As promised...

pictures of the moving extravaganza, for your viewing pleasure. I met the carpet cleaning guys this morning at 7:30am (requiring catching the 6:40am bus...eek!). I do the walk through with the property management people today at 1pm, and then I will be officially done with the old apartment.

To recap some of the previous adventures in the old apartment - guys next door fighting and punching holes in the wall at 3am, waterfall wall from the leaking roof, drunk college kids passing by from midnight to 3am most Thursdays-Saturdays, squirrel in ceiling, bat in apartment hanging from ceiling. Ah yes, college life at its finest....

the old apartment in a state of packing chaos

how did someone without much stuff end up with so much stuff? (still old apartment)
Callie enjoys the screen door at the old apartment as she supervises the cleaning process.

If you're a cat, you don't need furniture to find a place to hide. (old apartment)

The new kitchen, in the unpacking process.

The future office, filled with practically everything I own.

Chaos in the new bedroom.

Ah, that new living room look of emptiness....

The very last load of stuff from the old apartment (Thanks, Virginia)

Of course, it's much easier to hide if you've got a closet, and a bunch of unpacked stuff...

The new bathroom (with its light above the sink and a light switch on the wall, not the ceiling)

Moving is really hard work

The new office (so far)

What's left to unpack in the new office

The living room, a little less empty

Of Squirrels and Earthquakes

After being kept awake by the squirrel, I slept through the earthquake. Someone posed the question, was the squirrel so weird because it sensed that there was going to be an earthquake. It's interesting to ponder. I'm not sure. One thing I didn't really expect in Indiana was earthquakes. Just goes to show that you can find pretty much anything and everything here.

This link has a map of the epicenter (5.2):
http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/cus/STORE/X2008qza6/ciim_display.html

I'm preparing for a weekend of finishing up projects/papers. It's supposed to rain and be cooler tomorrow, so maybe that will help with the studying. This time next week I'll be getting ready to leave for Montana!

Time for a new game!

Today we play the game, Maintenance Emergency, Yes or No. It's very simple. I will give you scenarios, and you guess if this is something that maintenance will do something about in the off hours - evenings, weekends, late night, etc.

1). It's below zero, and all the pipes freeze except for a small trickle in the cold water faucet in the kitchen and the toilet. It's Sunday of the Super Bowl.

2). You go out drinking until 3am, get home, and realize you don't have your key with you.

3). You're woken up at 1am by the sounds of a squirrel practicing for Olympics gymnastics event, both floor and arial. Your ceiling consists of a dropped ceiling with metal grid and foam-type ceiling panels that are not particularly thick.

Okay, ready. The answers are....

1). No (the Indianapolis team is playing - nothing is a maintenance emergency)

2) Yes - This is a lockout, and maintenance will show up anytime. You will, however, get charged for it.

3) No - Apparently not. Or as the after-hours service said, "A squirrel won't hurt you. If if gets into the apartment, just open the door and let it out." I did wonder how that might work if it fell from the ceiling into my bed, and then Callie chased it around for a bit before the whole open door policy could be instituted.

Aack

So, in a scene reminiscent of Christmas Vacation, Callie and I are sitting on the couch talking to her kitty grandma when we hear something running around the roof. It was kind of loud, but there's not a lot between the dropped ceiling and the roof. Then we both saw the squirrel that had run out onto the plexiglass where the florescent light is. The squirrel saw us, stopped, and we all looked at each other. The squirrel ran off.

I wanted to yell, "Squirrel!" Since that seemed kind of rude to yell into my mother's ears, I limited myself to exclaiming that I had a squirrel in my ceiling. Callie has been on the alert ever since. I told her it's apparently her job to guard the apartment from squirrels.

This has been an amazingly long semester. Only the rest of this week, and then next week is the last week of classes. I will be happy for it to be over, except for the fact that some of my favorite librarians will be graduating and leaving for the wide world. One is off to a permanent government job in Washington DC, and two others are off to summer jobs out west and southwest. There are a few lingerers who'll be here through the summer. After that, it'll be pretty quiet in the new palatial, squirrel-less apartment.

See, this is why I needed help choosing an apartment! I am obviously not to be trusted to do this sort of thing alone. Squirrels...