In case you really like apartments...

Hello, and welcome to our apartment. I know if you have Facebook you've already seen this and it's almost like you've been staying with us, sleeping on our couch, drinking our milk out of the carton, and leaving our towels on the floor for days already.

Well, not everyone has Facebook, you selfish beast so step aside. Give someone else a turn and maybe do your dishes every once in a while.




Voila, the kitchen. The one and only. Right now it smells like salsa because Trader Joe's has these salsa kits (three roma tomatoes, a jalapeno, a shallot, two cloves of garlic and a lime) that are simple deadly.

It's generally a great kitchen except that it has no windows, which means two things: no sunlight, so I have to keep my basil plant in the living room; and no breeze so it will smell like salsa until I cook something even more pungent and the two smells mix together to create one unconquerable ultra smell and Tim and I are forced to sleep on the curb.










This is the more appealing side of the kitchen. Note that we have more storage space than anyone could ever need in a kitchen, which is good because we had no where to store our extra blankets. Guess which cabinet they're in and win a prize!









This side is less fun. Note, not a single dirty dish. My mom would appreciate the fact that the sink is actually at an appropriate height and wasn't built under the assumption that magical trolls would be maintaining the household, like our old house in Crawford was. Also, we have a functioning dishwasher.







This side of the kitchen does have one cool thing, which is a window into the living room. Here's a glimpse.












Look! Tim!











This is our hallway. Stay away from the closet doors if you don't want to be buried under an avalanche of... well... I'm not exactly sure anymore. I just know, by the grace of God, it all fits.

Also, the front door (with the RISD poster from my high school art room) is magnetic, which is highly dangerous. In this picture, the living room is to your immediate left, the kitchen is the second left, and the bathroom is on the right, which is where we're going next.











TA-DA. I like to stand in the shower and take pictures of the bathroom. Again, it's a pretty typical apartment bathroom.























It has a fair/good bathtub, with is grand/magnificent after having no bathtub at all. (My lobster is much happier) And...













Greatest of all, there's a combo washer dryer IN THE APARTMENT. You really can't beat that.



















So, next is the living room, which also doubles as my office. Tim's "office" is set up in the bedroom because, in theory, he will be studying while I will be downloading music, looking at college humor and writing on my blog--so I get the TV and stereo in my office and he gets the sound-blocking effect of all of our clothes.








The view from my desk...

















This can also be seen from my desk. Yes, we're that lazy. We've come to grips with it.




















That's Tim showcasing our $35 table (thanks Mikey) in what we like to call the "breakfast nook." Actually, I think I'm the only one who thinks of it as that but it is a nook, and one could eat breakfast there if one was thusly inclined.









And... a closeup of the nook, which has taken on the attitude of a jungle.















The only thing left is the bedroom, which actually doesn't have that much stuff in it. It does hold some interest though for those who were familiar with my tank of a bed and who wondered how I could possible turn it in to a queen size. Well, there it is. Tim look a little like he's hiding something naughty though. Like the drawers are full of stolen cookies. Which, I suppose, is for us to know and you to find out.





This is us, as you know, and our mirrored closet doors.















And this is the view of the highway that runs directly underneath our building, which I think is fairly cool, especially since I can't really hear it at all.

If our apartment was directly on the other side of the building, you could see the U.S. Capital building through this window.














And last, this is the worst grocery cart that ever was, in case you wondered. After repeatedly kicking it, I finally got it to collapse. On my foot. And yet, there it sits. Still.

I hope you'll come an visit us. Tim is at orientation right now and I'm working on getting the Best Job in the World. Tonight we're going to Mae's for Red Beans and Rice and LSU football. So life hasn't completely changed.

If you actually sat and read all that, I appreciate ya.

When lobsters play practical jokes...

Ok, that's just cool. Click on the lobster to read about its awesomeness.

Baby you can drive my cart...

So, Tim and I had our first grocery-trip-in-the-city experience yesterday. Normally, I wouldn't consider buying groceries anything worth blogging about, but honestly, buying groceries was on my top-five all time list of concerns about living in the city (along with: missing my family and friends, the fact that I don't like big cities, getting a job and getting into graduate school, and Tim finding a smarter girlfriend at GW).

We didn't bring the car to DC because it's simply outrageous how much parking costs and how difficult it is to get around. I'm the kind of person who likes to make GIGANTIC grocery trips. I absolutely LOVE grocery shopping. Grocery stores among of my favorite places on earth, besides the woods, any body of water, bookstores and my bed. I still grocery shop like I live in the sticks, where you make one trip "To Town" every few weeks and get everything you need, really load up.

You can imagine that the idea of stopping by the store every day or every few days really rains on my parade: going to the grocery store should be a grand event, not a daily chore.

So Tim and I have been trying to decide how to negotiate the grocery store trip. Do we get a Zipcar membership, which feels a little like chickening out? Do we give in and become one-bag-a-day shoppers? Do we order all our non-perishables on-line? Yesterday we settled on buying a grocery buggy... a little cart with wheels and a handle, which you can cart your stuff home in on the Metro and then fold up and store at home. (Mind you, the folding up bit is very important in a 1BR apartment that is already packed, I mean PACKED to the gills.)

We try out our first grocery store, a Safeway out in the Suburbs, two metro stops away from us. We walk through a tunnel absolutely inundated with urine, past a man who appears to be either sleeping or dead on the side of the road, up a 30% grade ramp to the parking lot of said grocery store. There, we get a cart which is not $12 but $28 (this we don't find out until it's been assembled for us). We pack it full of groceries and head back to the metro stop. Before we even get out of the store we realize our mistake. The wheels face rigidly forward, so the cart doesn't turn. The handle is too short by inches, so we both have to hunch over uncomfortably to control the thing. It's so low to the ground that you kick it as you walk. And perhaps worst, the front wheels are so small and narrow that they get stuck in any and all cracks, causing the rubber outer wheel to pop off as you ram the cart handle into your groin.

Miraculously, our case of beer made it home without a disaster. Our vegetables are somehow unbruised.

Essentially, there is little that could have been worse about the design of the thing. I'm nearly convinced that it was designed by the same folks who built the levees, or all those crumbling bridges and tunnels. So we are one option down, until we find a better buggy and a less terrifying grocery store.

I don't know how long it will take us to get accustomed to this place, this unfamiliar way of life. But I feel quite certain that a lot of trial-and-error will be involved. I feel like a bit of a weenie for admitting that having to hoof it everywhere for the simplest errand makes me tired just thinking about it, but we shall see. We shall see.

how high are a hundred boxes?

I have been a very negligent blogger, as you can see. I haven't forgotten though. There's more than enough news to fill at least five independent entries. The problem is that I desperately want to get my apartment unpacked and take pictures before I tell you all about it.

There's a trip home to Colorado, a terrible sunburn, a two day drive to the Capital City and a whole mess else to tell you about. I'm sorry I've been a bum, but I'll get there. I promise.