Moving In

Our kitchen! Left: as it was before we moved in. Right: as it is now. 

Gonna move away from here
You can find me if you wanna go there
I'm gonna move away from here
You can find me if you wanna go there.
—"Gonna Move," Les Dudek Band

A few weeks back I wrote about our excitement at finding a house in Muncie to rent; as of today, we've been living in said house for about two weeks, so I figured I'd post an update about the moving process.

Anna moved on May 2nd, as her apartment lease in Terre Haute ended on May 1st. She and her parents loaded the U-Haul, drove across the state (her dad drove the truck), and arrived to find the house in a state of disarray. There was no one home, but the back door was unlocked, and when they let themselves in, they discovered a home without usable toilets, a missing shower head, and new tile and carpet not yet fully installed. Anna called me, dismayed; we agreed that the house was not currently livable, and that if it didn't have at least a functioning toilet and shower by the next day, we would look for somewhere else to live.

When the landlord arrived, he explained that a family emergency had come up and prevented him and his wife from finishing the needed repairs on the house. Anna and her parents went to go stay in a hotel for the night, somewhat discouraged. Thankfully, by the end of the next day, there were both usable toilets and a functional shower head, so Anna and I agreed that we would move in and deal with whatever came after.

And we're really glad we made that choice. The homeowners are, in fact, really lovely people. Not only have they done a great deal quite quickly to make sure the house is in working order, they're just generally pleasant to be around. The husband is an elementary school principal, an extremely genial, gentle, and warm man whose worst fault, if it can be called that, is that in a fit of frustration he has been known to exclaim, "Oh, poopypants!" He and his wife have several daughters, some of whom Anna has met, though I have not.

Our front door. Left: then. Right: now.

A week later, on May 9th, Anna's dad took the train in to Chicago from Goshen, picked up a U-Haul truck, and drove it to my apartment, where my roommates and I were waiting. One roommate and I stood out in the rain, guarding the parking spot in front of our building with our bodies. Anna's dad pulled the truck into the spot, right into a puddle several inches deep and several feet wide. The ground immediately next to the truck's rear was very muddy. Needless to say, things got messy.

But for all that, the process was quick, almost embarrassingly so. Loading the truck took about 45 minutes, perhaps mainly because I moved relatively little furniture, though probably also in part because I made an effort to slim down my possessions to manageable levels (sigh, so many books left behind, though I probably never would have read most of them). The truck ended up being about three times bigger than what I needed, which was amusing in light of the fact that I'd been worried about having too much stuff to fit. Afterward, we ate a breakfast of donuts and scrambled eggs, then spent some time cleaning up the copious quantities of mud we'd tracked onto the stairs and floorboards and carpet.

The Franklin heating stove area in our living room. Left: old and busted. Right: new hotness.

My future father-in-law and I then set off on the four-hour trip to Muncie; he was the truck driver once again. I was worried about sustaining conversation with Anna's dad for that length of time, but that turned out to be a breeze; the only real trouble we faced was some really heavy storm conditions that rattled us both a bit on exiting the city. He and I share quite a few common interests (e.g., theology, politics, literature), and we were both able to pick up conversational threads and start new ones with relative comfort, so the drive was a pleasant one.

We arrived and unloaded, and Anna and I's life in Muncie together began. It's been a fun first week, and we're both very pleased with our new home. Check out a guided tour I put together this morning, in the video below.