Empty House

An empty house is full of echoes

with nothing left to make them.

I stood at this window for five years

and watched this corner of the earth.

What a fucking random corner

But I liked it.

My voice bounces off the walls

and fills the halls with resonance.

Without the bookshelf to lure it in

or couch inviting it to rest

my voice could go on forever

Echoing long after I’ve left;

which will be five minutes from now.

Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

Two years ago, two young men decided they were going to finally move into their first apartment together.  After a stressful month of apartment hunting and all the anxiety that comes with it the day of their move came at last.  Up in heaven God thought to himself “Now lets see how much these guys can take.”

What ensued was what was the worse day in both of their lives.  They cried, they swore, they yelled at each other, it was almost a non ending day that still tastes of bitterness in both of their memories.

Two years later, they decided they were going to move into their first apartment just the two of them, and God thought “Well I guess I have to up the ante.”

The last few days have been some of the worst in my life.  So the bf and I are trying to move into this beautiful apartment, not too far from our current.  1 bedroom very spacious, lovely kitchen with a DISHWASHER on a beautiful corner overlooking a treelined street on one side and a park on the other.

Going in we knew this apartment would be a lot of work.  The application required us to deal with a broker and requested more references and sources than I have ever been required (contracts, letters of recommendation, tax returns bank statements, reference of employment etc.)

All that was turned in well over 2 weeks ago, and then we played the waiting game.  See we need to be approved by the person who owns the apartment and renting it out, the management company that owns the building, and the co op overseeing the building.  As time passed and we weren’t hearing anything we kept getting more and more antsy but heard nothing from our broker.

It was almost moving day still no sign off, he says they are rushing it, they are trying to get someone to approve us, they are working no one knows what the problem is.  All the while we are saying “we have to move out the 31, we HAVE to move the 31, what do we need to do to be approved by the 31.”  We were told not to cancel anything (moving truck, friends helping, packing old apartment, painting old apartment) so the 31 we went and got our truck.

Since we still had no word by that morning we moved out our room mate first, after that we called the broker who told us our application had been lost in management and no one had even looked at it yet.  Aka you’re not moving today.

Well that was stressful, but we handled it with stride, we called our current landlord and we were allowed to stay a few days at a pro rated cost.

The next day we found out, IF we get approved for this new place it won’t be till mid September.  We freak out again, so we call our landlord and are then told we have to fax in a request for a September 30 move out date.  We couldn’t move out on the 15, they needed us to commit for the whole month.  Our new place was ok with us pushing the lease start to October 1, so we dodged another bullet.

Today we faxed in our request and got a call about 20 minutes later, that that was not indeed an option, if we didn’t move out in the next day our lease would automatically renew, and while we are bound to this new apartment we would have 2 leases for a year.  Panic, fear, anxiety, stress.

These two boys have so many wonderful friends in the city who all offered us a place to stay, for the whole month if need be.  That was so great to know, it really eased our minds.  The problem is we have an apartment full of furniture and our lives and had no place to put that, nor any way to get it anywhere.

I had about 3 hours where I just paced my apartment never sitting down waiting to hear from several people about what our options were.  I cried in that time, I started screaming, I’ve been in a bad place these last few days.

In the end we are signing a few contracts with various parties that pretty much sets us up for the month of september and allows us to move into our new place at the end of the month (so long as we get this apartment, if we’re not approved that’s a whole different story)

I haven’t been sleeping well, I’ve just been stressed, and today was icing on the cake.  I finally decided I would take myself to a dance class, it’s very zen for me, helps me step out of my body and calm down for a while.

I stepped off the subway and within a few steps I got shit on by a bird.  I walked to a bench and literally broke down.  I’ve been shit on a lot the last few days, now even by birds.  about 20 minutes passed and I just started crying harder, in the middle of central park kind of delirious.

