Our Apartment (part 1)

A lot of you have been asking to see pictures of the new apartment. We still don't have a couch, which makes for interesting evenings when we try to lounge, and we're missing a special something for Sam's 5,000 dvds, but I'll go ahead and post some pics of the rooms a few days after we moved in and the ones that are more finished. Let's start the virtual tour, shall we?


ENTRYWAY

When you first walk in you have this lovely mudroom/hallway area. The big yellow thing you see is the Air Bazooka I gave Sam for his bday--it can blow a blast of air at your face from up to 50 feet away! I know! Also this is where we keep our games, bathing suits, coats, hats, and I created some drawers under the shoe shelf for Ellie's stuff and extra utility stuff. The rug is made out of recycled bicycle tires and the chair is straight off the set of that show Cashmere Mafia. Our friend Alison worked on it and they gave away everything after the show was cancelled. So we have quite a few Cashmere Mafia pieces at the moment. :)

BATHROOM

To the right of the Entryway is our lovely Bathroom. My favorite decorative touch is the bathmat shaped like a frying egg! Ah man, who doesn't love that. You can't see very well but all of Sam's music prints that I gave him are in here, as well as a few of his favorite action figures. Let's go take a peak at the kitchen! Come on!


KITCHEN
Some of you know about my dream of having a kitchen like Amelie's (from the movie) and it is really coming together now that I have space to put everything and no bugs taking up residence in all my appliances! The kitchen is about 3 times the size of our old kitchen. That's because we live in Brooklyn. What you don't see here is the set of table and chairs we scored from the previous rentee, in the lower right hand corner, which I will include in the next installment after I hang my plate arrangement on that wall.

Here's also a very scary picture of our kitchen the weekend we moved in:



BEDROOM
So the day after we moved in the Landlord, a younger guy who is Polish, came with some paint samples and told us to pick out a color. He also added, "Either you paint, or we paint for you." Sam and I looked at each other--free Paint job? sweet! So he brings this other Polish guy who speaks no English to help paint and when they are finished, we notice they have also painted all of the molding around the doors and windows. I have never seen that approach before.

You can see our view of the neighboring buildings, and there in the window are some plants and I am trying to grow a pine tree. Oh, and that's the quilt me mum just made me out of all the dresses she has made me growing up--including pieces from the bridesmaid dresses she just made.


That shelf is a real pain to hang. Sam's contribution was the clone troopers placed on the top middle shelves. On the wall to the left of the shelf are my grandmother and sam's grandfather, and on the right, sam's maternal grandmother with her family and my maternal grandfather. You'll also notice the fan, which we keep going at all times. Central a/c, man. Thank your lucky stars for your central a/c. Those were the days...

TERRACE

We have this bangin terrace that's almost like another room. I haven't seen any other balconies like this anywhere in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Usually if there are balconies on a building they are teeny tiny, like only enough room for you to walk out and wave at pedestrians while standing. Anyhoo, it's a nice space.


Here's another view of our street. They are building a schmancy overpriced new building next door (we hopped the roof and snuck a peak--very small bedrooms and small everything for high prices) so the jackhammering and roadwork is impeding our enjoyment of the nabe a bit, but it should be nice when it's finished in a month or so. In the distance on the right corner is a laundromat/cafe (you can also drop your laundry there and they will do it for you), past that is the street we take up a block to the park/dog run, and past that another bodega that boasts a great ice cream selection and mysterious meats.

Stay tuned in a couple of weeks for part 2--Living Room/Office! Bye for now!

City Living 101 (a few things that happen here you don't see anywhere else)

1) A corner store or convenience store, here in the city is called a "Bodega" no matter who owns it or the quality of goods. I have found that most stores I have been
in, even if they look kind of shady, carry a wide variety of organic and vegetarian options. This is true of restaurants as well. It's interesting to me in a city where it seems like it would be more difficult to traffic goods in and out, the concern for organics and vegetarian options is still so high. I guess it has something to do with there not being a ton of regular grocery stores around, and so these "bodegas" help bridge the gap between your run-of-the mill MAPCO and your Kroger or Harris Teeter.

2)People make out in the street here like it's no big deal!
You never see this in the suburbs. But three times since I've arrived (that's more than once a week on average) I've stumbled upon couples unashamedly and unabashedly making out knowing full well people are watching. One girl we saw in Central park was even sitting spread eagle in this guys lap (Sam insisted they were European but I don't know...) And it's not like they were in some shadowy corner and you 'caught' them. I think I've discovered some new breed of couple that enjoys or is so oblivious to the world around them that they continue behaving like they are in the privacy of their own bedroom. I wonder if people with this kind of personality are drawn to the city or if the city makes you that way.

3)Trannies. Fierce Trannies.

4)Forget Craig's List--in our neighborhood you just put something on the curb and put a sign on it that says "free" and it's gone within 24 hours. The first time I witnessed somebody doing this I thought it was crazy! But I've seen it happen on three different occasions now (this actually may not be true in every city neighborhood, so you just gotta use your best judgment). Last night I actually put a bag of stuff on the curb in a gift bag with winnie the pooh on it--I had thought of taking it to goodwill, but then I remembered what I had seen before and gave it a try. Sure enough it was gone this morning. On my way back from walking the dog, I passed a man on the sidewalk carrying the same bag. I found this hilarious.

