I like the way you move

I’m not fully moved in, but I’ve started to move out. Yesterday, with the help of my parents and my brother Mike, I loaded all of the major items from my room—bed, desk, two dressers—into a U-Haul and then unloaded them in my apartment.

So, first things first. Thanks to mom, dad and Mike for all their help. It went off without a hitch and took less time than I expected with their cooperation.

It was step one in a multi-step moving process, but it was a big step. The basic set up of my apartment bedroom is complete. The bed’s been reassembled, the dresser re-filled with drawers and the desk returned to its upright position beside my bed. I like the bedroom layout, though there’s still a lot of items from my home bedroom, including my gargantuan CD collection, that need to fit somewhere in the my apartment.

For the next several days I’ll be living in flux between my old space at home and new apartment. I’m planning some furniture shopping Wednesday and getting cable and Internet set up on Thursday.

Hopefully I can then spend the weekend putting things together and making myself feel a bit more at home in the new location. But I imagine it will take some time to get used to.

One of the big changes in my bedroom is the decision not to duplicate the wall decoration. The walls in my room at home were nearly completely covered. It had a definite college dorm room feel. I had posters of Bo Jackson, Rocket Ismail, Shaquille O’Neal, The Simpsons, Muhammad Ali and Counting Crows on the walls.

I also had a mini Counting Crows shine on the wall directly above my bed. They became my favorite band during my senior year of high school, and after I attended their concert at the Warner Theater in Erie, Pa., that April, I was hooked. I printed and posted all their song lyrics and album cover art.

Additionally, I have all of my grade school athletic accomplishments hanging on the wall at home, including plaques from Marcel Arribi’s Rambler Roundball basketball camp and my Our Lady’s Christian School eighth grade MVP award. Maybe it was living in the past, but I never could bring myself to take them down.

Anyway, I haven’t decided what I plan to do with the posters, CC shine or awards (I am not one to throw things away easily), but I don’t expect them to be plastered on the wall of my new room.

For now, the walls in my new bedroom remain a blank white slate—same as the walls in the main room of the apartment. They won’t stay that way, but I’m not sure how to decorate just yet.

Any ideas? Let me know in the comments below.

No more need for a countdown

While Oct. 1 is technically the official date I start paying, I actually have the apartment now! I got to see the empty space for the first time on Friday. As of now, all that I have in there is a lamp. The plan is to do some moving in during the week and hopefully finish up the major moves by the weekend.

But what really matters to me is that I was able to get Time Warner scheduled to come in Thursday night to set up my cable and internet connection—the real necessities for living.

There's a lot to do between now and being moved in, including finding/buying furniture and whatever else I need, but it should be a fun week as I start trying to get situated in my new surroundings.

I'll keep it brief right now as football and sleep are competing for my attention. But it's official. I have the key. I've been in the empty, brown-carpeted pad. Matt's apartment exists. Now I just need to put my stuff in it.

This boy is not meeting the real world just yet

The countdown is now down to less than a week. Still, the reality of the move hasn't fully set in—mostly because I'm procrastinating in packing. I have several boxes upstairs, but they remain empty. I just haven't been able to bring myself to start packing up my things to take them from my room to my place.

And some of the things probably won't make the move at all, including my posters. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to decorate the place, but I probably won't use all the posters I have now, including a Bo Jackson poster that is copyright 1989. I'm not sure about the Hulk Hogan light switch either. But I'm a nostalgic guy. It's going to be tough—probably tougher than it should be—to keep anything behind.

The nostalgia kicked in again yesterday. I was basically bedridden all day, sick home from work after getting next-to-no sleep the night before, so I popped in my Boy Meets World season one DVD. I don't care that I'm 24 now, I love that show. And yes, I'm a total sap for Cory and Topanga.

In other news that's not really news, my pinky-tip remains unfeeling (see previous post). But I am feeling better. I'm not quite 100 percent yet, but I felt good enough to make it back onto the treadmill tonight for an abbreviated workout.

