On Wednesday, I slept in for a while, walked to a little local grocery store to start stocking up on a few essentials. Later that evening I got a ride from my assigned "big sibling" in the program. She took me over to Walmart where I bought an overflowing cart of all the things that wouldn't fit in my suitcase. We also stopped by a few nearby furniture stores, but they were all quite expensive. Instead, we headed toward IKEA where I was disappointed to learn that all the furniture I had carefully chosen online was sold out, and most of it was actually out of stock for good! Sadly, I left with only a lamp and comforter for the inside of my duvet. Look at that handsome lamp!
Thursday was the first day of orientation. All of the School of Medicine grad students went to the orientation, but we got to meet the people in our individual programs before sitting down to a day of boring lectures about safety, security, etc... It was nice to finally meet people, learn how to take the local shuttles, and get some phone numbers of the people living in my neighborhood. The most exciting (and frustrating) part of Thursday was getting my mattress delivered from Sears. The delivery man was less than kind, even when calling at 6 am to reschedule my delivery. Luckily, I learned how to complain from my dad, and got myself a $20 gift card to Sears for my poor experience with the delivery guy.
Friday we had our individual program orientations. It didn't last long, and mostly consisted of filling out paperwork and talking about taxes. Friday night and Saturday night I went out to dinner with classmates. It was really good to get to know people on a more personal level than the orientation environment. It was on Saturday night that I discovered a delicious Afghani restaurant just down the street. As I posted on facebook, it is a requirement to eat there if you ever come to visit me. On Saturday I also managed to get a hold of two people selling furniture on craigslist and plan to pick it up the following day.
Sunday was probably the craziest day since I've been in Baltimore. First of all, when I woke up, the clouds were so thick and gray that I could barely see the city from my window. It had been sprinkling on and off all morning, but didn't start to pour until about 2:30 in the afternoon. Somehow I had managed to talk two guys in my program who live down the street to both drive me to home depot so I could rent a truck, and then help me load and unload the furniture once I bought it. I would have postponed due to the rain except that the kitchen table was only available this day, and was well worth the stress (said only after the fact).
As my ride got on the freeway, one of the boys got an alert on his smartphone about flash flood warnings for the greater Baltimore area. We decided to venture out anyway, and ended up having to slow down to about 10-20 mph due to visibility and standing water. Even though there aren't too many steep hills, the water was rushing down to lower ground. Eventually, we made it to Home Depot the rain had slowed to a manageable level. Sadly, things didn't get easier once we got to home depot. The men at the counter wouldn't let me rent a truck without my insurance card. I had planned for that and had Dad send me a cell phone pic of the card on Saturday. However, their problem wasn't the lack of card, it was the fact that my name wasn't listed as a primary policy holder on the card itself. This meant that I had to call the insurance company, request proof that I was a listed and covered driver on the plan, and then have that information faxed to the store. When I called, they told me that I would have to have policy holder consent before they would release that information. Normally this would have been annoying, but no big deal. However, both of the policy holders happened to be in church. Not only were they in church, they were in Sacrament meeting where one was playing the organ! After a number of text messages were sent back and forth, somehow, Dad was able to run outside and give them everything they needed to know, and give official consent to release my information. Then, every time the insurance company tried to fax the documents, the receiving fax machine failed. After an hour of waiting around at home depot, they finally gave me the keys.
We headed out, in the rain, with me behind the wheel of one of these:
(I have no idea who this family is, it's just to show the scale of the truck.)
Long story short, we finally got to the furniture, loaded and unloaded it at my apartment, and returned the truck. The furniture was wet, but I had very few casualties. The worst of the damage was to a decorative piece on one dresser that doesn't affect function, but won't sit exactly in place anymore. (It's not really visible unless the top drawer is open.) One of the spindles on the chair broke, and another has a piece gouged out of the top, but it's worth it for such a pretty set! I'm pretty proud of my bargain furniture shopping (aside from my mattress splurge), since I only spent a total of $30 on the dressers and $100 for the table set!
In the table picture, you can see a "good luck" sign. I got that sign a night or two before my AP Chemistry exam in High School. It's been on our back door since. I got a package one day containing that, and a few other treats and notes! I love getting mail, even in lab when it's just packages of solvents or reagent catalogs, but something from home filled with nice notes is the best!
1 comment:
$20 Card to Sears!! Wooohooot!
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