endings and beginnings

It’s now tuesday. It’s been a busy week.

Friday was my last day at Apple. It was only a little surreal. Much different than a last day of school, where everyone is getting ready to wrap things up. You walk around the halls, everyone sort of going about their business as normal, but you suddenly feel like a visitor, an outsider. My team (four people) had lunch together at a decent sushi place; I didn’t have to pay. I expected an exit interview or something, but the HR people were a little slow and never got one scheduled. So I grabbed the last few things of mine from the office, handed my badge over to my boss, and drove away. It was a little sad, but mostly just exciting.

We started packing up things in the apartment on Wednesday. By Friday we were mostly done. Leslie had some teacher certification test on Saturday morning, the day our lease started, so our plan was to head to Fremont after her test, sign all the papers, then bring a u-haul back down to Santa Clara to move everything. The plan went great until we got to the “bring a truck back” part. We called about ten different u-haul and budget rental places, and none of them had an appropriately-sized truck for us to use. Granted, it was a saturday in the middle of the summer, but there are just so many truck rental places, you’d think there’d be a glut of trucks.

We decided to head back home (still Santa Clara at this point) to get lunch, and planned on reserving a truck for Sunday. Leslie had a craving for In-n-Out, so we headed over to the one nearest of apartment. On the way, we spotted a Budget truck place, and resolved to at least drop by and check to see if they had any trucks for rent. It turned out they did, and so while I scarfed my double-double (ack. arteries. clogging.), Leslie stepped up to fill out the paperwork necessary. First he asked for a driver’s license; she handed hers over. Then the guy asked, “so who’s actually going to be driving the truck?” to which Leslie responded, “me.” You see, every other time I’ve moved, it’s either been alone, or with a girl who thought it was my job to drive the truck. Leslie is not inhibited in any such way, so she decided to do the driving this time around.

We took the truck home and called Phil over to help us. Jeff, my big, strong brother, and George (also big and strong) both managed to be out of town for the day. So we were only three, and it was 3:00pm, when we started the move. It went well enough. We had to be a little creative to fit it in the 15-foot truck, but it was no real struggle. Phil was great and helped for over three hours before heading out to SF for the evening. At about 6:45 we got everything in the truck and drove to Fremont. We arrived a little after seven, already pretty exhausted. Did I mention the truck had to be returned by 8am Sunday morning? So we started to unpack. And we unpacked. And unpacked. We made many, many, trips from truck to apartment. At least a hundred. So many trips. So tired. The hardest items for us to do alone were the couch and the tabletop. Luckily, friendly passersby were able to give us a hand with each of them. Nearly delirious with exhaustion, we finished at about ten.

What better state of mind than delerium to drive a giant truck? So Leslie climbed back behind the wheel and we headed back down to Santa Clara, filled it up with diesel, and dropped it off at Budget. We were getting a bit giggly at this point, but we did make it back to Fremont, stopping on the way for some questionable milk and powdered doughnuts at the “Foodmaxx.” We collapse on the living room floor of our new place, nestled between boxes and furniture that coated every horizontal surface, guzzled coke and milk, doughnuts and corn chips until our blood sugar rose enough to get us upstairs. Lacking a shower curtain, we took turns in the bathtub doing our best to get clean, then collapsed in bed. I’ll save the events since then for another post…