New apartment

Mom, Jim, Callie and I got to Butte on Friday. Mom and Jim left Monday for the trip home through Yellowstone and Wyoming. Callie and I have been hanging out. I'm having issues getting internet started, so I'll only be intermittently available.

These are pictures of the new apartment. Most of my stuff is still in IN and will be for awhile, so it's a little sparse. I'm thinking I could open a yoga studio in the living room, though.... The new job starts next Monday. Hopefully the internet issues will be resolved and I will be able to keep everyone updated on a more regular basis.

Exterior shot

Mom and Jim hanging out
living room

living room

living room

Callie claims the chair

dining room, office, guest room

bedroom (complete with air mattress bed)

bedroom

bedroom

kitchen

kitchen

kitchen

bathroom

bathroom (with thrift store stool)

bathroom

bathroom

New apartment pics

The new apartment in Butte! I will be taking care of all the official paperwork this week. Here are the pics I took while apartment hunting with Gary and his grandson (the model in several photos).
Living room, complete with small balcony

Front bedroom (I thought I had more of the room, but at least you can see the closet)

Other bedroom (that adjoins the kitchen)

Built in drawers/shelves in other bedroom (which will most likely become the office/dining room/guestroom)

Kitchen (it's a galley, with new appliances on one side and shelving (lots!) on the other

More kitchen - small, but wainscotting, glass front cabinets, shelves!!

Yes, the kitchen (can you tell I liked the cupboards?)

bathroom (with old claw tub!)

skylight in bathroom above tub

view from right outside the apartment looking down at the lobby (yes, second floor, steep stairs, apparently I like to try to kill myself and others)

view from balcony looking south (ish)

view from balcony looking north (ish)

It's not huge, but it's just the right size for me and Callie. It's only about 5-6 blocks from the library. And, it has all those quirky architectural details that I so love....

More new apartment pics

Yes, there is an attic...
And this is it.

The kitchen and the corner of the living room with shelves (and cat)

Living room shelves and cat

living room

cat

office

more office

bedroom, complete with the last of the laundry

bedroom - screen with scarves

Some of you may have noticed the lack of bed in the bedroom. That will come this week, after payday. Until then, the "bed" room is more like the storage room for clothes. It would be a great place for some Twister.

And the newest member of the household is...

a bat. Yes, I woke up this morning, groggily from being up late fighting with APA format in a paper. I noticed something brown on the ceiling, seeming to hang there. I put on my glasses, and it was a bat. I'd thought I'd heard something in the ceiling early this morning. I thought it was my friend the squirrel. Perhaps it was our new friend the bat.

So I put Callie in the bathroom because it's the only room with a separate door. I opened the front door, and I tried to sort of push the bat out the door. It flew around the room and then behind the chair near the front door I kind of gently touched it with the broom to get it to move ouside. I had to do that a few times but it flattened itself under the door and then it flew off into the fog.

The thing that I could kick myself for is that I now have a digital camera, purchased yesterday. The battery had even finished charging, but did I think of that? No, of course not. Aak.

Bat gone. Callie liberated. I have no water, though. Apparently when I had no hot water, they'd had to replace the hot water heater. Of course, something has gone wrong with it. This is Indiana. So, I'm off to find coffee to drink in a place that has a bathroom in which I can wash my face. I already brushed my teeth without rinsing, so I'm minty fresh. Mwah mwah.

Time for a new game!

Today we play the game, Maintenance Emergency, Yes or No. It's very simple. I will give you scenarios, and you guess if this is something that maintenance will do something about in the off hours - evenings, weekends, late night, etc.

1). It's below zero, and all the pipes freeze except for a small trickle in the cold water faucet in the kitchen and the toilet. It's Sunday of the Super Bowl.

2). You go out drinking until 3am, get home, and realize you don't have your key with you.

3). You're woken up at 1am by the sounds of a squirrel practicing for Olympics gymnastics event, both floor and arial. Your ceiling consists of a dropped ceiling with metal grid and foam-type ceiling panels that are not particularly thick.

Okay, ready. The answers are....

1). No (the Indianapolis team is playing - nothing is a maintenance emergency)

2) Yes - This is a lockout, and maintenance will show up anytime. You will, however, get charged for it.

3) No - Apparently not. Or as the after-hours service said, "A squirrel won't hurt you. If if gets into the apartment, just open the door and let it out." I did wonder how that might work if it fell from the ceiling into my bed, and then Callie chased it around for a bit before the whole open door policy could be instituted.

Aack

So, in a scene reminiscent of Christmas Vacation, Callie and I are sitting on the couch talking to her kitty grandma when we hear something running around the roof. It was kind of loud, but there's not a lot between the dropped ceiling and the roof. Then we both saw the squirrel that had run out onto the plexiglass where the florescent light is. The squirrel saw us, stopped, and we all looked at each other. The squirrel ran off.

I wanted to yell, "Squirrel!" Since that seemed kind of rude to yell into my mother's ears, I limited myself to exclaiming that I had a squirrel in my ceiling. Callie has been on the alert ever since. I told her it's apparently her job to guard the apartment from squirrels.

This has been an amazingly long semester. Only the rest of this week, and then next week is the last week of classes. I will be happy for it to be over, except for the fact that some of my favorite librarians will be graduating and leaving for the wide world. One is off to a permanent government job in Washington DC, and two others are off to summer jobs out west and southwest. There are a few lingerers who'll be here through the summer. After that, it'll be pretty quiet in the new palatial, squirrel-less apartment.

See, this is why I needed help choosing an apartment! I am obviously not to be trusted to do this sort of thing alone. Squirrels...

The Winner Is....

