The saga of moving, part I:

I got up at 7:30 this morning to finish packing all my stuff. I even finish grading the last couple of papers for Math 153 (so I'm done with my job! Yayy!). I go downstairs at about half past nine to enter those numbers, email the grades to my (boss? I'm not sure what to call him. The guy who teaches the class that I'm grading for), and head over to campus to do a couple errands. I check my email and there's a message from my (boss) asking for the averages of the grades for each homework. Ordinarily, this would be no problem, but I didn't record the grades in Excel (because of all the problems I had with my computer, I was keeping the grades on the U of C server, so I was using Pico, a Unix-based text editor which doesn't exactly calculate anything). Again, maybe not a big deal, but there were 20 homework assignments. So by the time I finish putting all the data into Excel, it's almost ten, so I rush off to campus, turn in my takehome (and notice the swastika on the floor of the steps in Social Sciences. What's up with that?), return my books for grading, and go to Andrew and Mike's apartment. It's now about 10:30.

Mike's at the apartment and gives me the keys to the van, warning me it's a bit low on gas. I say OK, I can run it to the Amoco on my way home. I turn on the car. It stalls a couple of times, but the engine finally turns over. The brake light is lit, so I try to turn off the emergency brake. I pull on the brake release lever a couple of times, but nothing happens, so I sit there contemplating what to do next when the car stalls. I try to turn it on again, and nothing. 20 minutes later I give up and go back to find Mike. He tries a couple of times, has no idea what's wrong with it (though we ruled out the battery because the lights work) and he offers to let me drive his car. It's tiny, but it's a million times better than nothing, so I jump at the offer. I drive it home, start loading up (numerous elevator related shenanigans follow, suffice it to say I got stuck between two floors for about 5 minutes once), and resign myself to leaving the bookshelf and having to ship a lot of other stuff home. Amanda and I are ready to go when Andrew comes walking up.

He wants one of us to drive him back so he can fix the van. We dither a bit, but I like my bookcase, so Amanda goes back with him while I drag the other stuff (that wouldn't fit in the car) outside. Anyway, I called him about 15 minutes ago and he thinks it's completely out of gas. So hopefully it will be ready to go in about 15 minutes so I can get everything to storage. The thought of dragging all that crap back upstairs makes me want to die.

More later, if it's interesting.