A Day in Moving Hell
Tuesday the 19th dawned bright and clear here in Stanford, California, in this year of the Lord two thousand and seven.
Oh, wait. Not for me. For this poor unfortunate, Tuesday the 19th began at 10 pm last night, with loading half of my material possessions into Matt's car. The mission: get it all into my summer room on the 3rd floor of Lantana (dorm on other side of campus from Haus Mitt) as soon as possible after 9 am the following morning. 9 am being the time when I could pick up my summer room keys.
The following morning at 8 am, I of course woke up with the worst menstrual cramps I've had in years, second only to the time when 800 mg of ibuprofen weren't even enough to get me out of bed or keep me from writhing in pain. Today, however, I was mobile. Thank god for small favors. I did feel like keeling over and vomiting, though, and kept breaking out in cold sweats. Thank god Matt got here at 9 - in his car was my salvation in the form of painkillers. Hallelujah.
9:00 - 9:45: Matt and I succeeded in lugging an obscene amount of boxes and suitcases across the street and up the stairs, despite my cramped-up nausea and his still having a cushioned walking boot on from a recent metatarsal fracture. The walking wounded, we were. Ugh.
Matt had to head off to work at 10, though, and I was left alone once more to ponder how the hell I was going to get the rest of my material possessions all the way up and down three flights of stairs and across campus - alone, sick, and without a car. And clean my old room. In three hours.
(For those of you who don't know, Stanford Housing hates students. Ideally, we would all just die and they could have summer campers here all year round. We get four hours - FOUR HOURS - to move all of our possessions between our spring and summer residences, and clean our spring residences.)
10 am: called Amanda, bestest roommate ever, and asked her to have mercy and come help me. She was in physics class at Santa Clara University, where she's going to be studying *cough*suffering*cough* for the summer, but her mom offered to come down and help me after a vet appointment at 11.
10:15-11:45: Lug my remaining material possessions downstairs into the lobby of Haus Mitt.
10:45: Painkillers finally start kicking in. Start feeling human again.
10:45-11:30: Help Heather down with a futon, in return for a hand with my mini-fridge. Exchange words with a police officer who is very suspicious of the number of cars in our parking lot after most students have left campus. Try to explain that this is the emptiest it has been all year - only four vehicles. He doesn't get it.
11:30-12:50: Amanda's mom gets here. We load a bunch of stuff into her car, truck it over to Lantana, and drag most of my material possessions up three flights of stairs again. With the exception of one box of documents from my filing cabinet (still sitting in the hall down on the first floor) and my mini-fridge.
Oh, the fridge. You see, prescient me bought a mini-fridge from Bryce for $20 when he moved out of Haus Mitt after Winter Quarter. I say prescient, because if there is anyone who hates Stanford students more than Housing does, it is undoubtedly Stanford Dining. (I generalize, of course. But still.) Our kitchen in Haus Mitt was shut down by some authority or another last Thursday morning, meaning that these five days there has been no food available except for half-rotten fruit, dry crackers, and jelly beans, and no cooking facilities either - we couldn't even heat water. Well, I think, Tuesday I move into my summer dorm and can start feasting on the hundreds of dollars' worth of dining hall food that I had to pay for for the summer. Well, guess what? We have to move in four hours, but they don't have to start feeding us until SATURDAY. At DINNER. Hellooo, starvation. Having found this out in the nick of time, I managed to fill my fridge and a cardboard box with leftover food from residences around campus and the occasional fill-in item from a grocery store.
To make a long story short, the fridge was full. And f***in' heavy. And had to stay plugged in, or else the food would spoil. I ended up plugging it in in the first-floor lobby in Lantana and leaving it there for several hours while I did other things. Then finally, at about 2:30 pm, I emptied everything that wasn't going to die an ugly death within minutes of warming up (like cheesecake and cookie dough) into a backpack, lugged that up stairs, and returned with some help from my new neighbor to drag the fridge itself up.
