Accomplishing Escapism

Moving was an ADVENTURE.  Well, the real adventure was suffering the intense disapproval of my parents re: The Tattoo, but I love it and they don't love me less for having it, so whatev.  I knew they'd react in this fashion and I'm over it now.

It took us about two hours to load everything into the UHaul truck.  It's weird, I don't know if I packed more efficiently or if I left behind more stuff than I realized, but I definitely took up a whole truck moving out and had space left over coming home.  Maybe I am just a ninja packer and don't know it.  My room was very empty and desolate when I left, much more so after I vacuumed up a year's worth of dust from where my bed used to be.  Now my room at home is FULL OF BOXES, and I don't quite know how to unpack and mesh what I've brought with what was already here.  I appreciate the fact that my parents kept my room as my room quite a bit, but when I left in August everything got reshuffled to fill in the gaps of the things I took, and now I essentially have two rooms worth of stuff in one space.  I'll figure it out eventually...

Last night was tons of fun, I went out with some folks from home.  We hit up the Map Room, a bar over in Bucktown which is quickly becoming one of my very favorite places to go in the city.  It carries a whole mess of exotic beers - I especially like a Lambic Frambois which goes for $6 a glass and makes me realize I'm not in Iowa anymore.  It's a very sweet raspberry-flavored beer which doesn't taste a whole lot like beer.  Brian got some kind of Belgian wheat that tasted like banana bread, which was also pretty enjoyable.

I'm just so glad to be back in the city... I love Iowa City, and I miss everyone there (this feeling is only going to get worse, I feel), but I'm a definite city girl at heart.

Turns out that by "we have a job opening" what the company I interviewed with REALLY meant was "we hire independent contractors."  An independent contractor is someone not actually working for a company - they get paid purely on the clients that they see, on a totally freelance basis.  Since I am a college graduate so green I'm pretty much grass, this is not helpful to me; no matter what the eloquent man at the presentation yesterday says, I am NOT looking for a way out of the job market and into the world of self-employment, I am looking for stability.  With a regular paycheck and health benefits, preferably.  So I'm glad I spent a $50 bus ticket to be able to go to that interview.

Wasn't a totally lost weekend, though, last night was pretty rockin'.  My boyfriend has been having Monday night boardgame fun, which I actually got to go to last night, and that was fun.  We ordered mass quantities of Chinese food and played Settlers: Cities and Knights edition, which seems to basically be Settlers on steroids.  I'm not a huge fan of Settlers to begin with (granted, I've only played a handful of times) but this wasn't so bad.  Mostly I just liked doing something social, as I have a tendency to be fairly hermetic if given the opportunity.

Today I get to ride a bus for seven hours in order to return to IC, pack up all my shit, and come home AGAIN Saturday morning.  I would very much like to see people before I depart; I intend to return at least twice this summer, perhaps more in the coming year, but I may as well get the hangouts in while I'm still local.  

I really hate moving...there's just something about heavy lifting and driving in that horrifying UHaul truck that's downright unpleasant.  Plus I have to see my entire life reduced to what will fit into a handfull of cardboard boxes, and see the room that I've occupied so happily for the last year reduced to an empty wood floor and a bizarre faux fireplace.  I'll have to say goodbye to the little cat who's adopted me, who will undoubtedly go on to find someone else's window to yell into.  I might not get to watch the baby robins fledge and fly for the first time, even though they're getting GINORMOUS and will probably do so in the next week.  I have a lo of good reasons to move now instead of August, but even so, it's going to be sad when I do.