magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

Yeah, a lot to talk about. But briefly:

Jenny and I had made plans to move in together, in the apartment mirrored across the hall from where she is living now. The lease was to start May 15th (tomorrow) giving us an overlap of two weeks in our current places to pack up, do some painting, move, and get settled in. We hadn't signed any papers, or paid any money, but it seemed to be heading towards more and more of a done deal, to the point where I had been describing it as 99% certainly going to happen.

Last Thursday, five days before the 15th, we spent the afternoon bumming around Williamsburg, in anticipation of meeting up with her landlord, writing him a check, and finalising the lease. Around 6:00PM he called and basically told us that it was not going to work out. I won't go into all the details, but one major sticking point was that although he told us all along that having a cat was no problem, he had spoken too soon, and that his parents and older brother would be enforcing the no-pets clause, even though there are dogs in the building, and he himself has two cats in his apartment in the building they own next door.

We were crestfallen. We stopped into Union Pool for a beer. Then a real estate agency that Jenny and Emily had dealt with (although not actually rented through) the last time they were looking, who had no current listings in our price range, but told us to stop back.

We met up with Christian and Emily for a few more drinks, and to share the whole story, and then headed back to my place to begin searching Craigslist.

Friday morning it was back out to Williamsburg, calling landlords and brokers, and making appointments to see apartments. The first place that we got into see was a fourth floor railroad on Green Street in Greenpoint. Emily was there as well, but ducked out because it wasn't suited to a roommate share set up. Jenny and I loved it though. Lots of light, plenty of space to set up my home office, and a view out the kitchen and bathroom windows of the Chrysler building. There were some questionable decorative choices in the kitchen, perpetrated by the former tenants, and not the landlords, and not too tough to reverse. But otherwise we felt it was just what we were looking for.

Jenny had to leave for work. I schlepped way out Metropolitan to see a similarly configured but not as nice second floor apartment, and then back into Manhattan to talk options. Although we had plans to see a few more places on Saturday, we agreed that we'd be happy in the Green Street apartment and should express interest. Apparently two other people had as well, and the landlords wanted to be fair, but the sooner I got the application information together, the better.

I did look at some more places Saturday morning (Jenny was still at work, in the middle of a 24+ hour shift), one of which, also in Greenpoint, was incredibly nice, but even with bargaining the price down, still quite a bit more expensive. And then I was headed out of town to surprise my mom for a pre-mothers' day dinner.

And back on Sunday morning, running around putting financial information and reference contact numbers together, and finally to meet up with one of the building's owners (whose birthday it happened to be, although he had also been running around all day) at his Tribeca studio, to hand it all off. And he said that hopefully we would hear, one way or another, by Monday (today).

Which still leaves a crushing weight of anxiety, and the last few days feel more like weeks, but at this point we've done what we can do, and it is, for the moment, out of our hands.