Back to 12:50 pm. Amanda's mom drops me off at Haus Mitt, 10 minutes before I'm supposed to turn in my keys. Following the fastest hug and goodbye in the world, I race upstairs and clear a last few items out of my room and onto the front porch - including a watermelon and a cheerios box overflowing with my rock collection, both of which I took to the geocorner later that afternoon. And now the fun began. Cleaned the room faster than you could say "hey presto", tore a few post-it notes from the walls, and made it out the front door by 1:14.
Okay, only 15 minutes late, I think. I'll jump on my bike and make it to the Row Office in 30 seconds, turn in my key there like Jackie said, and be off. But when I get to the Row Office, whaddaya know? A big, ugly sign saying THE ROW OFFICE DOES NOT ACCEPT KEYS. TAKE YOUR KEYS TO THE ROW HOUSING SERVICE CENTER. And nowhere does it say where this mysterious housing service center is to be found.
Great. Fifteen minutes late, computer packed and across campus, am hyperventilating already with the stress, smell like sh*t from all the sweat and dirt I have caked on me, fridge sitting in lobby of a strange dorm, and I now have to miraculously figure out where the Housing Service Center is? I call Matt, who doesn't pick up, being at work at this point. Can't blame the poor man, I've bothered him incessantly for the past several days. Nothing for it: back on the bike, head at breakneck speed for the library. Tick tock...tick tock...with every minute, the odds of my getting fined $175 for staying past my alotted housing contract are growing. Grind my teeth and shake my fists in frustration when the computer I am using to search the Housing website is slower than molasses in January. The guy at the next one over stares at me as though I were a lunatic. I peer at myself in the reflective surface of the computer screen, and privately agree with him.
1:30: Finally the stupid machine does what I ask it to, and I race back to the Housing Service Center, which is conveniently located at the top of the steepest hill on campus. Now I'm hyperventilating for real. I rush up the hill, run into the building, drop a key in an envelope, write my name and address, and hand it to them. Only a 35 minutes late, and the authorities are merciful.
Back down the hill. Collect rock collection and watermelon from front porch in two trips, deposit in Geocorner. Back to my new home in Lantana now, to move the fridge up stairs. I get there, and try to open the front door.
CR*******P! I handed in a key, yes - THE FRONT DOOR KEY TO LANTANA! I turn around, it now being about 2:15, and race back to the housing office. Trade in the key I turned in for the real front door key to Haus Mitt. Finally done, I think. No more snafus possible. Back to Lantana. Move fridge upstairs, one item at a time. Start to actually settle into my new room, at long last.
4:30: But wait.
Something's not right.
NOOOO! I left the awesome map of Medieval England from the 1979 edition of National Geographic, that used to belong to Mom and that she kept all these years, IN MY ROOM IN HAUS!
What to do? No way in hell I'm going back to Housing, who would probably just have me shot for high treason or something. No, there has to be a better way. Wait. Didn't I leave my window a little bit open by accident? Yes, that's it. I'll climb up the fire escape, get on the roof, slip into my room, grab the poster, and be out before anyone knows.
Heart thumping in my chest, I start down the stairs, get on my bike, and head at a moderate pace for my old house. I'll have to be careful, now. Not only might the cleaners already be in there, but the Po-Po is everywhere, watching for burglars taking advantage of the state of residential chaos that presides all over campus. A wild-haired ragamuffin on the roof of a Row house would get into no small amount of trouble if caught. Am already trying to concoct a cover story and trying to figure out the least obtrusive way to get on the roof when I finally get to Haus Mitt.
And believe it or not, for once a stroke of luck. The back door has been propped open. I slip inside, sneak up the staircase in the house - which seems deserted - and hope I can find an open room door somewhere on the third floor so I can get onto the roof through a different room. Still more luck: the room across the hall from my old place is open. I slip out the window, and hugging the wall in hopes of not being seen, scamper across and slip through the barely-large-enough gap into good old room 321. Lo and behold, the poster is there on the wall. I take it down as quietly as I can, roll it up, close the window - won't be needing that any more - and head out. Slip out the front door, bike back to Lantana with adrenaline pumping through my veins, and collapse onto my floor when I get back.
