Moving In, Moving On

I've been absent from T&P lately, for which I apologize, but I had a good reason:

The Hubby and I were in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with The Boy, moving him in to his dorm at the University of Michigan (usually just called "Michigan").

He's moved on, now, to live behind ivy-covered walls.

Truth be told, not these walls. This was elsewhere on campus. But you get the idea, yes?

It took us multiple trips (okay, four) to the local Bed, Bath, & Beyond to get everything he needed. This is the first, last, and only time I will see my son and my spouse in a BB&B together:

That is as rare a sight as nipples on a chicken! But it was clear from the moment we entered the store, we were going to see some rare sights:

Not a sign we see much, in Los Angeles.

Never in my life have I seen such a huge Bed, Bath, & Beyond. Close to the university, clearly the college crowd is important to them. For move-in week, all the staff members wore Michigan tee shirts. They staffed up, too: it felt like there was one employee for every three customers. The BB&B folks all wore wireless phone headgear, moving with surprising swiftness and grace among the crush of shoppers, answering our questions, supplying us with tape measures, guiding us to the shortest lines, etc. Clearly they've done this back-to-college thing before.

At this BB&B, the big blue-and-maize symbol was EVERYwhere, on practically EVERYthing:

A space-hogging chair for $49.99? Umm, no thank you.

We picked up our pre-ordered items, tossed a few more last-minute things into the cart, and arrived at The Boy's dorm, where the locals were ready for us. A throng of upperclass-men and -women in special tee shirts helped the frosh class and parents unload their cars and load all the booty into big blue bins on wheels that looked like mini dumpsters:

Each dorm has its own blue bins, marked with the dorm's name.

The Boy and The Hubby, wrasslin' our purchases into the mini-dumpster:

Aaaaaand, here is his room:

Yup, it's as small as it looks. Maybe smaller.

It was fairly clean, except for a few denizens in the corners:

One quick swipe, and that was taken care of.

The room has two beds, which were stacked bunk-bed style when we arrived:

Two bureaus, with bookcases atop them, two desks, and two very simple chairs:

That's desk, bureau, bureau, going from left to right.

Two tiny closets flank the door. One of the rec rooms on the hall is visible through The Boy's open door:

I expressed dismay that he was so close to the noisy rec room. The Boy expressed puzzlement that I couldn't see how cool it was, to be so close to the fun times in the rec room. Oh.

And so we got to work, pulling apart the beds, rearranging the furniture, and stacking things on top of other things:

This is basically where The Boy will abide, for the next 9 months. From left to right, that's his closet, his chest of drawers, his bed, and his desk:

Here's the same view, midway through putting his things away:

The Roommate is bringing a mini-fridge, another chair, and possibly an area rug to tuck in to this "cave," but The Boy is pleased with how it's coming along:

Finally everything was tucked away. His closet may never look this tidy again:

But maybe it will. I have seen more than one messy kid go off to college and change into a neatnik. Having a roommate in such small quarters might have something to do with it.

Because he's a boy, and an engineering major at that, there was a host of electronic stuff to set up. Here, The Boy and The Hubby work together to run power cords under the overhead bed:

BTW, this is how his bed looks, made up with his linens:

The ever-present "M": There's no getting away from it, on this campus.

He worked in tight quarters to deliver electricity from one wall, where the only outlet was, to the other wall, where he wanted to have a power supply.

The body English was fun to watch:

Umph! Ermph!

Juuuuust a little bit more, here....

And a tweak this-a-way:

...and that:

And a flop to the other end of the bed to check that the lamp still works:

This may be one of the few times he's happy he's not 6'4" tall. There's not a lot of room on top of that bed:

Above his desk he put up a double frame, with a photo of The Hubby and one of me with The Boy when he was just The Baby:

Whoops! Didn't mean to cut off your eyes, Hubby. Here ya go:

On the desk, a subtle reminder of me, cast in the omnipresent maize-and-blue: Polka dots!

Tomorrow: Around the UofM campus, the town of Ann Arbor, and out to the countryside.