A Node About Apartments
I had an apartment for a day or two. I was waiting for the owner to sign the lease I'd signed and to drop off the keys, when I found out that the building apparently was a co-op, and the building's board had just put a moratorium on new tenants; I think the owner was trying to sneak me in just before it took effect, which would surely have endeared me to some of my new neighbors.
So I'm back apartment-hunting; a friend gave me a lead, about five weeks ago, on some places near Prospect Park, but, at the time, I was focused on finding a place on the Lower East Side, close to work. There appears to still be vacancies, so I'll try to get in touch with the landlord while I'm here at work.
I went straight home (my Aunt's house in the Bronx) after work on Thursday, had a bowl of cereal, and laid down to take a nap, figuring to wake up after a couple of hours, make a proper meal, then attempt to fix some code I'd brought from the office. Eleven hours later, I awaken, and have to scramble to get back to work on time. A sign of how little sleep I can get during the rest of the week. An apartment will both give me a much-shorter commute, and restore all the free time lost in apartment-hunting.
The last apartment I saw, near Bedford-Stuyvesant, was, in spite of the bad-rep neighborhood, the best I'd seen so far -- essentially two large studio apartments, joined and renovated, separated by a new kitchen. A huge (to me) space, and it gave me the ability to have separate living and home-office quarters, with optional separate entrances (a plus when it comes time for that IRS audit). The kitchen reminded me of my childhood apartment in Riverdale, where you could scoot from the bedrooms in one corner of the place, through the long passageway of the kitchen, and emerge on the outskirts of the livingroom. Big Wheel fun, for sure.
We've been coming into work on Saturdays of late, having missed a few deadlines on this project (in fact, I was hired about two weeks after we'd missed one in September, I hear); I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I'd come in, though this week, we weren't explicitly asked to come in -- I'd taken it as a given until the end of the year (another deadline, and an important one) that I'd have to spend a few hours each Saturday fixting boogs, at the very least.
It's noon, and I'm the only one here; it's actually quite nice to have an entire floor to yourself -- you can ride your Big Wheel past the cubicles, around the dining area, over the plush carpeting of the VPs. I often come in early on weekdays, when the atmosphere contains much more peace and quiet than in the rest of the day; I leave the Big Wheel at home, though.
If no one else shows up, I can always go do a little extra apartment-hunting...