...Meadow Park, by a landslide. Thanks to everyone who voted. I signed a lease for a two-bedroom apartment. It was only $30 more a month than the one-bedrrom, and there's a $25 a month graduate student discount. So, it ended up not being that much more money for lots more space. Besides, all the one-bedrooms were on ground floor, and I didn't want to have to listen to people walking above me. I think it will be quieter this way. It really does seem like a much quieter part of town.

I'm not sure what I'll do with all the space. I've been living in studios for so long that actually having a bedroom was going to seem spacious. With two bedrooms, it'll be palatial. So, if any of you find yourself in Indiana, you'll have a place to stay. And hopefully, since I have been influenced in my decision, maybe my apartment karma will start to change.

Let the Games Begin

So, week number 2 begins tomorrow. While I began my new job this past week, things were slow. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing there. With things picking up for this next week, I'm hoping I get a better feel for how the office functions. The council meets Tuesday for a state of the campus address by the Provost. That sounds interesting, but I learned Friday that this involves a reception afterward, something that strikes terror into the heart of socially inept library science students. Ah well, this is where I start paying back that fee remission part. Wish me luck, because I will need it.

I have begun checking on apartments for fall. This is the initial contact phase, which will result in the official visit phase, which in turn results in the signed lease. I am hoping to find a six month lease. I don't think that will happen, so the next best option is a place which allows a subleasee who can assume the lease. That (also) is highly improbable. We shall see. I have never lived in a place with such unusual housing issues. When I mention any of them, I'm met by, "It's a college town." Hate to say, but I've lived in several other college towns, and this is less a college town thing and more of a all-bets-are-off-there-are-no-regulations thing.

I remain ever hopeful, though. After my previous experiences, my standards have been lowered. If I can find something that doesn't leak, has pipes that don't freeze, can be heated and cooled adequately, has even three feet of kitchen counter space, and allows a cat, I could be happy. I look back at my places in Missoula longingly, even those which I then considered to be unworkable for some reason. I would be happy to be living in any of them again. With a cat, it's even more fun looking for places. Here, we have not only the pet deposit, but the portion which is nonrefundable (you pay for having a pet, not for any damage that might be caused by the pet), in addition to a monthly pet rent.

How could anyone not want such a cute cat as a tenant? (the mat behind her is the first scratching device she's ever willingly used.)

Week 1

1. I have survived the first week of class.
2. It has stopped raining so much that my apartment is back to its gentle leaking (in the form of spreading water stains), and not the dripping from the ceiling, running down the walls leaking of Tuesday night.
3. I think I will like all my classes, some more than others. None as much as the kids' class last semester.
4. I think I will like the new job, especially once it picks up a bit more and I figure out what it is I'm supposed to be doing.
5. I am still working three jobs (2 regularly and 1 sporadically).
6. My bursar bill has been unraveled, so my financial state is now better than it's been for months. That began working itself out Monday, and I have seen concrete results today. (yippee)
7. As a result of the concrete financial results, I can now see out from under my bangs. Why is it that a haircut can make me so happy?
8. Now that I have some money, I can get my books and do my reading for next week.

Some Observations

These are some random observations from the day, in no particular order.

1. It's slightly after 8pm, and the temperature is 61 degrees. It's supposed to be in the 60s and 50s most of the week.
2. When you cook and freeze black beans, and then use them later in black bean soup, the texture is perfect. The cooking/freezing procedure would not work so well for other things, I think.
3. Bloomington is much nicer (ie quieter) during break, when all the students are gone. This makes me look forward to the summer.
4. My current apartment has been rented for next school year already. This is in spite of the fact that the roof leaks, the neighborhood is loud, it has no real insulation and only single pane windows, it's heated with cheap (read inefficient) wall-mounted electric heat. The new guy was quite happy, as this was larger and nicer than most things he'd looked at.
5. This says much about the state of the rental market in town and the lack of all but really basic code requirements. It's like a third world country right here in the US, and makes Montana look reasonable and quite humane. I am not looking forward to trying to find something for only half the year. (Most leases are from August to August, and are not flexible, which would be why my apartment will be with the new guy and not me.)
6. Classes start tomorrow, and I am generally looking forward to the semester.
7. I'm hoping that since the woman who has my tuition remission destiny in the palm of her hand will be back in her office tomorrow that the whole bursar bill/financial fiasco will be unraveled by the end of the week.

The Apartment

Okay, I've been promising pictures of the apartment and campus. Bonnie loaned me her camera, so I was able to take some photos of my day to day life. I'll start with some pictures of the apartment this time. This is from outside. The small part that juts out is home sweet home. It's been converted from a garage, as you may have figured out from the side painted brown.


This is the living room/bedroom, as seen from the front doorway. The bookshelf in the background separates the kitchen from the rest of the room.
This is the living room/bedroom again, looking back toward the front door. (Callie says hi!)
This is the small kitchen, with no counter space at all. The microwave and coffee maker perch on top a dresser. Next to the stove is the door that leads down into the bathroom. The dresser is on the wall on the other side of the door.
Cooking in the kitchen involves some planning, and often perching things on the stove and sink area. This is the preparation for making a salad for Thanksgiving. Someday, I will have counters, in that far distant mythical future when I have a real job, or something like that. The bookshelf often doubles as an area for a cooling rack. These are the pumpkin rolls I made from Thanksgiving, perching up there.

It's small, but close to campus and downtown. The public library is only 3 blocks away. The main campus library (where classes are) is only a 15 minute walk, and the Education Library is 20-25. What it lacks in grandeur, it makes up for in convenience. Besides, it's darned easy to clean, so there's something to be said for smallness.