Tuesday, February 26, 2008

New Beginnings



Last Friday night Amanda spent and I spent out last night together in the house. We cooked (ordered) dinner and drank wine while we did our last boxes. The truth is that we had basically packed everything up so there wasn’t much to do.

We watched the Wire (now on season 2) and then Amanda went to bed and I watched Bill Maher as I took apart my DVD player. I would’ve documented everything only that I couldn’t find the camera charger. (I found it Saturday morning).

We woke up early sat morning and did the final packing. At about 730, the guy who is moving our apartment came in and finally checked out our pad. We were busy and simply wanted him to tell us if he was interested in our air conditioners or not but instead he launched onto a dissertation on how he might decorate the apartment. Here’s the thing, we just don’t care. We don’t care what you are going to do and how you are going to do it. Just that you give us money for the air conditioners and get out.

Then the movers came. And they were quick, and before we knew it our apartment was empty. It was just odd. And it felt odd to see it become naked and bare so quickly (You can see the video from before). I guess it shows you that home is really created from what you put into it and…well stop me before I get cheesy.

Moving in with your in-laws is just an odd experience. There’s no other way to put it. You can have the nicest, most understanding in-laws in the world, (as I believe I do) and it still feels un-natural. Imagine having lived essentially on your own for 12 years and suddenly you are under someone else’s roof. Their rules. Their stuff. You no longer have things your way or in your set up.

You get into your room and you have less closet space. Less fridge space. The TV in your room is broken! (The horror!)

It’s actually not that bad, but just feels odd and I think we both feel uprooted. But then again it’s only been a few days so I can’t fully comment. They’ve been great and have only asked a few common sense of things of us which I think we can handle.

This of course brings us to an update on the apartment.
We delivered our co-op package plus a check for their auditors a little under a month ago. This big abacus was created for 3 other apartments to verify and a month later, we don’t know what is going on. At the same time, we are trying to work with the other couple to determine a possible closing date. Right now we are aiming for the 23rd of April, although we can’t actually choose a closing date until we meet/get approved by the board.

It just places us in a bit of frustrating limbo.

I spoke with our attorney who is speaking with the seller’s attorney to find out just what the heck is going on.

This is why buying an apartment sucks…

Monday, February 25, 2008

And we're out...(of apt #1)

And into temporary housing #1


Tales of the move coming up...

Friday, February 22, 2008

T-minus 18 hours...




Christ. 1 day to go and still a whole lot of packing to do.

Luckily, we’ve gotten A LOT done, but there’s that feeling that there’s always more to pack. On Wednesday night we went back and forth between Amanda’s parents and our apartment with suitcases and wardrobe boxes (I think our door men think we’re mental) but we got a lot out of the way.

Still feels weird that we’ll be living with our in-laws soon. I’ll be reporting extensively about that one.

Still trying to sell our air conditioners and tables. There’s this guy who’s supposed to be taking over our apartment, and he already lives in the building. He told our doormen he was interested in our stuff, but we haven’t even spoken to him or gotten any kind of commitment. So I told the doormen to tell him he needs to speak to us TONIGHT or we are taking everything with us. Just odd that this guy would wait until the last moment. Actually, more annoying than anything.

Short report, will be back to tell more later.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Pack-a-roo


The countdown is officially down to 4 days, which normally would make one freak that they weren’t fully packed, but luckily for us this past weekend was a long one (for me at least, not Amanda), so we were able to get a LOT of packing done.

We got our boxes from our man Gonzo (yes, real name), and began the process of putting things together.

At first, it was a little overwhelming, as we didn’t know where to begin or what was the best strategy. So after a few false starts, we each broke off to a different section of the apartment (Amanda did linens, I tackled the books) and started our boxes.

The tricky part is that we are essentially putting our stuff into two different places: stuff that is going to her parents, and stuff that is going into storage. So we have to be careful what goes where so we can tell our movers where to deliver stuff.

The other tricky part is packing up stuff we can live without for a week (computer speakers, tv in bedroom) vs. things we simply can’t live without (HDTV player, microwave). It’s a little trickier than you think as you have to pack things and leave some boxes open so that they can be filled in on Friday night when we do our final pass and closing of our stuff.

There is also the issue of wardrobe: We brought over a few suitcases of stuff to her parents house, but even though they have made a lot of room for us, it clearly is a lot less room than we are accustomed to. So that, coupled with the fear that renovations will take twice as long as we hope gives me just a small sense of claustrophobia.

Saturday night brought a respite in our final apartment, dubbed ‘The Flight of the Concords.’ We had a great showing from friends, and there are no photos since our camera battery had died and I only found it on Sunday where it was stashed in one of our suitcases (I’m just hoping now that my sunglasses will turn up the same way!). Thanks to our friends who could make it and hopefully it was a fun little gig for the road.

It is still pretty wild this is all going down and odd that we’ll be saying goodbye to this place. We’re still hoping to sell off our Air Conditioners before the week is through, hopefully to the guy who is taking over our lease, so we are waiting to hear from him. Our doorman told him about it, and it’s kind of a steal, plus he wouldn’t have to pay to have them installed so it would behoove this guy…we will see.

