At last....

Dear Auntie Dolly...

Sorry it's been so long, but stuff has been happening.

Ooooh, and the interview I was all worried about? I got the job, they liked me anyways. So that's cool. I'm gonna be the "Communications Coordinator" for the Lousiana State Bar Association. They put out a magazine every other month and a tab every other month from that. Also they need various different things designed & some house ads, brochures, etc. So that's cool. And it's in this totally historic old building that's completely beautiful.

So apartments in New Orleans aren't easy to find. We looked around alot lookin' at a bunch of them. Ithaca's tight, but around here it's not tight so much as they just came out of a tight time and still think that they can charge the same rates. Plus, after living thru the Grand Forks Flood, I didn't really want anything on the first floor or anything in a house or anything like that. So we would go to these big complex type places and they'd be all like "Well, we have a newly renovated first floor apartment that's beautiful." Is it newly renovated because it flooded here? "Why yes, the levee broke just over there...blah blah blah" the other thing that was a little aggrevating is that they charge all these fees, $50 to run a credit check on you, $100 for administrative fees, plus the security deposit, on top of the rent. And we would look at these places, and they wouldn't have the actual apartment to look at but rather a "Model" apartment and you could stand in one room and reach into another, mostly they were really really tiny and in these huge complexes, with lots of other people all around.

Anyways, so we called this one place and the guy's telephone pitch was horrible, he was all like "We don't take section 8. We don't do subsidized housing. We don't run no crazy house. How much do you make in a year?" before he'd even talk to me about the apartment itself. Totally weird, anyways, so I made an apointment, but was kinda thinking "Well, I can blow it off if we want" and we found this other apartment house that wasn't too horrible, and the rent was a little more affordable, and the lady at the building was pretty nice, so we were thinking that maybe we'd go there, but we went to the apointment anyways.

The place was huge, and was originally decorated in the 70s. Like this thick blue shag carpeting. Flurescent wallpaper. But it was two stories, and it has this wonderful window-seat that I was like "Oh, with a couple of pillows that'd be perfect for reading..." So we drove to the old place, and I was all like "I love it. Let's get that place." Plus the rent was more reasonable than anywhere else, but still in the ballpark. So I called him the next day and he told me that the one we looked at was already rented, but he had this other unit that was the same floorplan, just reversed, and if we came by to drop off the security deposit, we could take a look at it.

No 70s wallpaper. Light blue berber carpet. Beautiful window seat. The wallpaper still leaves something to be desired, but it's not horrible. So we took it. Yay! It seems pretty nice.

Once I get my computer moved over I'll make sure to draw out a floor plan on a Paradiso napkin and upload it... :>

Talk to you later,
Barb.