Me, Sack and Xudohle

I kind of can’t believe that all worked. I picked up a Uhaul truck, got it in a parking space, all my stuff fit into it (barely), I got it out of the parking space (okay, well, Ben did), I drove it from Chicago to Charlotte, unloaded it into a storage unit where it (almost) all fit, and now I’m back in Delaware for the next month. Exhausted.
Driving the truck wasn’t as terrifying as I thought it would be. Sacajawea (my Garmin) was a fantastic tour guide. Mountain roads and crosswinds are a little scary when you’re about as un-aerodynamic as they come, but all in all, not so bad. I stayed in Shelbyville, KY on Saturday night, after driving through torrential sheets of rain in Indiana.
It cleared when I got to Kentucky, but caught up with me overnight and greeted me again in the morning. I drove through stormy rain all morning, until I got into Tennessee and the sun came out. I forgot how beautiful mountains can be. And how flat Illinois is.

I finally made it to Charlotte and the Uhaul storage place. My brother met me there and we somehow managed to fit my stuff into a 5x10 unit. The couch is standing on one end, there is a bookshelf balanced on top of the couch, my kitchen chairs are stacked about eight feet high, and there’s about a half-inch of clearance between the end of my mattress and the door when it closes. My kitchen table had to be left behind. We left Xudohle the Uhaul truck in the parking lot, dropped off the keys and headed to Greenville.
Two hours after leaving Charlotte we got to Greenville and stayed in an incredibly shitty motel. (I found a small plastic cat next to my bed and there was a beer bottle cap next to Toby’s. There was one partially-damp bath towel, no clock, no remote control, and everything was either peeling or stained.)
We got up early the next morning to be greeted by the same giant storm front that had been following me since I left. So we moved Hannah out of her dorm room into a storage unit in more torrential rain, hit the road about two and arrived in Delaware by midnight. Plus, Sack took us on a fun little detour through D.C., which was a little blast from the past for me.

It feels good to be home, but I can’t really relax yet. I have to officially request my background check from the FBI, arrange classroom observations with a local high school, study for the GRE next week, and get started on all the pre-Institute work I have to do before heading to Mississippi. But also in the mix are visits with friends I haven’t seen in too long, cooking for the family, and setting up the hammock in the backyard. Not a bad deal. Here goes May!