A girl's gotta have her stuff

This past weekend marked a whirlwind trip to Columbia to liberate my belongings from their storage unit home of over a year. When I started traveling, I gave away a TON of stuff and only put things that I really thought I would need into a storage unit. Of course now that I am living with BJ, there were some things that I no longer needed like the 25" TV (he has a 56" one) my dining set (his is nicer and we're probably going to just buy one together anyway) and the futon frame (we are going to have two queen size beds). But all in all, most of the things I have will find a place in our home or will go to the growing garage sale pile because how many casserole dishes and glasses does a young couple need anyway??

We flew one way into St Louis and rented a car to Columbia. Our first day there was taken up by a quick visit to my friend Kristin's to see her adorable new baby Kate! I can't believe I didn't think to take a picture ... but it must have been the fact that at the time I had been awake over 24 hours since I got off work in the morning then immediately left for the airport. After our visit, we met a nice locksmith at the storage unit to pick the padlock since of course I lost the key. And seriously, I'm not a key losing type! Somewhere between Virginia Beach and Arkansas I misplaced it and it's never turned up so it's definitely gone. After a 45 minute epic battle (damn that was a good $12 lock!) we were able to enter the unit. There was no obvious damage and I set off a bug bomb to hopefully terminate all living creatures overnight. Note: some mutant spiders survived but luckily they were all only on the outsides of my belongings.

The next day we went to the campus of my alma mater and walked around because the weather was gorgeous! We stopped by the bookstore and picked up some MU paraphernalia and on the way walked by the engineering building. BJ took a picture next to the shamrock outside of the engineering building. Legend has it that if a female crosses that shamrock she is destined to fall in love with an engineer. He may not technically work as one now, but BJ most definitely has an engineering degree from the University of Arkansas hanging on our office wall :)

After spending some enjoyable time on campus, we returned to the storage unit and packed things up. Other than some dust, cobwebs, and lots of little bug carcasses on the outside of boxes, things were in good shape. The Uhaul was efficiently packed through BJ's excellent scheming and in no time flat we were on the road. After an overnight stay at my granny's in Springfield, MO we were back in Little Rock. I'm sure it will be an ongoing process to get everything truly unpacked an in place, but I've made good progress so far. At least my entire Buffy DVD collection is now nested securely in the living room and the ghosts of my past (yearbooks, prom pictures, sorority stuff) are all securely sealed in plastic totes.