Well we are moved in, though certainly not unpacked. The move so far has been fairly rough. In previous years, we had done it slowly over the course of a couple of weeks. This time we needed to do it over the course of a couple of days. Sunday we spent the day loading up a moving truck, yesterday we spent the day unloading the moving truck and cleaning the old apartment. Suffice it to say both my roommate and I are extremely weary.
There has been some pleasant surprises to be had thus far…
First, our storage space. We knew we had an extra unadvertised storage space going in (the floor plan they have on their brochure doesn’t include this closet) but I’ve already started to put the huge bathroom closet to good use. I am going to be moving my daughter’s bigger toys, bath toys, and clothing into that closet, thus freeing up my room of some of the clutter. In addition to this though, we found out that our out-of-apartment storage space is on the same floor as us, and more than twice the size we had previously thought! One of the guys who showed us the apartment showed us a small closet-like storage space down 2 levels in the underground parking area and that is where we thought we’d be. This was a very happy surprise for us and gave us great relief as we were worried about how to store everything and now it won’t be as bad. Plus it is nice to be able to have that storage easily accessible.
Second was the paint. We had asked to paint a couple of walls a special color in order to liven up our lives a little bit while we lived here. We were fairly confident in our choices of colors, but who knows what it will really look like until it is on. We were happy to note that the colors looked REALLY good! Not only that but the painters put them on the correct walls that we wanted them on, and they did a really good job at it as well! In addition to this, it looked like we got just the right amount of paint because there really wasn’t a whole lot left. This made me feel good because the paint was rather expensive ($80 for 3 walls!) and I was worried that we had bought more than we needed.
Third was parking. We knew that we got an underground parking spot, but the spot that we have is right next to the door that is near the elevator meaning that we have very short travel times between the car and our apartment (especially considering our apartment is right by the elevator as well). This did come with something more unpleasant in that there really doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of parking in the neighborhood for second cars, and whoever is not going to be parking on the street may get screwed quite often.
Forth, wifi!!!! Ok so this may not be great, but the clubhouse has free wifi. It is likely slow, but it is good enough. More importantly is that this wifi actually reaches up to our apartment two stories above the clubhouse! Which means that even though we have no internet access I am able to write this post from the comfort of my bed. This is really making me consider canceling my cable internet account as they have told me that it is possible that we get super-fast internet (35mbps) by the end of September or October (btw this speed would be $10 cheaper a month than the 5mbps cable Internet I could buy!!!! And a guaranteed speed at that). I am not planning on getting back into any MMOs for the next few months at least so this may be a viable option for me.
And finally, the views. We knew we had a corner apartment and what not. But as it turns out I really love the views of our apartment. I have my bed situated in the corner of my room that lines up to give me a view of a hill street that I absolutely adore and the country hillsides behind it (we are on top of the hill). This is mirrored by the corner of the apartment that has our living room going straight onto this same hill. And my roommates bedroom, while I don’t think as good, has a small but nice field outside of it as well as beautiful sunsets and it is west-facing which she really likes to watch storms come in. The hilltop location is really nice for the views! (Though hard on biking and walking most likely.)
I’ll probably make another post at some point with downsides of the apartment, but right now it seems pretty darn good. I really love this place I am currently living in and hope to be able to maintain the somewhat higher rent that I am paying for it well into the future.