Enter the bf, who calls to calm me down.  I snap at him that I don’t want to talk and he spends the next 15 minutes calming me down, centering me, making me realize there are positive and exciting things coming up and the great place we have gotten to, and how proud we should be of ourselves.

This whole experience has been just as hard if not harder on him.  I was still doing a show in Boston until monday and he’d been dealing with almost everything, and here I am breaking down and he is there being the most incredible guy, just trying to make me realize how good of a position we are finally in.  That guy is just the most amazing guy in the world, I have said this a million times in the last few days, I could not have gotten through the last week without him.  Bottom line.

So I went to the columbus circle bathroom and washed myself off, walked up to dance, still not sure I would actually take one, decided I should and I’ll be honest I kinda rocked tonight.  Yeah that’s not even remotely modest, I don’t really give a flying f.  I felt great and grounded and present and for about 2 hours didn’t even think about the things stressing me out in life.

3 months and this positive little anecdote is what I finally return to my blog with.  There was a lot of positive stuff that happened in between.  Once I find where my camera adapter is I’ll upload some photos and try and share on that.  Who knows, maybe I’ll even have a definitive place to live by them (dream big)

We get the internet once a day by chance

This whole moving experience keeps getting better and better.  The one thing I will say about our leasing company is that they seem to be on top of getting the broken things in our apartment fixed.  However that half of our kitchen wall has been ripped out because the gas pipe collapsed and needs to be replaced.  I would think that this is something that should have been dealt with before we moved into the building.

I’m nervous for how long this whole gas line is going to be a problem, because now we will have to have some remodeling done in the kitchen, and as long as there are people working in our apartment someone has to be here.  That makes finding a job very hard for me.

Everyday it seems there is something happening where one of us needs to be here.  The cable guy comes tomorrow (somewhere in a 4 hour span) the gas is today, who knows when they’ll come to fix the torn up wall.  It keeps going and going!  No me gusta.

It’s even more frustrating because there are quite a few people coming into the city both today and in the coming week to visit and 1 of my roommates is going home for a wedding this weekend, so it kind of falls on me to stay here. 

We have discussed that we are going to demand some of next month’s rent taken off because the company has technically broken contract by not providing us with some of the things that were laid out (like gas).  Also, basically remodeling the kitchen within our first 48 hours of living here is not ok.  And of all the outlets in our apartment, more than half don’t work.

Growl.  The apartment is starting to come together though.  My room is almost completely unpacked and things are finding their place.  There are a few furniture pieces that we need before the rest of the apartment can come together.   Currently I need:

  • Entertainment stand
  • Dresser
  • DVD rack
  • Book case

Not a whole lot, but these are all organizational pieces of furniture.  Currently everything that would go in these pieces is without a home, so just tossed in boxes, or bags, or heaped in large piles around the apartment.  The whole kitchen is still in boxes too, but that is for a different, obvious reason.

We are fast approaching the point where we get to start hanging things on walls.  That is when this apartment will start feeling and looking like my home.  We want to paint a little too, so we just need to figure out what colors we are doing, and prioritize in order what we are going to do.

On an optimistic note, I got to see some good friends yesterday.  I met one friend from AZ for coffee before heading to midtown to see some Emerson peeps that are in town looking for apartments. 

We were talking at dinner about looking for apartments and moving to New York, and yesterday was their first day and they were saying how tired of it they were, how stressful it was, and how they wanted it all to be over.  In my mind I just kept thinking, “You don’t even know yet.”

My mom commented on my last post about worse moving experiences.  I moved a few times as a child and one moving day story sticks out in my mind above all the others.  It was when we moved from Cincinnati to So Cal.

I was at my friend’s house for most of the day while movers came to pack up the house and put it in the enormous truck.  When it started getting dark my friend’s parents drove me back and as we turned the corner to my house we saw a whole bunch of flashing lights, there were ambulances, fire trucks, police cars and a whole bunch of people milling around our house and the loading truck.