Hopefully I'll have some exciting apartment related news in the near future so I can keep this stream-of-consciousness meandering in check, but then again, I might just continue writing these random posts for the heck of it.

Leave your comments below.

Feeling sick and not feeling

While I wait on the call from my landlord telling me when I can get first crack at my new apartment (it will be no later than Oct. 1, but it will likely be sooner), I am feeling quite miserable.

Ah, the power of the common cold to bring one down. Well, that and a fourth quarter collapse from the Raiders yesterday afternoon. OK, so the cold officially hit me before that, but I think the symptoms definitely worsened afterward.

Anyway, I spent the work day guzzling various vitamin enhanced waters and juices and obnoxiously blowing my nose every 10 minutes. Fun times.

As for the other half of the title of this post? Well, I jammed my pinky finger playing basketball last week. The next day it was swelled and a nasty bruised purple. Most of the purple is now gone and so is the swelling, but I’ve yet to regain feeling in the tip of my pinky. It’s like when your arm falls asleep, except it’s just the tip above my top knuckle and it’s lasted nearly a week. So, maybe it’s hibernating.

Anyway, that’s my self-pitying rant for the day. It’s really not that big of a deal, but sometimes these little things are just annoying. Hopefully I’ll feel better and my pinky will feel again soon.

It's electric, boogie-woogie-woogie

OK, so I actually cannot stand that song and I clear the wedding dance floor each and every time it comes on. Why is this song mandatory at wedding receptions? Can we move on already?

The real reason for the post title is that I had no more clever way of relating the news that I called Penelec and had my soon-to-be-apartment's electric bill transferred into my name. Woohoo! My first of too many bills to come!

The best part of the whole 15-minute ordeal? Penelec's automated telephone service that quickly makes you forget which end of the conversation is being conducted by a machine. By the time I reached the seventh spoken command to get me to a service representative, my responses were so monotonous and unemotional (so as to be recognized clearly to the listener-bot on the other end) that I was almost unable to respond to the woman's first question once I finally got her on the line. (Her question, by the way, was, "What is your name?)

Anyway, I cleared that hurdle and the rest of the conversation went just swimmingly so I think I'm good to go with electric. Exciting, I know.

Next up, well, aside from actually getting the apartment key, is getting cable and Internet set up so I can watch ESPN and whatever other channels exist these days and keep up this blog.

If you though this post was riveting, just imagine all the fun that is yet to come...

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

Semisonic fans might recognize that lyric. It also served as the theme of my high school senior project (awesome project, by the way). It's hard to believe that was nine years ago. A lot has changed since then, but my belief in the quote has not.

And so it is that I start this new blog—my latest venture in writing—with the news that my life is about to endure a major ending and new beginning. I signed the lease on Monday and by the end of the month, I will officially be living on my own in an apartment and moved out of my room at home after 24 nothing-short-of-wonderful years.

Having stayed home through all of college as a commuter, this is even more of a change for me than the average new apartment dweller. I've been living the pampered home life, and I undoubtedly will miss the comforts of home—mom (and dad's) cooking, a big back yard, a driveway with a basketball hoop, free laundry and, of course, my family. But I'll only be 10 minutes away from home, so not to worry (mom), I'll still be in touch!

I'm sure the challenges of this change will come in many different shapes and forms. Financially, I'll have to be a bit more frugal. Domestically, I'll need to learn to cook more than a pizza. Generally, I'll just need to do some growing up—scary, I know, but doable.

As for this blog? I don't know that it'll be relegated exclusively to apartment-related ranting, but it gives me an outlet to do what I love to do—write. I still have MattHubert.com whenever I want to comment on the world of sports, but this blog gives me the freedom to scratch that itch to write about my other favorite subject—me. For the long time followers, think of it as grown-up extension of some of the stuff I wrote at my old site, HalfCourtHero.com.

Feel free to leave some feedback in the comments section below. I'd love to hear from you.