The day we signed the contract, we let the ink dry and then raced to the new place to check it out. Ah. Just as fabulous as we’d remembered from our two previous visits. Newish, comfortable furniture. Nice open rooms. A great view off one side of the house. And best of all, a seven-minute walk to school.
While one guy fixed various things around the apartment, I performed the most important of all our moving-in tasks: I made up my new bed.
It is a glorious thing. A double-bed, it is NOT two twins pushed together with a lumpy blanket shoved in between, so it can only be an improvement over my last sleeping spot. It has a rather impressive-looking dark wood frame, and, the best part, it comes with box springs so high that even I, massively tall, jolly green giant of the Arab world, must hop a little bit to get into it. Glorious. Please excuse the horribly grainy photos taken with my laptop computer. My good ones are not functioning properly at the moment, which leads me to think they might not be my good ones.
The rest of my room is not quite as nice, though I would have been able to put up with a sinkhole to have that bed. The furniture matches the frame, but it is showing a bit of wear in places. My desk drawer won’t open or close without quite an impressive fight, and my wardrobe, while straighter than my last one, doesn’t hold quite as much. I also do not yet have a mirror. I am working on remedying that situation. But I have two windows, one that has a pretty decent view of the city. My room also came with a cork board, to which I have already affixed pictures of many of my favorite people, and I’m working on getting the rest of you favorite people up there.
We have one and a half bathrooms, but I’m iffy about the half. That toilet tends to run, so we keep it turned off. But it’s nice to have in emergencies, such as when one of us is occupying our favorite bathroom. The bathroom with a shower is nice and spacious. It also has a whole tiny shelf more storage space than our old one. The shower has almost as much water pressure than the old place, and the toilet seat is firmly attached to the toilet, unlike in our old place.
The other bathroom is functional, but it is stuffed with cleaning supplies and a washing machine, so sitting down and taking your time in there is a mite uncomfortable.
We have two living-roomish places: a TV room with one couch and a sitting room, with one couch and some lounge chairs. The TV and cable work. I’m still trying to get our DVD player to function. I’m hoping a good cleaning will allow it to read discs again, apparently an important part of DVD functionality. The sitting room + dining room + bookshelves room allows me to display my random selection of books to our guests and gives them somewhere to sit. Plus, it looks classy.
The kitchen is also big and houses probably the least impressive of the furniture. Instead of a real stove + oven combo, we have a confectionery oven and a two-burner stove top. This makes cooking just a smidge more challenging, but I live off of falafel now anyway.
The second most annoying thing in our apartment was the lighting. All fluores- cent. Ouch. So we chipped in and bought some nice lamps to place strategically around the house to create a warm glow instead of the seizure-inducing strobe effect of the fluorescents. Nice.
The trip down the staircase of this new place is much cleaner and less smoky (remember the fire?) than our last one. We live right above the caretaker of the complex, an elderly Muslim woman, so we’ll have to keep the parties to a minimum. And at the foot of the staircase is a brief wander through a hallway adorned with plant life. Ah, greenery! And then we find our super secure front door, which comes equipped with two locks than you can’t get open even if you live here, so I know it’s keeping the bad guys out.
Did I mention it’s a seven-minute walk to work? Hello, Heaven. I have found you on Earth.
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