I can’t even remember what I thought when I saw it, but what had happened is while trying to load our Suburban into the moving van one of the movers had tried to lift the ramp the car was on, and the ramp fell on top of the guy (car included).  The guy turned out all right, I believe he had bruising on his ribs, but what a horrible thing to happen on moving day.

I was about 9 at the time, so I can not even remotely appreciate just how horrible that moving experience must have been for my mother (my dad was already in California) but I’m starting to get a better idea now. 

My brother and his wife also had a terrible time moving this summer.  I could sympathize but not empathize at the time.  This is no longer the case.

One final note.  I never realized how bored I could get if I didn’t have the internet.  All I want to do is watch True Blood.  Is that such a crime?

How many Emerson grads does it take to repair a door?

Turns out…3.

So I have made it to New York in one piece.  I apologize that I haven’t been updating, but I don’t really have consistent access to the internet yet (Time Warner is hopefully coming on Saturday to hook us up).  From time to time we are able to connect with the 1 unlocked signal in the city, but it comes and goes.

The last few days have been a roller coaster ride of emotions for me.  In fact, the act of moving really blocked out just how stressful packing and cleaning my old apartment was.  Now that I’m a day or two removed from the whole experience everything that happened feels more like a dream to me.

Now I’m going to go through the hell that was moving.  Bare with me, everything seemed 10 times worse when it was all happening at once.  Thank god I had my boyfriend with me throughout it all, I literally would have fallen apart within the first hour of September 1st without him.

We got up around 5 to get ready, grab coffee and a bit of breakfast (I had a donut, breakfast of champions) and head out to Brookline to pick up our Uhaul.  It took a while to get there but there were no problems picking it up or anything.  But then we had to drive back to Cambridge.

I have said it before, I will say it again now: EVERYONE in Boston moves on September 1st.  It is surreal how many vans and trucks are on those extremely narrow and windy streets.  What was also a problem is the fact that I never drive is Boston and have no way of navigating unless on foot.  The streets are almost never marked, and when I’m within my first 10 minutes of ever driving a truck, let’s just say I was not having my finest hour.

We eventually got back to my apartment, and by this point I had only barked at the bf about 10 times.  We packed up quickly enough (thank goodness that much had already been organized) and as we prepared to leave, a cleaning crew came in.  I’m so glad we spent so much time this weekend cleaning…

We got on the road around 8:35 and headed to Newton where our roommate’s parents live to pick up some of his furniture.  Again, we got lost on the poorly marked Boston streets and what should have been a 20-minute ride took us over an hour.  But we got there and loaded everything up.

Next was the 4-hour drive to New York.  This part was a little easier because at least I felt more comfortable driving on the freeway then busy city streets.  However halfway we got a call that the management company had not received one form from us (the form we confirmed in person at their office on Friday had been received) and got word that we would not be able to move in until the form was in.  Cue my stomach dropping out of my body.

3-4 phone calls later, we are set to move in.  1 crisis averted.

Getting into the city wasn’t too challenging, so we got to the apartment, called the super and got our keys.  Now here’s where the story starts going the fun route.

In order to empty the Uhaul, we were instructed to drive onto the sidewalk (full of trees, poles and laughing children) and then back the Uhaul into the courtyard.  I’m not very comfortable doing this with a Uhaul, but did it.  We unloaded everything and were able to pull back onto the street no problem.

Next, we went back to Manhattan to load up the bf’s apartment.  He had all the furniture, so…all the heavy lifting still had to be done.

We finally loaded everything into the truck, and started back to Queens…at 5 o’clock.  Anyone out there ever driven through Manhattan at 5 o’clock on a workday?  It took 45 minutes to get from 86 to 59 street.  Yes.

Then we had to cross the bridge at right at the end of the bridge the car in front of me pulled a slightly illegal maneuver, right in front of two police women, who thought it was fine to block my lane of traffic during the busiest hour to give this man a ticket.  234 honks later, I got to move, and made it back to my apartment.

