That is the mapquested distance from my old house to my new house and I made it. I didn’t have to drive it (luckily) but I’m here in Naw’lins, which is pretty much the only way to pronounce/spell it.
I’m pleased to have the internet (for a brief, flickering moment in time) while my computer is on a truck somewhere around mile 1863 (I’m estimating).
Let’s do a quick recap of my time here to date:
Wednesday: land at approximately 8:45pm; feeling pretty good about arriving with all my luggage (for the extra $90 I paid to check my 2 bags they had better arrive with me!); get a rental car (2005 Mustang) that allows the driver to feel every bump in the poorly-paved roads not awesome; check into hotel downtown and enjoy the fact that I didn’t have to fork over a credit card to pay for it hooray new job!; realize that I’m starving and not sure I want to roam around downtown at night. Opt for pretzels from the vending machine for dinner boo.
Thursday: sleep in a little and find a Starbucks. Do a little exploring and by exploring I mean finding where the nearest shopping plaza is located and kill time before meeting my new boss for lunch. Meet my new boss at 11:30am for charbroiled oysters at Acme. Eat many of them because they are fabulous. Have a salad because it’s the responsible thing to accompany oysters coated in butter and garlic. Follow my boss back to campus, where he let’s me use his computer to check email and fill out my HR forms. 1pm: sift through the 42 emails that have accumulated in my inbox since Wedneday morning many of which were “checking-in” emails which make me feel loved. Not gonna lie. Go back to my car, where I have only been parked for an hour. Pull the stupid parking ticket off the windshield and think $40 could have bought me cool new apartment items. Go to the hotel and nap.
Friday: Orientation day from 9am-1pm. Fill out all of my benefits information and learn how to use a fire extinguisher. Hurricane evacuation procedure is conspicuously left out. I head to the traffic office to buy my [gasp] 500 American dollar parking permit, only to be told I don’t have a university email so I can’t. Boo. Go back to my car. Shake my head in disbelief at the boot on the back right tire of my visitor space-parked car, along with the four tickets on my windshield. Go back into the traffic office. Miz Debbie (anyone older than you is a Mr. or a Miz, make a mental note to adopt that policy when I have kids) waives three of the tickets. Leave $150 poorer than when I went in. Get lunch because I spent two hours in the traffic office sorting it all out. Nap. Wake up and see about dinner.
Saturday: Wander over to the Lakeside Mall and pretend to be interested in buying a MacBook computer, which is really a shameless attempt to check my email again. It works, because now here I am.
A quick recap:
$40 parking ticket on Thursday
$100 boot removal fee on Friday
$10 ticket fee on Friday
Cost of first day of work? NOT priceless
Happy to be here, ready to have a functioning kitchen, really wanting my stuff to arrive. Like, seriously. Is it here yet? It’s amazing how much spare time I have with no internet go figure.