I said sure and sat down in the chair. About 30 seconds later the sky opened up and rain began pouring down in buckets. Thunder, lightning all at stuff. Someone from the college came running around with tarps, which I put over the kid's stuff. A few minutes later, a very perplexed Dan came back to find nobody he knew and some strange man sitting in his folding chair. We had a friendly conversation while we kept ourselves dry and tried to keep the kid's things covered with the tarp. The rain was pouring down and people were scrambling around, but everything seemed to be going okay until someone pulled the fire alarm. Ha ha ha. Everybody then comes pouring out of the dorm into the pouring rain. Lots of pouring everywhere. Then the firetrucks showed up.
At this point, I had no particular purpose to be there but I didn't want to leave the covered area where I was standing. Eventually it was all clear and people went back into the dorm and continued loading up and soon the rain stopped. I took a lap through the Public Garden and went back to my room with stories to tell.
Our own move was more routine, although there was some rain in the middle of it. The order of affairs was for our daughter to go get her room key, then get in line to move her stuff up to the room. She went off to find the KeyMaster, while Ronnie and I got in line for the freight elevator. We were staying in a hotel that was less than two blocks from the school, so it seemed ridiculous to bring the car around, but the key to that working was to get a hotel luggage cart. Considering that the hotel was very full between school move-in, the Red Sox, and the impending Boston Tatoo Convention, it took some serious skulking around the lobby to find a recently abandoned cart but eventually I did.
After a trip to the parking lot to load up and a rather harrowing trip down a ramp among cars into a traffic jam, I trundled the thing over to the school, luggage dripping off both sides until I got some unexpected help from a very energetic guy. I asked him why he appeared so fresh and full of pep, and he told me that he had hired two people to help them move his kids stuff into the dorm, and it was the best hundred dollars ever spent. So he was more than happy to help move my cart little bit.
I got in there just as my wife had become first in line for the elevator, so in and up we went with all our stuff. The dorm room itself was almost shockingly nice, with carpet and a separate bathroom. There were bunk beds, but just the top bunks, with dresser and desk underneath. This seems a very efficient arrangement, as long as you don't mind working a bed over your head. There's enough room to set up some musical equipment, but the college does not allow practicing/playing in dorm rooms. That's a good idea, I think, considering that everyone in the dorm plays something. It would be fun to have an Everyone-In-The-Dorm-Practice-At-The-Same-Time Day, but I'm not holding my breath. There are practice rooms on every floor.
For a little while, I participated in the unpacking, but eventually first returned the luggage cart to the hotel and then camped out in the hallway with roommate-dad, where we discovered that we have had pretty much the same career path. Very coincidental and strange.
Eventually, we said goodbye and let her get oriented. We decided to stay on for an extra day, which turned out to be a mixed-at-best decision. This required changing hotels. If you want to see the review of the second hotel, see here. By the time we finished all of this, we were pretty exhausted, so we ordered takeout from Legal Seafood and called it a night.
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