I pulled onto the sidewalk to back in only to find that it was trash day!  And the sidewalk was covered in trash bags and other household items.  Quickly the bf, the female roommate and I tried to move them, getting essence of garbage all over us (some liquid substance that smelled of poop splashed in my face, that was pleasant).

After moving the pile, we discovered we hadn’t moved it far enough.  So we left the Uhaul where it was and unpacked.  The unpacking would have been fine if it were not for:

THE COUCH

This couch literally weighs 2 metric tons.  It’s a fold out bed and is the vain of my existence.  We got it up the stairs by sacrificing our backs, and when we got to the door of the apartment, discovered it was too big to get in.  So what did we do?

We took the door off its hinge.  This wouldn’t be a big deal if the hinges to our door were not spring loaded.  Once we sold our souls to get the couch in we realized we couldn’t screw the door back on.

Whatever, that was the end of unloading, and we were grateful.  Uhaul was already closed by now so I went and parked it for the night, I came back and the 2 roomies and I fiddled with the door until we somehow got it on.  SOMETHING WENT RIGHT!

After that, we got food, beer and called it a day.  My day ended up lasting 19 hours, and probably the 19 most stressful, mentally, emotionally draining hours of my life.  When I lay down to fall asleep I barely could, I was too exhausted to sleep, and my mind was still racing.

Since moving in, we have unpacked most of our stuff (except the kitchen which I’ll elaborate on in a second) and tried to set up Cable.  See, we can’t find a cable jack anywhere in the apartment, and as I’ve explained there’ve been a lot of problems with Time Warner, but now they’re telling me there’s no problem and they’ll come hook it up on Saturday.  This whole not having a jack better not be a problem.

Most of the outlets in the apartment do not work, and also I couldn’t get the stove to work.  We discovered it is because the gas was not turned on, so the gas company came out to check it out and discovered…

A possible gas leak.  Not in our apartment, IN THE WALL.  They said there’s no gas running to our apartment but the meter is still turning, which means gas is leaking somewhere, so they need to rip into our wall and find it.  OH FUN!   

Fortunately I can say, everyday is getting easier, and everyday is better than the one before it.  I’m not freaking out the way I was on moving day, and there’s also a bit of comfort in that I can’t imagine any day in this apartment will be as bad as the one when we moved in.

On a scale of 1 to 10 September 1st gets a 2.  It didn’t rain, there was electricity, we got into the apartment, nothing broke, no one I knew died, and the only thing I hit was another Uhaul.  I officially hate moving.

This post is long enough now so I’ll end here, but I will say I feel like I have grown in maturity by at least a year in the last five days, and I feel closer to my boyfriend than I ever have before.  I keep apologizing to him because I think in the last few days I snapped at him more than the rest of our relationship, but I was stressed.  This has all proven not to be my finest hour.

Moving…

So we are in the midst of the move.  My mind is all over the place, and I apologize.  But this day has been CRAZY so far.

All I had to do this weekend is pack up my kitchen, paint my room and clean the apartment.  All of these tasks have proven harder and more time consuming than I expected.  I’ve only had 1 break down so far, I’m kind of proud of that.

I only got one bucket of primer to paint my room, and it proved to be pretty weak stuff, and so we got about 1 and a half coats out of it, which was not nearly enough.  I had been cleaning and packing all day and then I had to walk all the way back to the hardware store and back (40 minutes right there) got back, opened the paint I bought and was confused.

I discovered 2 things last night.  Oil based paint is different then latex based (slash stupidier and pointless and annoying) and it also can’t get on your skin.  I learned by doing.  That’s when I had my break down.

Today I got a different (latex based) primer and the bf is painting as I clean the apartment.  It turns out our apartment is WAY dirtier than I thought.  When the rooms are empty and you look at the surfaces they all have lots of dirt/grease/dust/etc all over them.  

