DC At Last (And A Few Thoughts on Packing, and Oakwood)

We made it! It feels so good to finally be here. When I caught sight of the Capitol dome driving into the city, it brought tears to my eyes. What a journey this has been, from the FSWE to this moment. In just a few short days, I will have the Bid List in my hands!

Before I get busy with other things, a few notes on packing: I have read of people with spreadsheets and lists and evil master plans to take over the universe with their packouts. I was not one of those people. I made the mistake of a) waiting until I got The Call to start cleaning out my house, and b) taking only a week off between my last day of my old job and packout. The latter was a HUGE mistake, and did not leave me enough time to pack properly (I'd lived in my house almost 10 years and have a child.). Consequently, I scurried around and made giant piles for UAB, HHE, and to drive here in the car with us. I have little idea what I have with me, but I know I erred on the side of being in DC for lengthy training, and brought a little of everything. The car was so full that we looked like Ma and Pa Clampett pulling into town. It didn't help that I decided to pack in trash bags to save time and space! With my luck, I will probably get sent abroad as soon as A-100 ends. Anyway, I can now see the benefit of maybe taking a little more time and creating a few more lists of what I am packing, and what went where.

We are pleasantly suprised by our Oakwood accomodations. We are pretty picky about housing, but agreed that with everything else we had going on, there was no way we were going to try to find our own housing, when we could just do Oakwood. From all of the criticism we'd read on the Yahoo group boards, we were expecting dumpy on-campus college apartment living. Our kitchen has junky particle board cabinets and early 80's almond colored appliances (I can barely hear myself think, the dishwasher is so loud right now). The bathrooms are similarly outdated. However, the carpet is new, much (although not all) of the apartment has been freshly repainted, and many of the furnishings appear new, and are relatively stylish. The linens are nice, and there are six place settings of dishes (although, only four chairs for the table!). The layout of the apartment is nice, and it's more spacious than I expected. All in all, we are pleasantly surprised by it. I'm glad we chose it, as it certainly was easy to simply show up and check in like you would at a hotel.

And now, more unpacking! Maybe I'll find something interesting...