Journal: Entry for Palatine

I spent the last week helping move and get my little brother set up in his apartment in Bloomington, Indiana, home of Indiana University, where he will begin his doctoral program in microbiology. Bloomington seems like a nice place. I didn't get to see a lot of it, but what I did see was nice.

As with any move, there are always a few hiccups. The most serious is my back. I hurt it pretty badly moving this god-awful leather recliner out of my dad's house. The thing is big and wide and I wrenched my back bringing it up the narrow staircase to the basement. But, as long as I don't do anymore heavy lifting for a while, it should be fine.

The drive to Bloomington went well (we stopped a night at my big brother's house in Illinois), but when we arrived we couldn't get in the apartment. The property manager wasn't there to meet us like he was supposed to. We called him, but got the recording saying the customer is not available. So we called the building's owner. He showed up quickly, but he couldn't get a hold of the property manager either. The owner's daughter had the apartment before my brother (so the amenities are a little better than the other units), so he called his wife to see if she had a spare key left behind by their daughter. She showed up with two keys, neither of which worked. So the owner called a locksmith. The first locksmith tried to pick the lock but couldn't. Another one showed up and they decided to drill out the locks and install new ones. The owner (also a state appeals court judge) was embarrassed about the whole situation, which he apologized for many times and he gave us a $150 gift card to a nice restaurant.

The only real drawback to the apartment in my view is the air conditioner. It is very loud. So loud that we would've had to turn up the sound on the TV so high, the neighbors would hear every word perfectly, but instead we turned on the captioning.

And finally, I'm gonna miss the little twerp.