By the way, has anyone ever heard of the magic eraser?  I am convinced the inventor sold his soul to the devil.  Not only does it magically erase EVERYTHING, but it keeps going forever.  I have scrubbed almost every surface in the kitchen/living room/bathroom with it, it is falling apart and absolutely disgusting, but it’s still working!!!  There some black magic working inside it to get my apartment clean.

I’m also proud because I called Uhaul to confirm my pick up for tomorrow.  They said I was scheduled to pick it up at 2:30 in Saugus (about 2 hours away).  I informed them this is impossible because I don’t have a car and have to be out by 9 am. After 5 different people I finally scored a truck from a store right off the T (easy access) and I get to pick it up at opening (7am)

So it looks like we’ll be getting to New York mercifully early.  I was really concerned about the Uhaul aspect of this move, but now that crisis has been averted.  Who knows how many more are going to come before all is said and done.

Tonight we are early to bed, but not before breaking down my bed and organizing everything to go into the truck.  

One final thought.  In the 2 years I lived in this apartment, I never realized our door was BROWN with dirt.  Thank you magic eraser!

The work of the devil
The work of the devil

The Times They are a Changin’

So I am on the bus going to Boston for the last time.  I have made this trip a dozen or so times since I started College, I am not going to miss it.

The plan for the rest of the weekend is get in tonight, and tomorrow I want to get everything left ready to go (that means packing up the kitchen and a few knick knacks here and there).  I also need to paint my room and get a deep cleaning in there before we leave on Tuesday (I want my security deposit back).

I have a lot of emotions playing on my system today, and I would consider most of them “good” emotions.  I woke up and did what little remaining packing I could and then had to wait for the boyfriend to get off work.  I sat around watching True Blood while a nervous energy kept building up inside of me.

I am finally taking a step away from the limbo that has been my life for the last month.  I am making a real life for myself in the city.  There is so much that can go wrong (and probably will go wrong) in the next few days that I don’t look forward to.  In general moving in Boston on September 1st is a nightmare.

PS, this will be my first time ever driving a truck…and I will be driving it down freeways I have never driven before and then into New York City.  I’m in no way shape or form excited about that.

But I am preparing to take lots of pictures of the whole experience.  I imagine it will make for a funny post, and I need some photo documentation when I publish “My New York Story” however many years in the future.

Hmmm.  On my way to the bus stop (after having built up so much emotion by sitting all day) I was really excited to do a long, deep post about moving, but writing on the bus is uncomfortable.  My elbows are squeezed against me and I have a sneaking suspicion the girl behind me is reading what I’m writing.  I also hate bus rides.

So…I’m gonna end now.

This was the view I got everyday of Boston...I'll miss that
This was the view I got everyday of Boston...I'll miss that

You say potato, I say the natural history museum is boring

I have little more to say than the title.  I am a little overwhelmed with things to do right now.  I leave for Boston tomorrow evening, tonight the boyfriend and I have been packing up his apartment.

Today he had the day off (except he did have a long overdue dentist appointment this morning) so we planned to use a pair of vouchers one of my friends gave me to the Natural History Museum.  

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad we went…but…its kinda boring.  Last time I went there was the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, and my brothers and I thought it was boring then too.  I don’t know why I thought it would be different this time around.  I am older, wiser, more mature, more inspired by the world.  I guess that only goes as far as the doors of that museum.

It didn’t help that while in line to redeem our vouchers the boyfriend was called and offered a job at Apple, and during that conversation was also called in for an interview today with a theatre agency.  So that excitement definitely eclipsed the “excitement” of the museum.

I decided the problem with this museum is that frankly a lot of the stuff is boring (I mean it is basically a dead zoo slash fake forest) and it is outdated to the point where everything is being presented as boring.  It just doesn’t have the sex appeal necessary to keep my interest.  The museums I saw in France (years ago) were at least interesting because if nothing else were the site of sex, scandal and death in years past.

