Getting to Boston

Yesterday (when I traveled from Portland to Boston) ended up being a pretty darned long day. My flight landed a little late (at around 4pm instead of 3:40pm), but it was an hour before I could get my luggage and get to the rental car place, then another hour before they got me my car, at which point it was 6pm (in case you didn't do the math there) and I sat in traffic for over an hour trying to get to my (totally awesome) hotel. By the way, I never remember this until I'm waiting in line there, but every single time I've rented from this rental car place (whose name rhymes with "Nifty") no matter what city I'm in I've had to wait at least an hour for my car. My GPS was incredibly helpful in finding my way "home" to my fancy hotel. I hate trying to read and interpret printed directions in the dark on my own, so having a handy little gadget telling me where I am and what I'll need to do every step of the way was fantastic, especially given how tired I was after getting up at 4:30am to make it to PDX in time for my flight...

Exhausted and starving (having only had a "breakfast cookie" and 1/2 ounce of pretzels on the flight) I collapsed in my room and ordered delivery. I've learned from experience with moving that it's good (if you're me, at least) to order enough dinner on your first night to serve as an emergency lunch the next day, too, in case you're still too tired to act like a productive member of society by then. Thus, my dinner featured (clockwise starting with the naan, below) Naan, Saag Paneer, Chicken Korma, Chicken Tikka Masala, Vegetable Samosas, and Rice Pudding. Everything except the Tikka Masala was seriously good, and the Tikka Masala was just totally different than what I'm used to but still quite tasty.
After 10 hours of sleep and a lazy morning recovering from travel, I headed out to find some groceries... which ended up being a little disheartening. I won't get into the specific problems I had, but this seemed like a pretty big fancy grocery store and they had very limited options for several things that I needed. I also need to find an Asian grocery ASAP, since buying spices in a grocery store is a ridiculous waste of money for a kid like me. This afternoon I went to check out one apartment complex that I had been referred to, but it was not for me. Aside from being too expensive, the apartment didn't have a door on the guest room ("You can just hang a curtain!") and just had one communal BBQ down by the swimming pool with no patios/balconies on the rooms where you could put your own grill ("Those George Foreman grills are really great, though!").
Feeling a bit exasperated with that waste of time added to my grocery-shopping angst (as Stanley can tell you, I get disproportionally disheartened when grocery stores don't have what I need), I set out to find a place to buy a cutting board and reasonably decent chef's knife (the kitchen in my hotel room has a pretty sketchy selection of dull knives and only a glass cutting board, which is horrible for your knives) to tide me over until my kitchen stuff gets here in 3 weeks. I actually had to go to three places before I found what I was looking for (which affected my mood about how you'd expect it to after the way the rest of my afternoon had been going), but during this time I was deeply grateful to have my new best friend (picture above) sitting on the dashboard telling me "Hey, why don't you just sit back and let me do the thinking for the both of us..."

Looking forward (with a mix of excitement and nervous energy) to my first day at work tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how things shake out. More apartment-hunting this weekend, hopefully with less exasperating results. Note to self: Do not post to blog when tired and cranky anymore...