Passing through the eye of the needle, and life in Rockville
So, I haven’t really posted in like two weeks … guess it’s about time to write down what’s been going on.
The whole “life convergence” thing happened. The last twitches of migration pains went off, with the PHSI folks getting their own sharepoint branch on the e-enterprise tree.
The day I had to be out of my apartment, I had my now-former coworker Tejas give me a ride out all the way to Monticello, because apparently the end of July is when everyone in the freaking state moves. But they gave a discount to offset the fuel to drive to and from Monticello, and a mileage offset too, so it was all good.
Same day, I spent the afternoon and evening packing, and moved out, started driving. Spent the rest of that night driving, stopped halfway between Dayton and Columbus on I-70 and slept at a motel for the night, and kept on going the next day. Landed in Rockville around 6:00 pm.
Some notes from the drive:
- Ohio’s big.
- The eastern half of Ohio is pretty, and a little hilly.
- West Virginia and Pennsylvania are more hilly, and …. topographically interesting. Also very pretty.
- Maryland is even hillier. I didn’t realize before, but it really is. There’s seriously like … mountains, coming into MD from WV.
- It really, really sucks trying to maintain speed in a 4 ton U-Haul truck
- It’s also sort of tricky trying to keep a 4 ton U-Haul truck in a highway lane. It’s seriously completely different driving one of them than driving a car.
Anyway, I didn’t take any pictures of the drive, because I was busy actually driving. But it wasn’t bad. It was overcast the whole trip (keeping the brightness down, so I had no trouble driving the long haul despite not having sunglasses). Rained in western Maryland, at one point enough so to completely hide a freaking mountain that I was literally driving through (apparently they blasted a highway path basically right next to a peak).
Anyway, got to Rockville, enlisted my new roommates to help unload the van, started to get situated and oriented. Now I have some idea where I am, where other things are, and how stuff is laid out in general.
Now I’ve been here for a week. I’ve ridden the buses a couple times. I’ve ridden the metro a couple times. I’ve bought a bunch of stuff needed to live life in a house. It’s … all pretty crazy really. Spent some of the last week here sorting out paperwork for when the job starts. Just took today with one of my roommates and headed into DC to go around the capitol and see the touristy sights. Pics of the clouds from the plane flight, a few shots of around the neighborhood, and pics of the DC touristy-touring today are all in the Gallery. We walked a lot today… a bit over 5 miles all told, from metro center to the Lincoln memorial back to union station, via the air and space museum and the capitol building. Crazy fun (exhausting) times were had.