That’s all for tonight folks.  I don’t have any energy to go beyond this.  Wish me luck in the move, it is certainly not going to be the happiest/most stress free weekend of my life.

 

It should say "World's Most Boring Museum" somewhere
It should say "World's Most Boring Museum" somewhere

P.S. Thank you K.W. for the vouchers!  I really appreciated them!!!  Even if I was a little hard on the museum 😉

Your call means a lot to us…

Everyone has worked a job before where there were certain procedures that you had to go through.  Every time I get on a plane I can’t help but think “is my ipod really going to make this 747 crash if I play it during takeoff?”  A part of me gets angry at the flight attendant when she tells me to stow my ipod even though I know she is not personally trying to rob me of my music, its just the policy.

When I worked at Disneyland I learned that there was reason behind the madness.  Safety is usually the influencing factor behind random rules at the happiest place on earth: you have to keep arms and legs inside the vehicle because there are certain corners the ride turns that get close enough to a wall or prop that your arm could get hurt…presumably.  The park is just being thorough.

On a flight, I bet you aren’t allowed to have earphones on because if there’s an emergency they want the passengers to be alert, not distracted by blaring music.

When you are on a flight or at an amusement park, these silly rules seem annoying or random.  When you are dealing with a large company over the phone and it affects your life, money and comfort it can incite the fury of God within me. 

If there is one thing I love, it is calling the number I am given and then waiting for 17 minutes for the next available representative.  Then when they pick up they tell me I had the wrong number and transfer me, and I wait another 8 minutes.  When I get the right department and go through all the hoops they demand of me there, they put me on hold for 5 minutes (kindly checking in from time to time to make sure I didn’t hang up, which clearly happens a lot if they’re so cautious of it).  Then when they come back they tell you there is an inherent problem in your account that they will solve by Friday, in the meantime leaving you SOL and powerless to help yourself.

There is an opera called the Console, which is about a woman in Eastern Europe who is trying to get a visa to leave the country and rejoin her husband (who was a rebellious leader forced into exile).  The show takes place almost entirely in the consulate office where she has to come to fill out a form every day just so she can get the next form, and the next.  By the end of the show she is no closer to leaving the country, her husband has been found and executed, and her children and mother have died of starvation.

This is a melodramatic representation of how I feel right now.  I fill out papers and papers, none of them seem all that important and they get me nowhere.  Big companies make me so mad sometimes, and they seem to have no rhyme or reason to their madness. 

Its like some sad, sadistic human being decided one day he wanted to see just how angry and frustrated he could make me.  I call and get referred to another person, who refers me to another, and another.  Why does no one seem to have any answers!?  They just know the name of another person!  I have spent easily 2 hours on the phone today and accomplished NOTHING!

This entry has been brought to you by Time Warner, infuriating yours truly since 2009.

Getting off on the wrong foot Time Warner
Getting off on the wrong foot Time Warner

Anxiety, Stress and Laziness oh my

I have had better days in my life.  I have had worse days in my life.  My mood has been swinging in absurd waves from one end of the spectrum to the other on an hourly basis since about 2 this morning.  

It all started with a visit to my new neighborhood.  I don’t want to say that I’m having second thoughts about the apartment-because I’m not- I’m just freaking out a little bit with having already committed my first year in New York to this new apartment.  Many of the thoughts I had when moving off campus in Boston have come back to mind.  Fears of feeling isolated, of not liking the apartment, of not liking the area.  So there has been a lot of uncertainty plaguing my conscious since then.

Next, last night I watched Slumdog Millionaire.  It is a really good movie, and the performances are pretty fantastic as well.  It was not the movie I should have been watching because it is also a REALLY sad movie, and I have rarely seen anything that played more on my white guilt.  Much of the movie is set in the slums of Mumbai, India-and for whatever reason the emotional reaction I was having to the images in the movie were subconsciously attaching themselves to my previous trip to Queens.

