I closed a major chapter in my life today. I left the apartment where I have lived for just over 6 years. Indeed, I have lived in South Bend more-or-less continuously (minus some summers and Army time) for a few days shy of 11 years -- the majority of my adult life.
However, I'm about to start a new chapter, too -- I'm moving to Louisville, KY, to go live with my new wife, Mrs. Tracy Payne Squyres.
At the risk of sounding sentimental, I feel compelled to present a few reflections of my mixed feelings.
I have been gradually moving my stuff down to Louisville over the past two months or so. Still, today was the final day of my lease, and (by design) I loaded the last of my stuff in my car this morning, cleaned the apartment thoroughly for the last (first?) time, locked the door, and left.
It was surprisingly hard. I'm not an overly-sentimental kind of guy; indeed, I'm from the MTV generation and have the attention span and short-term memory of a skiddish cat. The apartment itself is pretty crappy; it's small, didn't have too much sound protection from other apartments in the building, had very hard water, crappy cabinets, etc., etc. But it was home. I have lived in that location for quite a long time -- it had become a part of me. I've had many good times, many bad times, and some just downright weird times in that apartment. The good times always come to mind first, which is one of the reason that it was hard.
This morning, as I was cleaning and packing, I was musing on the history of my time in that apartment. This is the end of a 7 year streak -- I initially moved in with Mr. Huy Phan (EE grad student) back in the summer of 1994 (he had some other roommate for the previous academic year; I never knew who it was). Huy eventually moved out and went back to France. Mr. Brian McCandless (CS grad student) then moved in with me. Brian graduated a few years later, and Chuck (EE grad student) moved in. Chuck was only around for a semester and a half; Kevin Barker (CS grad student) moved in before Chuck even left. So that apartment has seen a continuous stretch of a single lease since 1993 -- 6 people. And I got the clean the apartment today. Did I get the short end of the stick, or what?
I found all manner of interesting things in the apartment today:
- A grand total of 41 pens, pencils, markers, and various other insundry writing utensils. And all of my commonly-used pens are already down in Louisville -- where did these come from? Why did we have them? We certainly didn't write that much. A mystery.
- I found -- still in shrink wrap -- a mini gas grill. Who the heck did that belong to?
- I also found a boom box. I have no idea whose it is, nor how it got into my apartment. The left channel doesn't work, but I'll bet that it could be fixed fairly easily. I gave it to Pete and Brian.
- The couch that Tracy bought (used) in her freshman year and gave to me when I moved in the apartment in 1994 has now been passed on to Pete and Brian. May it continue to give them good service.
- The Christmas lights that have hung in the apartment for years (literally), and have been on continuously since April or so (it's all about uptime, baby) have also been bequeathed to Pete and Brian as a symbol of Bachelorhood.
All in all, I was surprisingly happy -- albeit sentimental --
about moving out today. This is surprising because I absolutely detest moving; after loading each carful of stuff over the past two months, I always found myself emotionally drained because a little piece of me was leaving. But today was different. I realized that I actually do have closure with this place -- I'm ready to move on and become a husband and start the next chapter of my life. This move has been planned for quite some time now, and I guess that I've been subconsciously preparing for it all along.
Flashback to last night. I went out with Pete (just graduated CS from ND in May, and is just starting as a CS grad here this semester) and Brian (CS undergrad, starting his senior year here at ND) -- the same guys who inherited most of my stuff. For those of you who don't know, Brain has been one of my students for a year or two now; Pete worked for me for about a year as well. We went to BW-3s, had some wings and beer, and played trivia. It was much fun. We went back to Turtle Creek, had a few more beers and pizza, and used the Smoking Table one last time. More fun. In short, it was a perfect evening; we just hung out, were generally stupid, and got a little philosophical at times. These guys will become the next set of urban legends in the College of Engineering at Notre Dame; I am leaving ND in capable hands.
Back to today.
I said goodbye to Troy (one of the maintenance guys at Turtle Creek), and asked him to be nice to me when he does the final inspection of the apartment. He always liked us, and took pretty good care of us (when things broke, he always came pretty quickly and fixed them). I said goodbye to my apartment (it's a thing that I have -- I always have to say goodbye to places that I've lived), and got in my car and drove away.
Metallica's "No Leaf Clover" was playing on the radio as I drove away.
Goodbye, Turtle Creek.
(that was surprisingly hard to type)
Louisville -- here I come!!! Woo hoo!!!
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