The Box

(Ed. note: Because I’ve been lagging behind, the next few posts are going to cover general aspects of life, the move, ect. instead of chronologically so I can get back to posting about recent events. To do this, I will be posting daily until Friday.

After that, there will be a new post every Monday and Thursday. The temperature’s dropping, and it’s gonna get weird.)

My first week in my new place wasn’t rough, but I’m glad it’s over. Without cable or Internet, I was completely cut off from most forms of outside communication.

There was, of course, the radio. There’s only one news station and only one sports station here, but to create world and national news pages every night, I have to go into work having some idea of what’s going on. I soon got used to having it on all the time. It would sometimes be a matter of hours before I heard a Braves score, and since new news is thrown into a loop with the rest of the stories, I might hear one new story an hour. But that was worth it.

And besides, I was forced to kill time by cleaning up and setting up the Box. My stuff would still be on the floor if I had cable when I moved in.

But while my stuff wasn’t left on the floor, I was. I had brought an inflatable mattress to sleep until I could afford a proper bed. The thing is, I had no other furniture either; the things you don’t think about until you get there. I sat Indian-style on the floor to read and use the computer (delicately balancing the keyboard on my thighs was the tricky part) and ate off my kitchen counter standing up.

After a quick trip to the hardware store, I had the essentials: a hammer, nails, screwdriver, toaster and coffeemaker. The rest could wait.

It was Tuesday, my first day off when I finally hung my TV. The cable wasn’t getting hooked up until the next Saturday, but at least I could watch some DVDs.

Television was not a luxury I had used much in the past few weeks. Other than one day of SportsCenter on Bob’s couch, I hadn’t actually sat down and watched TV on my whole trip. Sure, I’d watched a few at bars and at work, but I was busy doing other stuff, too.

I took full advantage and watched the entire "Lord of the Rings" trilogy in two days.

A natural part of any moving experience is realizing what you don’t have at the moment you need it. This requires frequent trips to Lowe’s, Wal-Mart and Safeway (the local grocery chain), so I took the opportunity to explore the towns stores while running these errands. There’s lots of specialty stores with local flavor; there’s lots of mining equipment and surplus military supplies. On my way back from Fred Meyer (an upscale Wal-Mart), I passed a green neon poster board with "MREs: $60/case" written in permanent marker.

Usually, I despise having to go to Wal-Mart so much. Like in Florida, the one here greets you with an old smiling vet and sends you away with poor service, and it draws some of the trashiest people the town has to offer. But since it’s upgrading to a Super Wal-Mart, there’s new stuff every time I go inside. Case in point: I went there for duct tape the day they began selling futons, something that was hard to find cheap here. I forgot to buy the duct tape and got my first workout in two months lifting the futon into my car.

With that and a computer desk, I felt as though I was living like the nouveaux richs. Hell, I still do. I got running water and no roomates, so I figure I'm doing better than 95% of recent college grads.

Here's a little tour of the place (It's not 4 minutes long, only 1:39. I dunno why it says 4:31.)