You Gotta Move

I've finally moved out of Laurel Apartments. I'm now comfortably situated at Washington Ridge Apartments, so kindly update your address books and send your chocolates, money, and threatening notes to my new location. I had quite a bit of help moving, for which I'm thankful. Brent and Marci brought the truck, and Jim and Cliff from small group brought themselves, which was plenty. I had woke up that morning, surveyed the mess that was my apartment, and wondered how on earth was I going to organize everything and get out of there in a day (Well, I actually had three days since I was moving to Washington Ridge early on a pro-rate, but I did want to get as much stuff out as possible since I had help for that one day).

The problem solved itself, though, because once Marci showed up, she started throwing everything within reach into anything that looked like a box without so much as asking 'May I?'. I came out to the living room at one point and found saw her stuffing things into places I'd never intended to put them. She kinda just smiled goofily the way she does, and said "Um, I'm packing your stuff for you". She kept right at it as I stood there, eyes blinking and mouth agape. Good ol Marci, what would I have done without her?

Later on as we were piling things onto the truck, we realized nobody had thought of bringing rope or bungie cords. Brent tried his best to make do with one cord that he had in the truck, but it clearly wasn't enough to hold everything. Cliff went up to the apartment to look for something useable... I told him I didn't think I had any rope we could use. Then I hear him say "Oh, hey, how about this?", and he's holding up my old karate white belt. "You got anymore of these?"

So a few minutes later we had chairs, a table, and a disassembled bed all haphazardly piled onto the back of the truck, held precariously together by white, yellow, orange, and green karate belts tied together like streamers. It looked more like a parade wagon than a moving truck. Can you say "Rednecks Moving"? I did. If only I'd had my camera with me at the time.

While we were carrying things into my new place, Jim pointed out I had a slight pest problem: The living room window had a small hole in the bottom left corner where ants were coming through. I went to the office a couple of days later and told them about the problem. A couple of hours later, Billy-Bob (I don't know his name, but I'm calling him Billy-Bob because he talked like one) knocks on my door and comes in to inspect my ant problem. I show him the window, where the flying ants were congregating at the top and the normal ants were holding an Irish drinking contest on the window sill (I think). Billy-Bob takes out his flashlight (this was in broad daylight, mind you), points it at the top left corner, then points at the the top right corner, and back and forth for a bit.

After he's done shining he flashlight all over the window, in broad daylight, he puts it away, and proceeds to look intently at a few of the ants as they crawl across the window. Then, with his forefinger, he crushes one, and then looks at the dead ant on the tip of his finger for a while. I'm watching all this, and half expect him to put it in his mouth. He then proceeds to crush another one, and then another one, all with the same forefinger. I'm like "Oh crap, dude's gonna stand here all day doing that". After a bit, though, he stops, turns to me, and says "Hee-yup. You got an ant problem."

Genius. Pure genius.

Which brings me to my next point. I'm in the East end of Knoxville now. I'm used to moving about the West end, where people seem fairly normal and well-educated. But here on the East side... well lets just say I figured out real quick why they don't have a Borders on this side of town. That's not to say these aren't decent folk; the race is not to the swift, nor the glory to the wise. But as I was walking about the Wal-Mart near my place, I had to look in the mirror a few times to make sure I still looked alright, because everybody else in the store looked like they had been beaten at the entrance with the ugly stick.

Okay, okay. I'll stop making fun of my neighbours. I'm actually thrilled to be in my own place for the first time in years. And like I said before, Washington Ridge is a really, really nice place. The geese I saw before are still there, escorting their young from house to house like comic sentinels. They gathered outside the stairs to my apartment once, and looked a little annoyed that yet another featherless bloke had come to make a mess of their haunt. "You watch yourself, now", they seemed to say, "No funny business on our watch".

No sirree. No trouble at all. Not from me.