The poster now hangs proudly on the inside of my door, a trophy of this brutal ordeal. I swear we shall never part again.
Oh, wait. Not for me. For this poor unfortunate, Tuesday the 19th began at 10 pm last night, with loading half of my material possessions into Matt's car. The mission: get it all into my summer room on the 3rd floor of Lantana (dorm on other side of campus from Haus Mitt) as soon as possible after 9 am the following morning. 9 am being the time when I could pick up my summer room keys.
The following morning at 8 am, I of course woke up with the worst menstrual cramps I've had in years, second only to the time when 800 mg of ibuprofen weren't even enough to get me out of bed or keep me from writhing in pain. Today, however, I was mobile. Thank god for small favors. I did feel like keeling over and vomiting, though, and kept breaking out in cold sweats. Thank god Matt got here at 9 - in his car was my salvation in the form of painkillers. Hallelujah.
9:00 - 9:45: Matt and I succeeded in lugging an obscene amount of boxes and suitcases across the street and up the stairs, despite my cramped-up nausea and his still having a cushioned walking boot on from a recent metatarsal fracture. The walking wounded, we were. Ugh.
Matt had to head off to work at 10, though, and I was left alone once more to ponder how the hell I was going to get the rest of my material possessions all the way up and down three flights of stairs and across campus - alone, sick, and without a car. And clean my old room. In three hours.
(For those of you who don't know, Stanford Housing hates students. Ideally, we would all just die and they could have summer campers here all year round. We get four hours - FOUR HOURS - to move all of our possessions between our spring and summer residences, and clean our spring residences.)
10 am: called Amanda, bestest roommate ever, and asked her to have mercy and come help me. She was in physics class at Santa Clara University, where she's going to be studying *cough*suffering*cough* for the summer, but her mom offered to come down and help me after a vet appointment at 11.
10:15-11:45: Lug my remaining material possessions downstairs into the lobby of Haus Mitt.
10:45: Painkillers finally start kicking in. Start feeling human again.
10:45-11:30: Help Heather down with a futon, in return for a hand with my mini-fridge. Exchange words with a police officer who is very suspicious of the number of cars in our parking lot after most students have left campus. Try to explain that this is the emptiest it has been all year - only four vehicles. He doesn't get it.
11:30-12:50: Amanda's mom gets here. We load a bunch of stuff into her car, truck it over to Lantana, and drag most of my material possessions up three flights of stairs again. With the exception of one box of documents from my filing cabinet (still sitting in the hall down on the first floor) and my mini-fridge.
Oh, the fridge. You see, prescient me bought a mini-fridge from Bryce for $20 when he moved out of Haus Mitt after Winter Quarter. I say prescient, because if there is anyone who hates Stanford students more than Housing does, it is undoubtedly Stanford Dining. (I generalize, of course. But still.) Our kitchen in Haus Mitt was shut down by some authority or another last Thursday morning, meaning that these five days there has been no food available except for half-rotten fruit, dry crackers, and jelly beans, and no cooking facilities either - we couldn't even heat water. Well, I think, Tuesday I move into my summer dorm and can start feasting on the hundreds of dollars' worth of dining hall food that I had to pay for for the summer. Well, guess what? We have to move in four hours, but they don't have to start feeding us until SATURDAY. At DINNER. Hellooo, starvation. Having found this out in the nick of time, I managed to fill my fridge and a cardboard box with leftover food from residences around campus and the occasional fill-in item from a grocery store.
To make a long story short, the fridge was full. And f***in' heavy. And had to stay plugged in, or else the food would spoil. I ended up plugging it in in the first-floor lobby in Lantana and leaving it there for several hours while I did other things. Then finally, at about 2:30 pm, I emptied everything that wasn't going to die an ugly death within minutes of warming up (like cheesecake and cookie dough) into a backpack, lugged that up stairs, and returned with some help from my new neighbor to drag the fridge itself up.
