How I moved
Last week Boston had experienced a heat wave, with temperatures on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday breaking recorded highs for the area. The hottest it got? 92 degrees Fahrenheit.

Needless to say, it was my turn to laugh. Since September, I've been pretty cold, and finally when it got warm people were all sweating and lying about and complaining. It wasn't even over 100! And there was very little humidity - not at all like Middle Tennessee where summer days regularly reach 100, or South Georgia where the humidity makes the air so wet you can feel it thick and heavy around you, and water will condense on your skin like on the outside of a coke can when you walk out from the air conditioning. So it was my turn to feel comfortable while everyone around me felt the weather was treating them poorly.

The "heat wave" broke Saturday, and so when Ryan came over to help my new roommate Aral and I move into the new place the temp was back down to the high Boston 50's. It was a monster kind of move, the sort that makes you never want to move again. We took Ryan's car over to the U-Haul place in Southie, and swapped it for a ten-foot truck. Then we unloaded my things from the storage unit from hell where Ford and I had stuck them last march. This was the storage unit on the second floor of a place, up a small set of stair that had a face-level pipe to dodge every time you went to it.

After getting my stuff out of storage, we drove the truck to campus and due to the way the place is set up had to park a good hundred meters from the dorm. Then we had to bring all my dorm things and most of Aral's dorm things down through the narrow difficult security door all the way back to the truck.

And after that, we drove to the new place, in the area of Boston called Allston, down by B. U. and a bit closer to the Charles River. Then we had to park about 50 meters from the doorway of the new building and carry stuff up two flights of stairs.

Towards the end we were all stupid exhausted, laughing at things that weren't very funny because we were grouchy and tired, but we didn't dare stop. The U-Haul was due back by 3pm. We got the job done. Ryan was just the biggest help possible, he drove the truck though Boston traffic and helped us move things. There was no way the job could have gotten done by just two people in that amount of time.

My parents sent me a little money, which ended up just covering the expense of the U-Haul and the storage unit fees. My Aunt Beth, in addition to all the cool things she regularly sends from the Mexican border, put me on her CPA firm payroll for $50 every two weeks. Both of these things were an immense help. Doing everything totally by myself is really just too hard sometimes, and the assistance was very appreciated.

My new apartment is quite nice, although it's filled with boxes at the moment. It has hardwood floors and plenty of windows that look out on a neighborhood of rental houses and buildings filled with college students. When you walk in there's a small kitchen area to your right that looks out into the living room. There are two small bedrooms in the back, and two large closets. The closet off my room has a door in it that leads down to the basement laundry room. It's a small space but I feel very good about it, like that's where I'm meant to be right now.

After we moved Sunday - and boy were we exhausted!- Ryan and I drove out to Sturbridge where my cat, Mr. Puck, had been staying with Ryan's sister Julie. We hung out for a bit and then almost cried as Mr. Puck left. Julie was a great foster mom for him, and truly didn't mind - she has a huge farmhouse with three small boys and four other cats. I'm halfway convinced now that Puck needs another cat to keep him company, he did so well with the cats at Julie's. Well, I have an 18 month lease, so I guess it's a possibility.

I have yellow paper roses and ceramic elephants on my windowsill in my bedroom. Maybe by Sunday I'll have more of my stuff out of boxes, but that's enough now to make it feel like home.