Friday Update

Laura:

We've survived our first week in Rochester! We arrived Sunday (July 17) night around 7 pm and got our keys from the landlords. Since our furniture wasn't arriving until the following morning, we just camped out in the living room on air mattresses. For our first meal in Rochester, we ordered pizza from Mark's Pizzeria. While we were forced to enjoy our pizza sitting at our cardboard "dining room table", we were still able to thoroughly enjoy the DELICIOUS pizza.

Movers dropped off all our stuff Monday morning. Everything went very smoothly and nothing was broken. It rained for a little while when they first arrived, but stopped after a couple of hours. I think they arrived at 8 am and were done around 1-2 pm. Not too bad for just two guys moving our stuff in and setting up our furniture!

Alex:

There was one thing broken actually...  So the moving truck was huge -- an 18-wheeler with special doors on the side and cargo space underneath.  There was street sweeping in the morning, so all the cars on our side of the street were gone (and we parked our cars out front to block the spaces just in case).  Unfortunately there was one thing we could not account for: a low-hanging tree over the road.  Now when I say low-hanging, I'm really saying that a few feet over the curb there were a few branches maybe 12+ feet off the ground.  Anyway, they rammed and scraped up some branches pulling in front of the house, but when someone was trying to pull out of a driveway they had blocked they were forced to back into the tree again to let them out.  They slowly inched back further and further to let the person out, pushing on the tree until there was a loud crack! and leaves and water spraying everywhere (it was raining during our move in).  A giant 15-20 foot branch tumbled into the street.  The movers dragged it into the mall in the middle of the street so people could drive through, but we were worried that since the tree was in front of our neighbors house that we might not be well liked in the neighborhood...  Luckily we went to talk to them later and everyone was very nice about it.  Since it was between the sidewalk and the street, it was technically city property, so the city would come by and collect the branches and the neighbors didn't care about the tree much.  Our landlords even said it probably needed to be pruned anyway, and we were just lucky it wasn't one of the other 100-year-old magnolias lining the street that the city does care about.  That was our excitement for the day on Monday...

Other than that, the movers were great!  Really friendly and professional.

Laura:
After the movers left, we decided to find something to eat and then hit-up Home Depot and Wal-mart for various supplies. We stopped at DogTown for lunch. It's a great little hot dog place down the street from our apartment. They have all sorts of topping variations to put on your Red or White Zweigle's hot dogs. If you ever come up to visit Rochester, I would definitely suggest you stop by!

The majority of my week has been spent slowly unpacking all our belongings. The kitchen was unpacked by Tuesday, so we were able to make some Jambalaya for dinner.

We are also very happy to be using our brand new dishwasher!!!!! It's an incredible perk of this apartment seeing as Alex and I have both been living without one for the last three years. Wonderful, wonderful inventions!!!!

We've made very good progress on the unpacking of our apartment. As of today, everything is very liveable (minus the lack of AC during this summer HEAT WAVE). Kitchen is fully functional and now fully stocked after a trip to our local Wegman's (grocery store). Living room is pretty much totally put together....TV and Xbox working....couch and such set-up. I'll try to post some pictures next week once we're totally set-up. I know people are just dying to see what our apartment looks like. :0P

This weekend we're planning to explore the city a little more, especially since there should be a break in the heat (mid to low 80s....WOOT!). Hopefully we'll have lots of fun pictures from our excursions.

Med school update: I've purchased my first two textbooks! They're both for anatomy lab. I also need to procure some scrub pants and an old grungy t-shirt to wear for anatomy lab. Don't want my fancy clothes to start reeking of formaldehyde. ICK! Next week (July 24-30) is my last free week. My pre-matriculation course starts on August 1 and is designed to help get students back into the groove of schooling if they've been out for a while....like say if you took three years off between med school and undergrad to do some rockin' research. ;0) Hopefully the pre-matric course will help boost my conifidence about starting school again! After the pre-matric course we have Orientation Week, during which I'll get fully signed up for classes and get all the administrative business taken care of before classes actually start. CRAZY!!!!!!

Alex:

I've started my working from home.  Specifically, I started on Tuesday, which was way too early.  Next time I move across the country, I'm taking more than a 3-day weekend!  Since we didn't have internet until Wednesday afternoon-ish, I went to Panera on Tuesday and worked a half-day, and worked a half-day Wednesday too.  Things have been going just alright so far, but I'm not sure how a full 5-day week is going to be this coming week, especially since we won't have AC until later in the week!

And speaking of AC, Foof totally downplayed this heat wave!  At first it was just funny when it was in the low 80's, but it's been in the upper 90's the last few days!  I think our thermostat only begins to tell the story:

I think it topped out at about 85...but really it was way hotter!  It's almost midnight here and it's SIGNIFICANTLY cooler than earlier, but the thing is still reading 82.

We have a box fan and an oscillating fan here with us, and during the day wherever one of us is in the apartment there is a fan blowing a few feet away.  I've taken up keeping my hair wet from about 11am through 6pm, and all afternoon today at work I was wiping a wet washcloth over my arms and face.  It's been crazy!  I can't wait for our AC to arrive.  We had to order online because all the stores here are sold out of AC units -- ALL OF THEM!!!! 

Laura:
That's it for now! More posts and pics to come about our car ride up to Rochester and apartment progress. :0) 

THE LORAX