It is official. I am moving to Crown Heights in August. Ryan and I drove up to NYC on Monday to sign our lease. We will be living in an apartment building on the 6th floor. There is an elevator. We are optimistic about our apartment. We have a big bedroom and living room, bathroom, kitchen and a few closets. There may even be some hallway room for creative bike storage. It feels really nice to have a lease signed. The apartment is affordable and I really liked the neighborhood. It is 5 blocks from Ryan's school. It will probably take me 45 min to an hour to get to NYU. It will be nice for the pets to have Ryan home quickly since I will be having irregular student hours. It looks like all of my classes first semester will start after 10AM and some of them will be until 7 or 8pm. My clinicals are going to be every other week from 3 until 10pm. This will be so different from my schedule now. I normally get up at 6:30 and work until 3:30 and try to do things until 11 or 12 when I go to bed. Going back to a student schedule will be weird but will probably agree with me since I don't really like seeing 6:30am. I went to NYU last week for orientation. I got to hang out with Molly and Brian. We watched the Bacholerette and tweeted our witty commentary. The Bacholer/Bacholerette is a weird cultural phenomenom. Watching it hurt my brain a little bit.
It was good to spend 3 days in NYC I got to ride the subways on my own and check out apartments. Molly and I walked around and drank coffee and made sandwiches. Ryan came up on Wednesday night to pick me up. The last apartment that we saw was the one that we ended up getting. We looked at 2 before that were a decent size but they felt like the NYC nightmare apartment that you see in movies and tv. One of them was in a building near a really congested interesection next to a subway station. The previous tenants had been evicted so the apartment was a wreck with dirt and garbage everywhere. The subway was above ground and went by the back of the apartment. From the window you could see the train tracks and graffiti. There were cops all over the block and the only parking was meter parking. I had an internal freak out at the idea of living there. Then we saw an apartment a few blocks away that was also in a congested shopping district. and it had a crazy layout and was also a mess. It was nice relief to look at the apartment in Crown Heights. It isn't too far from Prospect Park and there is a grocery store across the street. We looked at a few places in Sunset Park that would be really close to Molly and Brian (in one case it was right downstairs) but the Crown Heights apartment definitely had the right price and accomodations for a dog that cannot do a lot of stairs and was bigger than the other one bedrooms that we looked at. Next on the to do list is have a yard sale in Philly and figure out how to organize all of our personal items into a 3 room apartment. We will have a least a week before Ryan starts school to unpack and organize right. I feel up for the challenge. Since I moved in with Ryan in April we never properly set the house up because we new that moving was in the near future and we still had to paint and finish the floors. I have always lived in a chaotic bedroom and am hoping to for once live in one that is organized and attractive. This is also the first time that I will have full reign over my living space. I'll only have one person to compromise with instead of 3.
Philly life continues to be busy. Ryan is in a band called Must Be Nice with my old housemate Amy and another guy named Russ. They started playing shows on Sunday. We went to Scranton to Amy's parents house for a pool party/show. It was awesome. Sunday was perfect swimming weather. There was tons of food and beverages and we got to see Must Be Nice and a pop punk band from Florida called Larf play. A parent's house felt very appropriate for a first show. They played outside so the sound was a little wonky, no montiors or Lollapalooza stage yet! Ryan has been working on this band since we met in October with Russ and it WAS NICE to see them finally play a show. Yesterday they played in West Philly with Larf again and tonight they are going to play in Sea Isle City NJ. Tonight should be so good. In my opinion Good Luck is the best band that is still playing and NJ rules.
A few months ago, we planted a vegetable garden which has since exploded with tomatoes and other veggies and we have also been getting a CSA share all summer. As of late I have made vegan cole slaw with CSA carrots and cabbage. I'm not sure what else to do with cabbage in the summer. We also have been getting a lot of beets in the CSA. I never bought beets before but I am falling love with them. I have been into making mashed beets and potatoes. This has been so delicious. I just boil the beets and potatoes together and just mash them up with almond milk and earth balance. Everything turns pink so it is beautiful and delicious. Last night we made salad with pasta, green beans, greens, apples, tomatoes, carrots, cukes, and peppers. We just steamed the green beans and threw them in. I have never eaten green beans in salad before and it is awesome. I love the CSA because it forces me to cook with things I don't normally buy like beets, cabbage and green beans. We were also getting scallions for awhile and I became a total fan. I loved the scallions in salad.
My last day of work is August 5th, then I'm going to Michigan for a week, then I am moving to Brooklyn. Holy Crap!!!!
