Pen-Elayne on the Web

Bronkers

Well, the apartment hunt is over, at least for this year! We've just signed a lease to take possession, as of April 1, of the top floor of a 3-family house (tenants already live on the first floor and basement) which literally lies on the border between North Riverdale and Yonkers. It's (barely) officially in the Bronx but the houses visible from the back window are in Yonkers; I've already taken to calling it "Bronkers." There's a little patch of land between the back patio fence and the back yards of those houses to which neither county has laid claim (tax reasons, I guess); Robin's thinking of either cultivating it for a garden or declaring it a sovereign country, possibly both.

When we started flat-hunting I suspended my job-hunting, so I'll be staying with my current company for the moment, which is moving out of the city altogether into a building my boss just bought in Westchester County, right by the New Rochelle train station. Our personal move and the company's move should just about coincide; if the company lags a bit it'll put another 10-15 minutes onto my commute into the city but that's certainly doable. And if it doesn't - well, this weekend I plan to vacate the premises during the open-house hours to avoid the louder-every-weekend tromping about going on upstairs (yes, it could be worse, someone else could have moved in by now) and throughout this half-empty building, and take a ride or two on the Bee Line bus system up into Yonkers then across the county to check out the newly-bought office building and time the commute.

I'm more psyched about this change than I'd first suspected; between the crowded subways with their too-small molded seats and the general push of the midtown crowds, it'll be nice to have Manhattan be a place to visit only on special occasions rather than a mandatory daily slog. And in a couple months I hope to go car-shopping with Dad. I haven't driven regularly in about 20 years, and I've never actually owned a car, but it will cut my daily commute down to about 15 minutes and finally enable us to visit friends and family without needing to rely on mass transit (which tends not to be so convenient once one gets into Jersey or Rockland County or even parts of Queens) so at this point in my life it's become a necessary evil.

We will have a Packing Party in a few weeks, at which time we'll also give away or dump all the furniture we're not taking with us (the new place is a bit smaller than our current one), including our dining room set, a couple just-barely-holding-together bookcases, our toaster oven and the table on which it rests, my computer table, and loads of VHS storage drawers, likely with the tapes still inside (most were taped off the TV and are pretty worn). I think Robin's also getting rid of all his PAL Star Trek:TNG tapes. The books and comics stay. :) More about the party once I've decided on a date.