Nearing a month
I’m sitting here watching Corinne Bailey Rae performing on the Grammy’s and it’s a pretty good performance. If you’ve never heard of her, you should give her stuff a few minutes. Same goes for John Legend. That guy is quite a talent too.
Anyway, I’m closing in on four weeks here and things have been going relatively well. So far there haven’t been too many surprises, but it’s still early and there’s plenty of time for shit to go awry.
What’s new in my world? Hmm. Let me re-cap the last few weeks by saying ‘Not much!’. I managed to get my SSN assigned to me and before it was 30 min old in my possession, I went upstairs to HR to give them my number so I could start getting paid. I don’t think I made it in time for the upcoming pay period, but I’ll probably start getting a pay cheque a the end of the month. I guess I should be glad that this month is a short month. I also found out that I had successfully secured a permanent apartment that same day. Congratulations to me! It actually works out perfectly because the day I need to move out of this temp housing place is the day I get to move into the new place. I’ve already arranged with the movers to move my stuff from storage into my new home. Everything’s going down on March 16th. I hope to have internet and cable set up that same day. That would be ideal cause I’m taking a day off and the more I get done that day, the better. Who knows, maybe I’ll buy a new flat screen and have it shipped that day too. :) Probably 
So where am I moving to? I’m moving outta DC and into Maryland. It’s a whole different State that surrounds the North and East side of DC. The town is called Bethesda (pronounced Buh-Thez-Dah) and it resides in Montgomery County. Julia Louis-Dreyfus was raised in Bethesda and Maury Povich apparently lives there with Connie Chung. Maybe I’ll see them at the grocery store one day. So why did I choose to live there? There were a few reasons:
- it’s a nice, quiet place with a relatively low crime rate; everyone there is supposed to be smart with 80% of them having some kinda post high-school degree, the highest rate in America (kinda impressive eh?)
- convenient; the town has everything that I need and it’s got a uber convenient trolley bus that goes through the town every 8 minutes. It’s awesome cause it goes past Safeway, Giant (another grocery store), the mall, and all the restaurants. It even goes past my future apartment and right to the metro train. This trolley was actually the thing that really won me over. I’ll explain more later.
- big apartment; the apartment is 850 sq ft and it has a lot of closet space which is a huge win and something I was taking for granted until I went to IKEA and saw how expensive wardrobe pieces were. The whole place has hardwood floors and a lot of light and windows. It’s on the fourth floor of a four story high brick building. It’s got a lot of potential and character, which really my way of saying that it’s old, and that the bathroom needs some work. The kitchen is sufficient. It doesn’t have a dishwasher and I guess I can live with out that. Laundry is on the first floor and that’s not a big deal. I’m kinda used to it already as my temp housing place doesn’t have in-unit laundry either. When I went to look at the place, it was still occupied by people, and the Management company that maintains the apartment told me that I wouldn’t be getting it in ‘that’ condition and they assured me that it would all get cleaned up, painted, waxed, scrubbed down, and I might possibly even receive an upgrade on the oven/stove. I hope to get into the place again before they clean it up cause I wanna take pictures and show you before and after pics. Plus that oven is a freaking antique. I’ve never seen something like that ever. It’s probably as old as the building (50 years old maybe?). Cross your fingers for me.
- the price was right; I was looking for suitable places for a long time and the prices for the places that I wanted were astronomical. Blackboard simply doesn’t pay me enough to afford a nice place closer to work. So I opted for an older joint. The monthly rent also includes all of the utilities which is great because that means I get even more value for what I’m paying. Now I only need to pay for cable TV, internet, and telephone.
- *sidetracked here* WOW! Mary J Blige’s performace is amazing!
- timing; the availability of the place fit in perfectly with the expiration of the corporate housing place. The new apartment allows me to maximize my corporate housing to the last day. I don’t think it gets more perfect than that, albeit, I only have a one day window to move. But I shouldn’t have too much to transfer over, so it shouldn’t really be a problem.
I think I covered most of the reasons. It’s just a seemingly perfect place that gives me almost everything that I want. Since it is an older place, I may even paint the walls just to give it a little more pizazz. We’ll see. I might be too lazy or too cheap to do it.
What’s life in DC like you might ask? Well, there’s one thing that I noticed that happens a hell of a lot here. There are a tonne of emergency vehicles that goes through downtown. During work, I hear at least 5 fire trucks that go through downtown within a day. I’m not kidding. In fact, I just witnessed a brigade of cop cars and bikes wailing past my apartment. I think the president or someone important must have been in one of the unmarked cars because there were at least 30 vehicles that went by, all with their lights and sirens on. Quite a sight actually. Disruptive, but cool too!
I took it easy this weekend (like I take it every weekend now that I think about it). I actually made it out to Safeway yesterday cause I needed to replenish my fridge. It had been over a week since I had boughten any food. So somehow I managed to spend over 2 hours at Safeway and when I left, my bill was $70 and I had 8 heavy bags to carry home. Things like, milk, eggs, juice, cans of soup, 6 lbs of chicken, etc.. Anyway, I don’t know if I ever expressed this before, but without a car, going to Safeway sucks because it’s not that convenient from here and it’s cold out and it’s a chore to haul shit back home. Anyway, 8 bags during a 15 minute walk is a lot of work and my fingers were about to fall off from the weight and cold weather. To put it lightly, it fucking sucked monkey balls!! I was tired and I actually stopped 3 blocks away from the apartment cause I needed to give my fingers a rest. My fingers were sweating and aching, and I was sweating up a storm too. My forearms were dying and I couldn’t type properly for 20 minutes when I got back. Today, my shoulders are killing me. It feels like I was in a 3 hour boxing match. Ugh! So, this is another reason why the place in Bethesda was so attractive. The trolley stops right in front of the local Safeway. Score. I’ll never have to experience the pain and agony of carrying too much at once now. Plus, since it’s so much more convenient, I’ll be more inclined to make multiple trips to the store rather than leave it all for one trip every 10 days. Smart thinking eh? Well, smart in a stupid way cause I know all of you are thinking that I just need to buy less or make more trips. It’s cold here though; it was -7 last week and -15 with the wind.
Alright, that does it for me today. I’ll save some of my thoughts and experiences for another time. Take care everyone!
Anthony
