It has been a week since I left LA for Nashville and I’m glad to report that I made it in one piece. The drive was not as bad as I thought. My initial estimate of being on the road for four days turned out to be one day too many. I averaged roughly ten hours of driving and 650 miles a day. There isn’t a lot on I-40 east that is worth stopping for unless you’re into the Grand Canyon, petroglyphs, and 72oz steaks.

Although I said the drive wasn’t too bad, it was still boring as hell. The drive gave me a chance to walk down memory lane as I listened to all the CDs that I haven’t listened to since freshman year in CD. Man was I such a faux-gangster back in the day. Somewhere in Texas, I think it was Amarillo, I broke down and pulled into a Barnes and Noble and bought an audio book, Malcom Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw. Nothing is more stimulating while driving through the open country of north Texas than listening to Gladwell wax on about the differences between ketchup and mustard.

Since my arrival in the Music City, I’ve been setting up my apartment so that it is somewhat comfortable. I was going to go for the cheap, agile, and mobile setup – buying camping chairs, tables, and aerobed from Bass Pro Shop or Wal-Mart – so that I can quickly pick up and move on from here after I graduate. I was quickly convinced that this solution was a bad idea, particularly after a classmate pointed out that a blow up sofa might not be the coolest thing to bring the ladies home to. Touche.

One thing I didn’t expect was how much money I would spend on furnishing the apartment. In my head, I had a general idea of what things would cost. What got me was how things added up so quickly. To Costco and Target: your weclome, you guys are now richer while I am much poorer.

When I’m not doing apartment stuff, I’m doing school stuff. Every other day, there is some kind of get together at a classmate’s place. There are so many people to meet that I’m on name overload right now. Owen, for whatever reason, doesn’t have a “math camp” that I know some other b-schools have so a classmate setup a series of ad-hoc quant review sessions this week. Each day is a different subject and the Owen professor that is teaching that subject comes in for an hour to answer our questions. I think we, the students and professors, are going above and beyond with the reviews, but then that is why we are “Team Awesome”.

So that’s the basic account of what has been going on for the past week. Things are going well and I’m well on my way to settling in. All this is a good way to slowly ramp up to orientation, which is a good ramp up to the madness that is going to be school.

I can’t end this post without commenting on the weather. A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted something about how it didn’t feel that hot or humid in Nashville. I’m eating that tweet this week because it’s been absolutely smoldering. The heat and humidity is worse than I experienced in Singapore or Taiwan. Not only will you sweat from just standing outside, but you’ll continue sweating once you go inside. I went running the other day and I couldn’t stop sweating even after an hour after I stopped running. I look outside and I start sweating. Supposedly, this is just a freakish week. I hope so.