No Bridges for Me

I won't have to live under a bridge next year after all; I found a place to live. It's in a line of townhouses mostly populated by other college professors, and I'll only be about a five minute walk from my office. (Actually, I think it's only really a full five minutes if I have to slog through six feet of snow and have to wait to cross the street.) No garage, but then I won't have to drive to work most of the time.

Now I'm back and spent part of the day trying to get movers. I have two appointments, one e-mail estimate, one "no can do", and two people who never called me back. It gives me something to do for the rest of the week. Plus the decision of what to take and what to leave. I've got some fairly old furniture, some of which is just cheap stuff assembled out of kits. I think at least those are not coming with me, if I can find someplace to get rid of them. It may be easier to just buy new furniture when I get there. I understand Pittsburgh has an Ikea store. Imagine me with real furniture!

I've also been engaging in partial packing of my office. I figure if I pack up a small book box and take it home each day, by the time the movers come, I'll have my office packed up and home. Good theory, but I'm finding carrying even one book box down the four flights of stairs and out to where I can park my car a little bit of a challenge. (It doesn't help that the school closed the parking lot that was close to my office. They feel a need to build another building there instead.)

I suppose I need to return the books I have from the department which are still current. Fortunately, we changed editions of the calculus book a few years ago, so I should be able to keep the old edition anyway. And who gets my old finals? I know normally we have to keep this stuff for at least a semester, but I won't be here to keep it. I'm somewhat surprised in at least a few cases I haven't already heard more complaints from students, but all has been quiet on the e-mail front for a while now.

It should be interesting to see what my state of mind is like in about a month. Although by that point it should be mostly over.