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These last few days have been fun. With the exception of a few furniture pieces, we're just about settled in. The only efficient way for me to share what we've been up to is to break it down day-by-day.

Day 1 - Tuesday

The day started early as Brooke and I left NJ and NY separately to meet up at the leasing office here. We carried only a few items in our cars. Brooke's dad drove a van down with the mattress and Brooke's things, the moving company met us not much later with the couch, futon, and my stuff. By about 1:30pm, the move was done. The apartment smelled fresh from a carpet cleaning and nearly everything was in working order. I moved boxes to their most appropriate unloading points in the apartment and then we made a second pass at unpacking the things we could. Brooke got a quick start on the kitchen, and she was very obviously excited about that. After we were thoroughly exhausted, we took a walk to Bedford St. and ate at a nice Asian restaurant. On the way there, a bike rider got hit by a car at the intersection of Spring and Bedford. We only saw the aftermath: bloodstained asphalt, an absurdly mangled bicycle and a TON of cops. Came back, setup the TV and DVD player and watched a movie. Beastly setup. Who needs a 52" TV? At some point on this day we walked to Target, I forget when - doesn't matter. We got toilet paper. Went to bed real early.

Day 2 - Wednesday

This day and most others so far, we've been up around 6:30am. By the time we were dressed and showered, it was still way too early to visit any stores. We did luck out however that Stop and Shop is open nearly all the time, so we took a trip there and loaded up on food, $200 later it feels like we have some orange juice and milk. By the time we finished unpacking the food and eating breakfast, we were able to ride over to Bob's furniture and pick out a bedroom set. After that we headed to Jennifer Convertibles to look at sofas, and then Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy all the necessaries for decorating the bathroom. Installed a new shower head and hooks on the door for towels.

Day 3 - Thursday

It's Christmas! We woke up early again, did more unpacking, cleaning, laundry. Our savior came in the early afternoon. After hooking up the wrong cable box (one belonging to another customer), exchanging our dead remote for a working one, assuming our account had a balance, and giving us the wrong invoice and account number when we had to call customer service to prove I had paid the installation and first month's bill - we finally had cable and internet, and an $85 credit to the account. Amen. We immediately realized we needed a wireless router, so we took a trip to Norwalk and stopped at Best Buy. Also checked out TVs while we were there, and then stopped at Circuit City next door just to be thorough. Took another stop at Walmart to get a garbage pail and some other little things we needed. Got gas: $4.50/gallon. Ate dinner, watched a TV. Went to bed...

Day 4 - Friday

This morning we took a walk to Target to buy a vacuum cleaner. I walked the thing 4 blocks back to the apartment and Brooke detoured to the bank and the public library to get herself a card. While she did that, I setup the vacuum and tested it out.
OH MY GOD.
You'll note in Day 1 that I mentioned how nice and clean the place felt. It was the smell of clean floors. But "I give you my word, on humble knee, whence you shall not say it wasn't ere to be" that this floor was filthy. I kid you not, I made one pass forward with the vacuum, and one pass back, I had a wad of dirt, dust, dog hair (looks like a Black/White dog with long hair lived here previously) and God knows what other crap the size of a softball in the container of the vacuum. I emptied the container FOUR times on the downstairs carpet area alone, and that doesn't include several large areas (under the bed, in the closets, and under the couch, I didn't do at the time). It feels much better knowing all of that was sucked away, but I almost feel like the floor should be shampooed again, because I get the feeling they didn't bother to do this vacuuming themselves. It looks like they just ran the carpet cleaner over the entire place, which in effect cleaned the dirt and dog hair lining the floor, but did nothing to remove it. Thanks guys. Anyway, after that I took a nap (I think I'm tired because I'm slightly bored), Brooke read a newly loaned book, and then the phone rang. The delivery guys for our bedroom set came, installed the new bed and delivered our other pieces, and then we proceeded to unpack more clothes into them. And that about leaves us at present time.

Tomorrow our parents are coming up. As a treat for reading this entire post, click here to see some pictures of the place!