WHERE I'M LIVING

Oy. Finding housing was the most stressful part of this entire experience. I know that claim is a bit premature since I'm writing this post from Crystal Lake and have yet to even leave for Texas, meaning the 'entire experience' won't be over for three more months. But, everything finally fell into place and now, when I finally get off my ass and leave Crystal Lake, I will have a place to go to.

For those of you who don't know yet--which is probably nobody except relatives since I talked about it quite frequently at Northwestern--I'll be living in Austin with Matt Presser who, I'm sure, appreciates very much having his name plastered all over blogspot. He'll be working at The Austin American-Statesman, headquarted only 0.6 miles from the Omni, the half-hotel, half-office building that houses Texas Monthly. I'm pretty excited about it. I've known him for three years now and even though we both lived in Willard last year and took Magazine Writing together this past quarter, I rarely see him. I doubt things will change all that much even while we're technically living together in Austin. He will, no doubt, put just as much time into the Statesman as he does the Daily Northwestern which happens to be every waking hour.

Anyway, we spent several weeks hunting on and following up every potential lead we got from Craigslist, facebook and other apartment sites. We also e-mailed our immediate supervisors at our respective publications and asked for suggestions, talked to Medill students that have already been to Austin for their Journalism Residency, etc. I kept finding apartments that Boca Raton Matt was afraid to live in. Really, who cares if an apartment building is known for having woman get makeshift abortions in the parking lot? It could still be safe and comfortable. Homey, even.

Finally something panned out. We were set on renting an apartment 13 miles north of our jobs in a resort community called Canyon Springs. We met to fill out the applications for leases and sent in a deposit check. After about 20 e-mails and several phone calls with the staff at Canyon Springs, I had to put a stop payment on the deposit check and let them know that we had, at the last minute, decided to go with something else. Thankfully, they were pretty nice about it. On Friday of finals week, I got a call from a lady in Austin I had contacted over a week prior about a corporate suite. This is the place we're living in; a much better situation for us. It's a short-term, three-month lease in a furnished, all utilities, cable and internet included apartment near the trendy SoCo neighborhood of Austin, 2.6 miles south of my office. Can't beat it.

The pictures I'm including are just a couple of preliminary shots that I got from our landlady. Apparently the living room has brand new furniture now but everything else should be similar when we move in. I'll be taking some more, better pictures when we get settled. See that TV? That means I'm busting out the Nintendo 64 that has been collecting dust at the top of my sister's closet. Sure, I'll be putting in a lot of hours at the office and spending a lot of time exploring Austin and road-tripping with Matt to Mexico and other Texas cities, but I'm still not going to have homework for three months. I think that justifies some video game time.