That’s all for now…more to come as the week progresses.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Boxing is for cool people


Not much to report here today...got the boxes and we (read: I) spent the night taping them up while watching the biggest loser. I guess that makes us losers too, ...of the biggest kind...get it, losers? anyway...

here's Me in all my coolness puttting these god forsaken boxes together.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Closer to Fine(ding when the hell we’re moving in)



It’s been a little while since a post, mostly because there’s not been much to report. We had sent in the co-op package but there were a few missing items although now it is officially in the hands of the board. It seems as though we’ll probably hear from them over the next few weeks and hope to be approved by Mid March.

There’s a growing sense of excitement/unease, as the due date with which we move out draws nearer. We have about 9 days left in our apartment, which is pretty scary, coupled with the fact that we are leaving here to move in with my in-laws.

Here’s a recent email that shook me to my core:


From Amanda

To Steve, Roberta, matt

Re: BRUNCH with our NEW ROOMIES?

I hope that doesn't make you shudder!

As you know, Matt and I will be spending our first night in your apartment on next Saturday, Feb 23rd.

Matt and I would love to take you to brunch next Sunday to inaugurate this momentous occasion. And plus, that's just what roommates do on Sunday afternoon.

Please let us know if you are free Sunday the 24th.


Don’t misunderstand me, I’m psyched, it’s just scary as hell that this is real. It’s also a little scary that we will be leaving the place that we have lived for the past three years. I guess it’s the feeling that you live somewhere for a long time and you almost forget what it was like to live anywhere else, even though you’ve lived other places long periods of time. I can’t remember what it was like to live in the house I grew up in and that was for 18 years.

Tonight our boxes are coming in so we are fully going into packing mode. This weekend, despite one last soiree’ at our pad, we are mostly packing and putting things away. And throwing out crap.

Another sense of frustration/anticipation is the issue of our closing date. When we initially put in the bid, we told he sellers we were flexible with the dates since they needed time to renovate their new place and we had a place to stay rent-free. But as time has gone on and we have tried to get an idea (any idea, some idea please!) of when they wanted to move, we received no response. It’s not an insane question, since we just want to start planning things with our renovations plans, and making sure our contractor is available for the times we want to start working.

To the looks of it, it seems as though we are hoping for a closing date of April 15th, and a goal of moving in by June. Amanda says she wants to be in our apartment for our 1-year anniversary. To me that makes sense, especially since we won’t have any money to go anywhere for the ‘paper anniversary.’ But if she still wants paper, we can always pick up some 40’s and drink them out of a paper bag.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Life insurance? (You kidding me?)



Got a call last night from our broker. Interesting talk. After busting our behinds to get our co-op package in, and thinking we had everything we need, we find out the co-op board asked if we had life-insurance policies.

Yup. In case one of us dies, they want to make sure we are able to still pay our bills.

I can see the usefulness of needing this and it is a practical question to make sure that a couple can still make good on their financial obligations, but to me it just felt like a tactless (and morbid) way to do it. Besides the fact that we would be fine despite not having policies at the moment (on our to-do list, AFTER we finish the apartment), if this was some sort of concern, I’m surprised they didn’t bring it up in the extraordinarily long list of things they asked us for when we were putting our application together. If this is a genuine concern this seems a little late in the process to bring anything up. I don’t foresee this as any type of issue, but apparently this board is asking for more than any board typically does.

This goes to show you that not only does the co-op want to know everything about your life, they also want to know everything about your death, too.

Monday, February 4, 2008

18 and life


Remember the old Skid Row song? Well we don’t have 18 and life to go, but we do have 18 days until we officially move out. How else to put it but holy shit. I think we are partially in denial even though we’ve already had some people come and look at the apartment who want it next. We’re just trying to see if they want to buy our air conditioners. (Any takers?)

I truly think that moving won’t be that bad, especially since we are moving a block over with Amanda’s parents, but even so, the fact that we completely cleaned out our closet and got rid of basically things we won’t need will be really helpful. I have a feeling that we will do this a second time when we finally move in to the place in Brooklyn, but for now I think it’s good stuff.

As we have yet to start the boxing process (or received boxes) I can’t comment just yet on the pain it is or isn’t to pack. I will say that right now finding out ways to get rid of the few things that are left in the apartment that we certainly don’t want is a little trickier. We have an old Dell computer that is a dinosaur at this point although it works fine. I’m trying to sell it (even if for a few hundred bucks) or donate it to a school. Amanda’s computer guy from our company might purchase it and if not, he’ll tell us how to get rid of it. I also still have to get the three garbage bags of old books to the public library since it’s a nightmare to get the library’s to agree to come pick them up. Amanda is just frustrated with me b/c I think she wants to enjoy her last three weeks of the giant closet being able to get inside if it.

Finally we have our television which unfortunately doesn’t really work with the layout of our new place. I hate to see it go, but then again I think I’ll be ok once we get a new TV that we get to hang on the wall!

In addition, I think our interior designer friend has finally inputted the layout of the apartment into CAD, so once I have those schematics, I’ll upload so everyone can see the virtual layout.

Ok, that’s all for now. More info later.