Moving Day

Its moving day in Tempe. That's my little corner of the world in Arizona. That picture was taken the moment that Julie and I pulled up to the apartment in August of 2008.

I've been reflecting a lot lately upon my time in Arizona-- probably because I knew that things were definitely closing there. My friends are leaving to internship or finding other jobs and will soon be gone from there too.

Julie and I drove up to the apartment complex. The car said 108 degrees. I stepped outside and said, "oh. well, this isn't so bad." Julie got out of the car and said, "Oh my god" and immediately wilted. We drove to the parking spot where this picture was taken and moved all my crap from the car into the apartment. My furniture from Santa Ana hadn't arrived, so we had this huge space and no stuff. We (or I) was starving and we all know how that goes. Julie is a champ- she knows when I need to eat and rest and to chill out. I was definitely stressed moving in, but she made the whole thing fun and more of an adventure. We were exhausted from the drive and the night we had before visiting a friend in Santa Barbara. That's a whole separate blog post.

We set up my computer and movies and sleeping bags in the corner of the room and camped out for the night--- right after we cranked up the air conditioning. My stuff arrived the next day and the rest is history. I arrived knowing one other student who transferred from Chapman- but three weeks later (around the time I burned my hand), I had this built in network that just beautifully came together. I am truly thankful for my Arizona family and I wouldn't know what I would do without any of them. All of those friendships were truly unexpected and I greatly treasure them. It was surprising how quickly I rooted there. I left Chapman so suddenly and never do I ever regret the decision to transfer- in fact I believe that the decision to move kind of jump started everything for me. But now that my apartment lease is up, that chapter is like really closing. Its a reality now. I moved here, but we still had the apartment so that little piece of me was still there. So it is a bittersweet feeling to know of all the wonderful things that happened in Arizona but to also really move on.

Speaking of moving on... I had my first quarter evaluation this morning. It went really well! I was harder on myself than my ITD and ST were but our comments were all aligned which is the more important thing. Tomorrow I have another meeting and then I will tie up some loose documentation ends for February. I have a hair appointment scheduled for tomorrow!!! YAYAYAY! Finally. And Kari is coming over to spend the night before we leave for Pittsburgh on Thursday!

That means that I better get to cleaning my kitchen before I turn in for the evening.

I'm taking it one day at a time.