Whirlwind in the Windy City

On Wednesday I drove over to Chicago in preparation of moving Katie home on Thursday. Her last final was Wednesday afternoon, and her check-out time from the dorm was set for 11:00 Thursday morning. The thunderstorms in St. Louis had made it impossible to get a good night's sleep Tuesday night, so I was a little concerned about being tired on the drive. And about whether I would be driving into the storm we had just experienced. But I popped in a surprisingly good book on CD, and fortunately only encountered rain as I got to the outskirts of Chicago.

After checking into the hotel, I drove the car several blocks away to park in the garage next to her dorm, hoping to simplify the move out process. I gave Katie a quick call, hoping she might have gotten out of class early, and getting no response I walked back to the hotel. Just as I reached the building Katie called to say her phone had never rung, but she was in her dorm room. So I trudged back to the garage, stopping to retrieve the additional four plastic containers I had brought for her to pack additional belongings in.

Several girls from the floor popped in while we were boxing things up, and it was interesting to hear them talk about the school year, and particularly their roommates. It seemed everyone had the same complaint about girls who have poor personal hygiene, who never picked things up, and apparently cooked and then never did the dishes. Katie had the same problems with her roommate.

We finished packing her up by 4:30, so we went to grab some supper at a nearby pub. Then we went to my hotel room to surf the web and watch American Idol (my guilty pleasure, not hers). Thunderstorms rocked my world again early Thursday morning - great, another day of driving tired! I checked out of the hotel at 8:30, and hadn't really considered the fact that I would need to carry my overnight bag, my laptop and my cooler all the way back to the parking garage. At least the rain had stopped by then, although it was very gray and the city was socked in by fog. I dropped my stuff in the car, and luckily was able to snag one of the two boxes on wheels available for moving stuff. I was informed by the security guard at the desk that since it was not officially "move out" day, the other boxes had not been brought over yet. Hmmmm....They know kids are moving out because they sign up for check out times, but it is not "move out" day? Oh well, I had a cart so life was good. Katie had to come down and sign me in, and we made the first of three trips to the 19th floor. We found a way to take the wheeled box from the elevator, down a hallway to a different elevator and up to the second floor of the parking garage where I had parked. That was awesome as it had begun to rain again. We managed to squeeze all the stuff into my car (fortunately we had removed the center two seats prior to me making the trip), and were done by 10:00. No problems with check out and we were on our way by 11:20 and home by 4:30.

In the fall Katie will live in an apartment with two other girls from school, so we won't have the dorm rules to deal with. I hope they have an inside elevator from the garage there, as that helped a lot. Now I just have to figure out where we are going to store all her stuff for three months.