superflea

Took the better part of twelve gruelling, sweaty hours, but my friend and I got the girl moved into her new place yesterday.

We went and got the rental van (I thought a cargo van would be closer to a minivan than a truck, and I was wrong), did our ritual pre-trip Quizno's lunch, and headed off to Ikea.

The Ikea was a ZOO. There was barely any parking to be had (especially for a large cargo van), and the place was jammed full of people, mostly with screaming broods in tow. It was nuts... although kind of cool to see all the people who were obviously students looking to furnish their first apartments.

We made two passes through the store - once for all the loose stuff, and once for the boxed up furniture. It worked a lot better that way. We've tried in the past to balance a lot of miscellany on top of the boxes and it always ends in tears and bloodshed.

Anyhoo, then we headed back here, stopped off at the Canadian Tire to get her a nice microwave and toaster oven, and then she did the preliminary grocery run. I told her the first grocery run of an apartment is ALWAYS two hundred dollars. It's like a science. She didn't believe me, but the cash register proved you don't fuck with science.

Then it was unloading the truck at the apartment, two vanloads out of the apartment here, and we were done.

A big hug, and a goodbye that didn't get tearful or drawn out, and then I dragged my aching bones home, into a shower, and out to the bar.

It's done.

Time for the next act.

UPDATE: I'm sitting in my half-empty apartment with Rancid's "...And Out Come The Wolves" CD playing. I just found out that the last song my old band wrote (I didn't do the main riff, so I'm innocent) is no small ripoff of "War's End". HA!

FURTHER UPDATE: I'm not tough as nails anymore.