Cohabitating: When Two Decide To Find An Apartment

I originally planned to write a post that was basically going to be about why money is good.  However, that will have to be for next time. Perhaps over the weekend.

Who am I kidding? This weekend I probably won't have time, but I will try.

As some of you may have noticed, I have been a bit absent. Mostly because this whole moving thing has had some twists recently. Well, one twist.

Sidenote: Packing up your life for a move this huge is kind of a pain in the a**.

After I had spent about a month researching the Northwest suburbs of Chicago, made appointments, even set up a shopping schedule to visit furniture stores, IKEA, etc, his royal highness basically changed his mind the week before I was scheduled to visit and look at apartments with him. All plans for the suburbs were scrapped and the focus shifted to the city. See? Twist. I will let him explain why...one day.

Readers, it is not that I have anything against the city of Chicago. Yes, they don't shovel sidewalks when snow falls. Yes, parts of the city resemble the less fortunate parts of Detroit. Yes, the winter sun hits the city at a strange angle that makes everything look a bit more "drab" than usual during the winter. Yes, there seems to be a larger percentage of "razz" black people in Chicago than New York. But that is all just...wait what was my point again?

So, it was time to look in the city. Having visited there a bit (as you can imagine) I already knew I wanted to be close to Lake Michigan. I like places by the water, what can I say? Maybe I have "mami wata" tendencies. We did, briefly, consider the Hyde Park neighborhood (where the Obama's have a home). However, Alpa Chino is apparently not a fan of the south side of Chicago. Secret Service patrols or not.

The problem, however, with last minute apartment hunting is that it is last minute. Not having time to spend in my usual research, I outsourced to multiple realtors. That ended up being the best idea.  They sent us MLS listings, and we picked out the ones we were interested in. We saw 7 different apartments over the weekend all in varying locations in the northern part of the city along Lake Shore Drive/Marine Drive. There are a lot of condos/apartment buildings along the water, some even on the beach. (I didn't even know there was a beach in Chicago, but we ended up not getting that apartment anyway).

Alpa Chino, bless his heart, was not as particular as I was about certain things. For example, mirrored closet doors. Most people, I assume, don't care. But I just cannot deal with that. We saw one apartment that had an entire wall of mirrors on one end of the living room. WHY?

Also, having only one window in bedrooms? Not happening. I don't want to live in a cave! It is great to have sunlight in a room.

Lake Shore Drive, Chicago.

In the end, I think we found a great place in a great condo building. We have a view of the Lake, access to a park, it is close to public transit, not so far north of the city, and most importantly within our budget. There is a dishwasher! (be still  my beating heart), the apartment is not closet sized and there is a gym which I hope plan to use. It is even a bit lower priced than the suburban apartments we would have seen. We have signed a lease (eek!) so at this point it is simply a matter of collecting the keys to our casa del lago (home by the lake).

I have heard stories of realtors showing terrible apartments at first only to convince you to look in more expensive places. By some miracle, this didn't barely happened. There was one place that was basically in the basement of a highrise apartment building and didn't seem to have any windows. The entire place was dark and depressing and I was so glad to get out of there.

Due to the last minute-ness of finding an apartment in the city, my "decorating schedule" has been thrown off a bit. But, I shall persevere. I plan to have it "visitable" by summer, especially since I expect some friends will be visiting.

So, for those who were not sure if this was happening, looks like it is. I will be buying a one way ticket to Chicago for the first week in January. Wow. I can't believe I just typed that.

In other news, I do not think I will be having a "goodbye" party. Hopefully I will see people before I leave but, if not, I will be back on the East Coast occasionally. I probably will take my family out to dinner before I go (if my parents are still talking to me).

I said I would explain how this move is possible with regards to work. Sometimes things just line up! The company is planning a Chicago office, so you already know what I did. I will be working from home at first, but eventually I will end up in the office and...wait for it...minions. So looking forward to that day.

When I think of some of the other positions I interviewed for this summer, during my little hiatus, I cannot think of any that would have allowed me to "take" my job with me. A lot of companies seem to reserve telecommuting for "higher ups" or emergency situations. When things didn't mesh at other companies after some interviews, it would bother me. I guess there was a bigger "plan" than I could see. I remember being on the fence about even applying for this job since I was expecting another offer at the time. Ah well, some things just work out in the end!