Home Sweet Home Chicago

Well the move is effectively complete. On Wednesday morning my buddy Bill and I emptied the grand majority of the contents of my condo in Maplewood into a 17ft U-Haul van. With Bill piloting the vehicle we hit the road at about noon. After driving through some rain and stopping once for gas, we made it to Kristen's parents' house in Orland Park at about 5pm. It was still lightly raining there, but we only had to drop off one table and two chairs - for storage - so unloading in the drizzle wasn't going to be a big deal. The plus side was that they fed us like kings while we were there. Of course they knew we were coming so her dad had a baked mostaccioli waiting for us and he even grilled up two 1/2lb burgers while we were eating the pasta! We left there with full bellies and another hour drive to the apartment (we opted out of taking any more highways).

After the all-side-road journey to Portage Park on the north side of Chicago, we decided to go ahead and unload the van that night, it was about 730pm by now. We were going to just leave the van for the night and unload in the morning, but then we remembered the couch and the TV were in the back of the van! So while enlisting some help from Kristen and her sister Jaime and using a dolly borrowed from the rather generous (and somewhat tipsy) next door neighbor, we got to moving. In hind sight we should have rented one of these dollies... it made moving things a lot simpler. The TV stand was by far the heaviest piece of furniture, so Bill and I simply had to man-handle it up the stairs (less than one full story). As it turned out the sofa was the most difficult to maneuver, even though it wasn't the heaviest - this always seems to be the case. Those things are such a pain in the ass. All in all we were satisfied to get the full move complete and we finished at around 1030pm.

We waited to return the van until the next morning, frankly because no place was open by the time we finished. I remembered I had to refill the gas tank to the level it was when I received it. We went to a Citgo and after having my issues with the credit card machine I put about 20 bucks into it. This value didn't quite get me to the 7/8 full mark (it sat at 3/4), so I proceeded to put 5 more $ at a time until I hit 40$. The needle was STILL on 3/4 after putting another 20$ in, so I said "fuck it" and stopped dumping my money into this van, knowing full well that they would charge me 30$ and 5$ per gallon to fill it up to the level if I brought it in light. When we got to the U-Haul rental facility the guy at the counter started busting my balls a little about the gas, but after a little convincing he opted not to charge me. He welcomed me to Chicago and we were on our way.

We spent the rest of the day lounging, visiting Wrigley Field, watching TV, organizing boxes around the house, eating Superdawg hot dogs, eating Giordano's Pizza, playing Wii, picking up a computer for my new office, and drinking beer. It was fun just to chill with Bill all day. Today (Friday) we are heading back to STL so Bill can get back to his life and I can do a bicycle race on Saturday morning. I really am grateful that Bill was able to help us out in the middle of the week. I owe him big time and I hope I made it up to him somewhat by showing him a good time in Sweet Home Chicago.

P.S. Please keep commenting! I haven't had a comment in several posts now and I could use the dialogue. Maybe my posts really don't leave themselves open to commenting, but if you can think of anything you want to add to the conversation, please do.