgh. There are so many hospitals around here that I bet the biggest medical issues they have with their EMR is deciding what emergency room to bring you to. Oakland is where UPitt and Carnegie Mellon are at.

Southside is one huge shopping district with about 3-4 bars every block. It's insane, never drive down there. It'll take you about an hour to get from one end of Southside to the other.

Northside is the point district where all the skyscrapers are at and the towering malls and whatnot. Cool place, but really easy to get lost without being able to get your bearings from the Cathedral of Learning. I pretty much know where I am around town by trying to find the UPMC tower and the Cathedral of Learning (UPitt's huge-ass classroom [or huge ass-classroom building] building that's over 70 stories tall).

There are more areas around Pittsburgh, but these are the ones that I've explored so far.

When you make a big move like this, it seems all your shit gets rifled through. I think my dad found my condoms because I don't remember putting them in my envelope box, and I know my mom found my bondage stuff because they were moved around. :(

At least my dad was cool with it, "Hey, I put your straps in the back of your sock drawer". Needless to say, embarrassing.

Today was my first day of graduate orientation. We took care of a ton of paperwork and talked with the senior grad students for a while. I picked up my ID at the end of the day.

Wednesday is the program fair. It's basically where a bunch of reps from all the different graduate programs within the Interdisciplinary program come out and you can talk to most of the faculty and grad students. I'm looking forward to investigating the Pathology and Molecular Pharma programs. I've basically given up on the Neuroscience program here - I don't want to do any more psychology. It's completely uninteresting to me and I don't care about it beyond the implications of my own research. I don't want to do fMRI work with Chimps, I like signaling pathways and receptor functions.

After the job fair is a huge picnic/party wherein we head out to Schenley park and proceed to eat, drink, and play a variety of games. Evidently there's volleyball, basketball, football, soccer, frisbee, etc. I'm most excited to get to know people, but second is to play some disc golf. Evidently our picnic site is really close to the disc golf course in the park and I look forward to trying it out. :D Also, Ultimate. :D
Previous post Next post
Up
[]