I could not fall asleep for the life of me, so I sat in bed reading until at least 2 in the morning.  I woke up this morning determined to go for a run (which I finally managed) and it confirmed what I was thinking before: I desperately need a gym membership.  I hate running in the city, it is just not calming in any way shape or form.  There are too many people around, and more than that there are too many cars whizzing past.  

Beyond running, I feel overall much more emotionally balanced when I am consistently working out.  Obviously it increases endorphins, but even more importantly I typically channel all of my angst and burn it off.  There’s a NYSC (New York Sports Club) right by the new apartment, which will be nice.  I actually applied there for a job online yesterday too…figured it was a smart thing to do and a good opportunity.

Today I have gotten to spend some time with friends, but I still have been feeling kind of anxious, plus my head started hurting a little around 2, and started pounding by 4 (I have taken Tylenol now).  Around 4:30 I headed back uptown and stopped at the park by my apartment.  

I run through this park whenever I go for a run, and I’ve walked through it several times, but today I decided to sit and people watch and write a little.  The weather was perfect (sunny and warm with a cool breeze) and there were hundreds of people out, and unlike when I’m running I loved being around all these people.

Sitting there for about 45 minutes was enough to get me breathing and relax a little bit, which is exactly what I needed.  My head still hurts a bit but I feel at least kind of relaxed.  I think I might try and make it to a dance class in the next week just to ground myself a little bit and get a good stretch in as well.

One of the reasons I know I’m starting to get anxious is because I’m sitting idle a little too much, aka I need a job!  I’m a little bored without a job or something to do each day and I need to figure that out, and hopefully soon!  I’m not good at not doing anything, especially since I haven’t really “done” anything since I graduated in May.  I’m ready to jump start my life a little bit more.

It’s at points like this that I like to listen (as lame as it might be) to the song Music and the Mirror.  Don’t understand?  Youtube the song and listen to the lyrics…

Apartment Search, Day 1

Today I baptized myself in the waters of the New York Apartment search.  I am pleased to say that after today I am significantly less daunted by the task that lies before me.  I’m not undaunted, just less daunted.

I went to Prospect Heights which is a fair ways into Brooklyn and looked at about 8 apartments.  When I stepped off the subway my first thought about the area was that I was in Harlem.  It looked a lot like everyone’s favorite uptown neighborhood, but I can’t say that I felt unsafe.  But the thing was that it was a very sunny day in the middle of the week.  The apartments were a bit of a walk from the subway-and we were a ways from the city already.  Coming home late at night I’m not sure how safe that would be, even for three guys.

The apartments, unfortunately, were wonderful.  They were way cheaper than we were initially looking for which was a plus, and they were huge.  They were also clean and had fairly new appliances, and though they didn’t have in building laundry they had a laundromat just for residents around the corner. 

The apartment was also right across the street from a hospital which meant the area would be a little bit safer, but also there were a few parking lots in the immediate area which attracts a less than ideal crowd usually-and the area was border line on safety as it was.  Also, the apartment we liked best was ground level, and I just couldn’t justify living on the street level in an area I was so unsure of safety wise.

So long and short, it has been decided to keep searching.  I’m glad that I have broken the ice, I have about 10 apartments set up for viewing tomorrow in Astoria (Queens) to give myself a basis there, and I’m hoping to go out with a relator on thursday to take a look at some Upper East Side apartments.

Now, life can never be all work and no play, so today after searching, working on my resume a bit more, and setting up tomorrow I got to go out to dinner with an old friend from when I lived in California.  I had a really good time getting to catch up, and we went down to the village which was a good change of pace from all the areas I’ve been searching for apartments.  I think I am starting to fall back into feeling comfortable in New York and all it has to offer.

Well that’s all.  PS, Brudder.  I need you to teach me how to post pictures on this thing, because I keep wanting to accent my posts with at least 1 photo!