This weekend I will be running a 5K in the Komen Race for the Cure. One of my friends in the department (a fellow grad student) has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Consequently, she has organized a team (Rebecca’s Lucky Rock Stars) to participate in the Komen Race for the Cure. She’ll be running as well before her mastectomy the following day.
If you’d like to sponsor me, please click here.
So a week ago Sunday, Ben and I went to check out another apartment. We had seen a sign out front on the lawn on our way back from looking at apartment #2 and actually called the number on the sign as we sat out front. We arranged a meeting for Sunday and so roused ourself the next morning (we had stayed up late playing Super Mario Kart with some friends) and headed back over to Prospect Park.
The building is a four-plex, like our current abode; not super-sexy from the outside, but in a really good location. About half-way in between the Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses, the location means a fairly easy bike ride to both (although Prospect Park does seem to be uphill from much of the surrounding area…) and a reasonable five- to ten-minute walk to both the 16 bus (for Ben) and the 87 bus (for me). And really, we could walk the whole way if we wanted; it’s less than three miles for both of us.
Rick, the landlord, showed us in and we had a look around. The apartment is slightly bigger than our current place, with a big ol’ dining room (which we haven’t got now) and lots of windows. There are two bedrooms, both about 100 square feet, which is smaller than our current one, but big enough to have both a bedroom and a study/guest room. The kitchen is fine overall; we always need more than what standard kitchens offer for storage and counter space, but this one is comparable to what we have now. Excitingly, the stove is (yay!) gas-powered. Soon, we will end our four-plus years of cooking on electric! The basement has plenty of storage and also has laundry, so we don’t need to truck to a laundromat or anything. The yard is small, and I don’t think there’s probably room (or light) enough for a garden; we’ll have to figure out what to do with our compost. The ceilings are quite high, so the rooms feel extra roomy, and the only thing we were really concerned about was the height of the shower head, which Rick said he’d raise for us (Ben specifically) if we ended up in the apartment. We left, telling Rick we’d get back to him after we discussed it.
Later that day we called back and on Tuesday we signed the lease. Rick said that after we saw the apartment, he showed it twice more and both couples called back on Monday wanting it. Whew! Timing is everything. Our lease starts June 1, so now just the whole rigmarole of setting up utilities and canceling utilities, forwarding mail, packing, moving, unpacking, and figuring out just how to set everything up again so life works smoothly in our new space.
Yep, so Ben and I are apartment hunting. Since I’m going to be spending my days in St. Paul and our current place has a long bus ride and a long bike ride to there, we’re looking for something that works for both of us. And while we’re at it, we’d like another bedroom, so we can more easily have guests — and so one of us can, for example, watch a movie in one room, while the other one works in another.
Looking at the landscape, though, things are a bit complicated. (Go check it out.)
Okay, the red area represent the two campuses: Ben’s on the left (west) red shape. I’m on the right one. The blue areas are neighborhoods we’re checking out. And the gray ones are areas in which we can’t (industrial area, commercial area, State Fairgrounds) or won’t (too many undergraduates) live. Since we want to be convenient to both campuses, we’re very interested in good bike routes (green and purple) and bus routes (red and purple). The yellow house on the bottom left is where we currently live.
Today we checked — and rejected — out two places (red markers). The far right one is nicely situated near Como Park, which is a really nice area of St. Paul. But it’s a bit far for Ben, plus is right on the railroad tracks (”yeah, they rattle the house in summer when the windows are open,” said the landlady), and you have to go outside to do laundry in the basement. The other place we checked out is in a neighborhood called Prospect Park — a cute residential island smooshed among highways and railroad tracks. But sadly the apartment itself was tiny; it was two bedrooms, but smaller than the one-bedroom place we have now. There was nowhere to eat (no dining room or eat-in kitchen), the two bedrooms were like closets, and there was no on-site laundry at all. Sigh…
Tomorrow we’re checking out another Prospect Park place.