Moving to the city

Thursday we went shopping for groceries and Target items and essentially regained our sanity.

Friday was move-in day.  

We had all of our stuff in Dave’s Subaru and his parents much newer, nicer Subaru.  We had already returned the Uhaul.  This was it, we were going to see, for the first time, where Dave would be living on his own.  We drove about an hour, over the George Washington bridge, and arrived at his new apartment building.  His appointment was to sign his lease for 11:00, but guess what happens at 11:00-12:30?  Street cleaning!  You can only park on one side of the street.  Everyone on one side of the street double parks on the other side.  (This happens four days a week!)  Having rarely ever even had to parallel park in my life, I have most certainly never dealt with double parking.  We ran out of time, there were no legal spots, so we did it.  Dave double parked in front of his building and across the street from some construction dumpster, leaving me in the car while he did paperwork upstairs for an indefinite amount of time.  I can’t believe no one ran into us.  Very stressful and loud.  Not a good first impression.   

Dave returned about 30 minutes later and we decided to just leave the car, like everyone else, and go see his new place.  The door man (He has a doorman!!!)  took his passport photo so he’d know who Dave was to let him into the building and mailroom and then we went upstairs.  Third floor, super cute, much larger than expected, sunny apartment.  The bedroom is huge with two big windows!  One big one in the living room.  The kitchen is dark, but bigger than we expected and possibly more cupboard space than I have in Boulder.  We were super happy!  We emptied our car’s stuff into the freight elevator and moved it all in.  A memory-foam mattress he had mail-ordered was waiting for us in the lobby, so we took it up and let it air out the rest of the day.   

Bedroom windows.  If I looked far enough right out the window, I could see beautiful, old trees in the huge park at the end of the building. 

 We walked around the neighborhood and it is just adorable because he is right on the campus and across the street from a park.  His parents came later and we took up the rest of his stuff, then returned to their house for the night and watched the DVRed opening ceremonies for the Olympics.  Thank goodness for Mr. Bean.  Those English are odd.  

Saturday we watched the disappointing road bike race, ate some lunch, picked up Dave’s 1-year younger brother, and headed to IKEA.  Usually when shopping, the more people the more confusing, but honestly, everyone was really useful because IKEA is a confusing place and sometimes it took all of us to form a good opinion or figure out the pricing scheme on a chair.  I would have liked a map, but gave in and just followed the arrows through the whole store.  We picked up a cute birch 2X2 cube bookshelf that fits the record player and records just perfectly, a $49 black TV stand with drawers, a large birch coffee table that is perfect for playing games on, a cheap bed frame, and a comfortable, but sleek chair with footstool.  We went away with no couch and no dresser.  The couches were awful for the price range we were looking in.  We’re hoping to find something on craigslist that doesn’t have bed bugs.  (I had bed bugs in 2002 thanks to a furnished apartment bed.  I will be the first to say that they will ruin your life.  Being cheap and reusing is all fine and good, until your life is ruined, and then you wish you’d have forked over money for a new couch.)

The boys put together the furniture and I helped a little bit with the bed.  We had a nice pizza for dinner from down the street.  

Overall we were missing 3 screw-type pieces and our new chair and footstool are not usable and the coffee table is sort of together. Thanks a lot, IKEA.  Dave went back several weeks later to get the parts and bought a futon.  

Bed building, despite my inability to read the IKEA no-word directions.

Dave's Mom and Dad helping to build the Entertainment Center.  The chair in the background they had just finished. 

Brother Matt trying to figure out the most ridiculous directions ever written.

I made a "couch" for Dave out of our camping pads.  Here he's showing me just how much this is in no way like a couch. 

A bed!  This is a bed spread I made for Dave's birthday several years ago.  My first big quilting project.  Note the bike handle on the LH side.  Oops. 

Lawn chair will work for a little while. 

At least we had some good tunes to listen to!

Kitchen complete with monkini ingredients, plunger coffee maker, and bread.  What more could a boy need?

We slept in the new place for the first time Saturday night.  The street light outside is a bit bright, there’s lots of sirens, one night there was a fire somewhere and it smelled awful and we thought about going out to check it out, the cigarette smoke of people walking by is kind of gross, it’s humid, and on week days, workers show up at 7:00 to honk their horns at each other over parking.  Oh yeah, and street cleaning happens four times a week, so you have to move your car four times.  Welcome to New York, Dave!