Seeking Time Travel

Argh!  If you’re an extraterrestrial, deity-empowered iconoclast, or human being from the year 3000 CE reading this blog article, please do what you can to whisk me away to this Sunday!  I’ll be the first to admit I absolutely loathe the packing and moving process.  Don’t get me wrong: I love spending time at home, and I adore being on campus.  But the in between time?  Not so hot.

The shopping nightmare

My least favorite part about the whole experience might be the shopping that goes on beforehand to make sure I’ve got everything I need for a successful year.  Just today I’ve browsed through Target, Costco, Linens & Things, and more, just keeping an eye out for necessities I may have missed on the way.

Of course, going about this in such a helter-skelter fashion is unhealthy for both the psyche and the pocketbook, as inconveniences of time and finances abound.  (“Ooh, look, a shiny mirror!”  “Wait, the trash cans were on the other end of the store.”  “Where did my basket go?”  I’m sure you know the drill.)

Everything’s complicated when you’re shopping for school.  Even the most basic toiletry purchase becomes an exercise in decision-making; after all, who knows the difference between Extra Whitening, Shine & Polish, and Baking Soda Fresh toothpastes, anyway?  Fortunately, in order to streamline this process, I’ve devised a nifty little trick: only purchasing items of a certain color in order to keep indecisiveness minimal.

Don’t believe me?  Here’s photographic evidence:

The packing monstrosity

The struggle doesn’t end here, though, as the real challenge is integrating the new and the old into a car that’s half as large as you recalled while you were shopping for that new rug.  If you haven’t arrived on campus, put your trash bags next to the door, just in case you almost forgot them like I did.

This is where the lists come into play.  My lists, lists from online, lists from friends, lists from the family, everyone’s got a list of stuff to bring down.

Of course, the whole problem of making lists is that the stuff you were going to forget in the first place never makes it on the list to begin with, so as far as I’m concerned, useless lists of paper serve as a psychological assurance at best.  (Even so, I’ll take what I can get.)

The big picture

Fortunately, though, every once in a while I’m able to see everything in perspective and see the move-in process as the exciting challenge it is.  After all, what do you really need to function on a college campus?

• your student ID card
• pants
• a pen

Not so bad, right?  If those are the necessities, everything else I’ve been planning is bound to be icing on the cake.

On second thought, galactic explorer, don’t teleport me to the 24th.  I think I can handle it on my own, assuming I stop blogging and start packing.