Moving In

So it's been awhile for me as well (thought not nearly as long as for dad or Kelsey). I kept thinking I would post a blog with pictures of my new apartment, but two weeks after moving in it still isn't in a state to be photographed. Moving is always a process, especially when you decide to do it gradually instead of all at once, like I did this time. In some ways it was good - I didn't have boxes and boxes piled up around me. Instead I could just unpack a little, then go down to my old apartment for another load. I also painted my room and bathroom. Everyone who has seen my room has commented that they really like the paint job so either they're just being nice because it's really a hideous color, or I actually did a very good job of picking it out (I think I'll go for the latter). It's a very sunny shade of yellow, which will be nice in the wintertime. I will post pictures, maybe on the family blog, sometime next week when I get my bed from Kelsey and am able to complete the moving in process.

Moving is always interesting because there are always advantages and disadvantages to the change in location. I'm still in the same town this time, so the changes aren't nearly as big as last time, but some of them are still significant. I'll hit the bad first, and then go for the good (and there is a lot more of that, which is why I moved in the first place).

First the downside. One is location (and there's an upside to location as well, which I'll get to). I'm up by North Campus now, and even set back a little from there. This means I am no longer anywhere near within walking distance. I actually quite enjoyed my mile hike to campus, once I got used to it, and I'll miss it. Instead I'll be taking the bus, and Ann Arbor has good public transportation, but other than a few miserable, windy, icy cold weeks in the dead of winter, a walk is much more pleasant than a bus ride. Also, I can't walk to the downtown area, to the local Borders or the main branch of the district library (we have a puny little branch about a mile away from our new location that's probably smaller than our apartment - fortunately they're building a new, nicer, slightly bigger northeast branch, to open sometime next year).

I also miss the neighborhood itself. My old apartment was located in the Old West Side, with pretty two-story midwestern houses and porches and tree-lined streets. My new neighborhood is on the edge of Ann Arbor, bordering open fields and newer neighborhoods and a couple housing developments and apartment complexes. It's nice and quiet and I like it a lot, but it just doesn't have the same character. It also doesn't have the same access to good running routes. At the end of two years, I had multiple options for any distance run I wanted to do. I LOVED my running routes, and I miss them a lot (it doesn't help that I'm still not 100% with my running after my foot injury). I know that I will discover new running routes up here, but I know Ann Arbor on foot very well now, and I just don't think my new location has the same potential.

One of the most annoying problems is the cell phone problem. The first day here I got no reception in my apartment, and since then I usually get about one bar. Most of the time I can hang on to my reception long enough for a decent conversation, but I've had a few that have gotten cut off (including one with tech support after I had waited on hold for 20 minutes). This is going to be a problem, especially in the winter when I can't just step outside to complete my call.

But the good outweighs the bad. I really do love my new apartment. It feels huge! In my old apartment I had much less room, and a very small closet, which meant that everything I owned except for some clothes was out in my room. It felt like living in my closet, and I had about 4 square feet of walking space - which got reduced to none when I set up my clothes rack to dry clothes after doing laundry. My new room is enormous in comparison, and it has a HUGE walk-in closet so that I can store most everything away out of sight. This leaves room in my bedroom for two and a half bookshelves, my desk, bed, nightstand, and (the best part) a little reading corner. I have a cute little armchair from ikea, with a footrest and a lamp and a lap pillow, and it's a great place to curl up with a book or my scriptures or my computer.

The other nice thing is internet. It took longer than I expected - I called Comcast a week and a half before moving in just to make sure that I got it set up on the very day I got the new apartment, but when the Comcast guy showed up, he spent a lot of time fiddling around looking baffled, and finally concluded that we were not wired correctly. This meant that they had to get people out to wire the house, and then we had to get the Comcast guy back, and it took a week and a half to do what I thought would take an hour, maybe. But at long last we do have internet, and it's all ours (no more stealing internet from neighbors and worrying that they'll put a password on their account), and it's secure and fast (enough) and a strong signal.

And there are some good things about the location too. We are within walking distance of a Kroger (my grocery store of choice), and a running store (!). The neighborhood is set back, and seems to have a lot of great places for Sunday morning walks once we switch back to the afternoon church schedule.

Other pluses - we have a swimming pool. We have a workout room (not the greatest, but it has two treadmills so it will let me go running in the winter without having to drive to campus). We have a covered parking spot. The trash is right by the parking lot, instead of around the back of the apartment building and up a long flight of stairs (I hated that in my old place). We can hardly hear our neighbors at all. I have my very own bathroom. We have air conditioning. We have a fireplace. We have a comfortable couch (hooray!).

And I like my new roommate a lot. She's a collaborative piano master's student, which means we have two pianos, and which means there is someone else in the apartment playing the piano (in fact, she's playing Christmas music right now even as I write - I love it!). She's also very insistent that she loves when other people play the piano and hates it when they refrain because they think she's so much better at it than they are, so I won't feel self-conscious about my playing. We get along well, and I'm really glad that this worked out.

Anyway, I've gone on enough about my new place. I'll leave off for now, and post pictures sometime next week for you to actually see.