Back to 12:50 pm. Amanda's mom drops me off at Haus Mitt, 10 minutes before I'm supposed to turn in my keys. Following the fastest hug and goodbye in the world, I race upstairs and clear a last few items out of my room and onto the front porch - including a watermelon and a cheerios box overflowing with my rock collection, both of which I took to the geocorner later that afternoon. And now the fun began. Cleaned the room faster than you could say "hey presto", tore a few post-it notes from the walls, and made it out the front door by 1:14.
Okay, only 15 minutes late, I think. I'll jump on my bike and make it to the Row Office in 30 seconds, turn in my key there like Jackie said, and be off. But when I get to the Row Office, whaddaya know? A big, ugly sign saying THE ROW OFFICE DOES NOT ACCEPT KEYS. TAKE YOUR KEYS TO THE ROW HOUSING SERVICE CENTER. And nowhere does it say where this mysterious housing service center is to be found.
Great. Fifteen minutes late, computer packed and across campus, am hyperventilating already with the stress, smell like sh*t from all the sweat and dirt I have caked on me, fridge sitting in lobby of a strange dorm, and I now have to miraculously figure out where the Housing Service Center is? I call Matt, who doesn't pick up, being at work at this point. Can't blame the poor man, I've bothered him incessantly for the past several days. Nothing for it: back on the bike, head at breakneck speed for the library. Tick tock...tick tock...with every minute, the odds of my getting fined $175 for staying past my alotted housing contract are growing. Grind my teeth and shake my fists in frustration when the computer I am using to search the Housing website is slower than molasses in January. The guy at the next one over stares at me as though I were a lunatic. I peer at myself in the reflective surface of the computer screen, and privately agree with him.
1:30: Finally the stupid machine does what I ask it to, and I race back to the Housing Service Center, which is conveniently located at the top of the steepest hill on campus. Now I'm hyperventilating for real. I rush up the hill, run into the building, drop a key in an envelope, write my name and address, and hand it to them. Only a 35 minutes late, and the authorities are merciful.
Back down the hill. Collect rock collection and watermelon from front porch in two trips, deposit in Geocorner. Back to my new home in Lantana now, to move the fridge up stairs. I get there, and try to open the front door.
CR*******P! I handed in a key, yes - THE FRONT DOOR KEY TO LANTANA! I turn around, it now being about 2:15, and race back to the housing office. Trade in the key I turned in for the real front door key to Haus Mitt. Finally done, I think. No more snafus possible. Back to Lantana. Move fridge upstairs, one item at a time. Start to actually settle into my new room, at long last.
4:30: But wait.
Something's not right.
NOOOO! I left the awesome map of Medieval England from the 1979 edition of National Geographic, that used to belong to Mom and that she kept all these years, IN MY ROOM IN HAUS!
What to do? No way in hell I'm going back to Housing, who would probably just have me shot for high treason or something. No, there has to be a better way. Wait. Didn't I leave my window a little bit open by accident? Yes, that's it. I'll climb up the fire escape, get on the roof, slip into my room, grab the poster, and be out before anyone knows.
Heart thumping in my chest, I start down the stairs, get on my bike, and head at a moderate pace for my old house. I'll have to be careful, now. Not only might the cleaners already be in there, but the Po-Po is everywhere, watching for burglars taking advantage of the state of residential chaos that presides all over campus. A wild-haired ragamuffin on the roof of a Row house would get into no small amount of trouble if caught. Am already trying to concoct a cover story and trying to figure out the least obtrusive way to get on the roof when I finally get to Haus Mitt.
And believe it or not, for once a stroke of luck. The back door has been propped open. I slip inside, sneak up the staircase in the house - which seems deserted - and hope I can find an open room door somewhere on the third floor so I can get onto the roof through a different room. Still more luck: the room across the hall from my old place is open. I slip out the window, and hugging the wall in hopes of not being seen, scamper across and slip through the barely-large-enough gap into good old room 321. Lo and behold, the poster is there on the wall. I take it down as quietly as I can, roll it up, close the window - won't be needing that any more - and head out. Slip out the front door, bike back to Lantana with adrenaline pumping through my veins, and collapse onto my floor when I get back.
The poster now hangs proudly on the inside of my door, a trophy of this brutal ordeal. I swear we shall never part again.