We Have Arrived - Day Four

I realize this is a bit delayed, but as you can imagine, things reached the peak of craziness immediately upon our arrival in Chicago on Friday around noon. But I did still want to provide a recap of that last day of our journey.

Luckily, we powered through most of the journey on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday....so we only left about 200 miles to drive on Friday morning. Which was very helpful, considering we had to be to my apartment by 12:30pm at the very latest (since that was when my mover guys were scheduled to arrive and get started). It was raining most of the way (this will come back up shortly...), which made for pretty cloud-covered skies. Chicago was dry, thank goodness, but still kind of overcast. Here was my first view of the Windy City as I was approaching it to become a real, legit resident:
I got the same feeling then as I did when I saw the New York City skyline upon move-in approach back in January 2005...it just felt right. And good. And overwhelmingly exciting. Which was a relief to yours truly! I was pretty sure I'd feel that way, but it's always good to actually make it to that point and be right.

The moving guys were right on time, and did an awesome job. Unfortunately, my lemon of a moving truck had yet another problem, in that the back part leaked some during the hard rains...meaning some of my boxes were wet. Very uncool:

And this was the floor of the inside of the back of the truck:

I would have thought I would have freaked out way more, but whatever. It was done. There was no use giving myself an ulcer about it. Nothing was truly ruined, and I'm pretty sure Budget will be giving me a huge refund anyway...so it's okay in the end. But it's just more proof that I am, in fact, the "s**t magnet" as my parents call me. Ay-yi-yi.

And then, believe it or not, after we got everything moved into the apartment and were finally ready to go turn in that stupid Budget truck (which had been double-parked and blocking traffic for over 2 hours at this point), I turned the key to start it one last time...annnnnnnnd the battery was dead. No joke. Really?! How did all this happen?!

So I had to call Roadside Assistance AGAIN, and wait for this awesome tow truck to show up:

And for this abnormally large man to give the truck a jump (which luckily worked so we didn't have to get towed away):

Gotta love it. Right up until the very end. I really just need to accept it as fact...my life is never boring or dull, and it's just not meant to be that way!

Honestly, there was only one key stat from day four, which is:

Number of people who successfully and safely arrived to Chicago - 2

My mama and I did it! It was a crazy trip, but we made it. And I got all moved into my new, fabulous home. And another piece of good news? I love my apartment even more now than when I found it a couple weeks ago. It's perfection.

So that's it. I'm a Chicago resident. And I REALLY hope I want to stay for quite awhile. Moving is just such a pain, and stress, and cause of blood pressure sky-rocketing. Anyone that's thinking of moving should really consider the madness that is involved. It's pretty much a blur. And most people aren't lucky enough to have the best helper in the whole world along for the ride to pack, ride, move-in, and support - I don't think I could have done it without mama bear. Just like I have for every day of my life, I owe her big time!