Just Your Typical Wednesday Morning Police Chase

God I love New York. I'm here for five days and I feel like I'm on an episode of NYPD Blue. So I'm walking to work Wednesday morning, just minding my business, bopping through the Union Square Subway Station on my way to catch the 6 Uptown (see how cool I sound already?). And everyone's pretty much doing the same thing, listening to their iPods, drinking iced lattes and what not and all the sudden I see a blur of motion go past me.

Now mind you this is a pretty normal thing. I think to myself, "That guy REALLY needs to get to his train..." He's bombin'-ass down the stairs towards the platform like it's nobody's business and people aren't really thinking anything of it. Literally like 9 seconds later, a GANG of New Yorks Finest go barrelling past. I'm talking like a half dozen cops in uniform and another easy half dozen in plain-clothes. These guys are yelling "Get out the way!" "NYPD" "EVERYONE MOVE" and that sort of thing. I'm totally waiting for the camera crew to go hustling past. So the cops follow this dude down the stairs and the guy is ahead of them by a bit. I wasn't ready for what happened next.

This crazy son-of-a-bee JUMPS off the platform INTO the subway tunnel and goes haulin' biscuits up the track. Mind you, he's running towards the direction the GIANT subway train will be coming from. Not that the train is coming. The cops are all yelling and talking into radios and they start JUMPING into the tunnel as well. I don't know what happened to the guy, don't know what he did, don't know if he got away. The trains were running slow, a bunch of New Yorkers were real pissed off about it, yet everyone basically seemed to go about their business. This was perhaps the craziest thing I've seen in quite some time.

To be fair, I recounted this story to some friends of mine who've been up here about a year now and they all admitted they hadn't seen ANYTHING close to that nuts since they've been up here. So I feel special and that regard. Like I really got to witness something crazy and delightful.

So then New York, I know we don't know eachother that well yet, but I think I'm already starting to fall in love with you. You crazy broad...

Start Spreading the News...

Well, we made it. We're here in New York and almost out of boxes. The journey to our new Brooklyn home took a week from start to finish, including a wonderful stay with Sam's family in Lexington. Here are a few scenes from our 16 hour road trip North:

TENNESSEE

















In Nash right before we pulled out of the parking lot at our old apartment.

KENTUCKY

We nestled Ellie's dog bed in between our seats. When we first started out, she was a little uneasy about the whole thing and kept resting one paw on Sam's leg for reassurance.

WEST VIRGINIA

What's the deal with West Virginia? All I really know about this state is that scary movie Deliverance takes place there and the Dancing Outlaw is from there. And a lot of people we saw were missing teeth. I also learned there are a lot of bridges. Like this one.


We made a wrong turn and wound up driving past the capitol. It seemed so out of place, this guilded building on a hill in a state renowned for it's poverty. Right after this we stopped and bought our first full tank of gas, for $140 people! This man getting gas next to us watched us fill up and was like, "How much was it?" He felt bad for us. On a related note, see Who Killed the Electric Car and you will be even more outraged about the gas crisis.

I really wanted to stop for dinner at Biscuit World, but when I mentioned it to Sam he said, "it's not any good," without batting an eyelash. Apparently Biscuit World is a West Virginia chain and he'd stopped at one on a ski trip once. He said the biscuits were terrible.

MARYLAND
It was dark. I was hoping to see a crab cake. I didn't see that or much of anything. Maybe next time.

PENNSYLVANIA

We were trying to get to New Jersey but we hit Hershey, PA around 2AM and delirium had set it. I was excited about Hershey though. I like chocolate. I was hoping to see a giant chocolate bar with maybe a man inside waving to us as we pulled in at the Comfort Inn but we didn't see any chocolate whatsoever. We did sneak Ellie into our room and all night she was barking at the slightest noise and we were shushing her. We didn't sleep so well. The next morning as we were gassing up I saw a frightful number of dead bugs on the front of the Uhaul.



NEW JERSEY
The home of Springsteen. By the time we got to Jersey we were getting really antsy. Sam had scheduled our movers to meet us at our place around 12:30. He called around 11:00 and asked if we could push it back to 1:30. They said no. So, we were basically racing to get there, cause you have to pay them whether you show up with the stuff on time or not. My heart leapt with excitement when I saw the first sign for the city!

New Jersey also has a lot of tolls cause they're cheap bleep bleeps. We paid one and right before we got up to the Holland Tunnel we rounded a bend and there was the Manhattan skyline! I almost cried with joy! I took another pic 'cause I thought our journey was almost over:

But then we got up to the Holland Tunnel toll booth and the guy was like "You're not taking that UHaul through there?" And we were like "Yeah?" And he was like, "Nope. No trucks in the tunnel." So then, I almost cried from desperation when we had to turn around, go back through Jersey, and drive through several more tolls. Around the sixth or seventh one (I lost track) we ran out of cash and they don't take cards and we basically begged the lady to let us through. She said something about charging the fee to UHaul and we were like, "do what you gotta do," and she let us pass.

NEW YORK
We ended up getting off the Insterstate way too soon 'cause we saw a sign for another tunnel and thought be might get stuck. Our mapquest directions had, of course, gone out the window when the mean man made us turn around, so with much difficulty we navigated the outlying neighborhoods, past the hasidic jews, and to our new home in Williamsburg. There we met the movers, who had been waiting on us for two hours.

Postscript: The movers felt bad about screwing us over so we actually managed to unload everything off the truck in an hour (that was all the time we had left), which was quite a feat considering it took close to seven to get it loaded. The movers were from Georgia (the country, not the state) and if they caught me carrying any box over 5 pounds they'd be all, "don't carry that heavy thing, here carry this pillow." So if you're looking to go with international movers I recommend the Georgians.