The view from the cabin this morning:
My boyfriend doesn’t listen to me.
I told him that I did not want a birthday president. I don’t like celebrating my birthday and I think gifts are unnecessary hassles. So what does he do? He arranges a weekend in Grand Marais. Ugh.
And of course it’s fun and intensely beautiful.
I know I keep referring to “the dogs” on this blog and yet only posting pictures of Harley, the bullmastiff. Don’t worry, I haven’t murdered my Rottweiler yet. It’s just that spastic doesn’t photograph well.
Until today!
I explored Nordeast during the past few days and my first impression of my new neighborhood is that it is filled with factories, old churches, dive bars, and hipsters.
Tader and I spent the bulk of the weekend recording episodes for Listener’s Discretion Advised, a popular gay podcast hosted by Margie Pederson. There is a public health STD/awareness angle in there somewhere, but most of it is catty talk spirited debate. Topics included: open relationships, gay club life, moving in with a loved one, and gay stereotypes.
It was a totally classy affair.
I get a text from the lead painter around 6 a.m. – he wants to know if I can let the painters into my old apartment at 6:30. The apartment isn’t completely cleaned, so I try to stall him to 8:30 a.m. and we finally agree on 10 a.m.
Then my landlord’s carpet cleaner calls to tell me that his schedule cleared up and he’s available today as well. Suddenly my disaster of an old apartment looks totes clean and rentable. Win!
I decided that it was appropriate for Harley to join me on my last moving trip to the old apartment. I had Harley before I even had furniture for my first “grown up” apartment in this building, and he totally loved the ride.
Our new apartment is the bottom floor of an old house. There is a new outside entrance for the upstairs unit and the old staircase is now one of our closets.
The perfect place for my shoes!
What an exhausting day. I work from home three days a week so I took the other two days “off” for ze great move. I spent most of the day working, showing apartments, and hauling carloads of my hoard to my new apartment.
I did however take the time to skip to Lake of the Isles with the dogs this morning:
One of the things I love about the Cathedral of St. Paul is that it is very quiet, aside from the shuffling and coughing tourists.
I’m moving away from Uptown this week. It may sound silly, but what I will miss the most about this neighbor is the stickers.
Sticker graffiti is fascinating. I think I enjoy the sticker art so much because it is higher quality than sprayed graffiti and the stickers are also hidden throughout the neighborhood, so I may be the only person on the street who notices them. It’s like finding a prize.
One nice thing about the new apartment is that it is close to the Mississippi River trail. This means no more driving the dogs to Minnehaha park.
The main lesson: people are disgusting.
It’s a full circle moment. Remember how aggravating the housing search was when I first moved to Minnesota? Well, the post-law school housing search with dogs was even worse, and everyone’s over it.
More sticker art monsters keep appearing in the neighborhood. This is my favroite. His name is Goober.
This weekend’s apartment hunt turned ugly today when dozens of building managers and real estate agents called us back. The theme? The Rottweiler is a deal breaker.
