I’m driving down the Ventura Freeway in a Budget truck about 30 minutes from my new home last Thursday in crazy L.A. traffic when my cell phone rings. It is illegal to talk on your cell phone while driving in California (but giving fellow motorists the finger is highly encouraged), so I hand my father-in-law the phone. Turns out it’s our wonderful housing coordinator, Mrs. Sue, with bad news. The apartment we’re supposed to be moving in (in thirty minutes, did I mention?) will not be available due to significant plumbing problems. But not to worry – the apartment next door is available. Sort of. They’re painting it in a feverish attempt to get it ready for us, but the fumes would be too much for us to stay there that night. But not to worry – Mrs. Sue had already booked us rooms in a campus hotel for that evening. And we could move all our stuff in. Crisis averted.
Well, crisis averted, but we hadn’t started working yet. Which qualifies as a crisis in and of itself.
So we’re on the third floor of a Malibu apartment on the Pacific Coast Highway with a view of the Pacific Ocean. This is really, really good, if you don’t count having to move all your stuff up there. The bad news was that we couldn’t park the moving truck anywhere near the stairs. And that there wasn’t an elevator. And that the two guys who were supposed to help us didn’t show up. So… we spent the biggest part of the day walking up and down so many stairs that we now hate stairs – which will suck for the next three years. Oh well. We are getting in shape. Toward the end of the move-in, somewhere in my delirium, God sent an angel in the form of a law student named Brian who helped us through the worst items (like the hide-a-bed sofa). As fellow students go, Brian was a perfect first friend to make. Super, super guy. One of the guys who planned to help us was our friend, Mark, from Ocean Springs, who happened to be in L.A. – in fact, he happened to be in L.A. traffic. He arrived on campus just as we moved the last item in!
After visiting with Mark for a while, we went down the three flights of stairs one more time, wearily climbed in our car, and went down the PCH to eat dinner at Malibu Seafood, a nice end to an exhausting day.
Except the day wasn’t over – we had to climb back in the car, climb back up a mountain, find our campus hotel, climb the steps to our rooms, and collapse in bed.
But we were in.
Minutes to Memories 