Moved In At Last!

We finally moved in to our apartment at Park La Brea, and I must say it was well worth the wait. Our apartment is huge, although laid out in kind of an odd way. The room Katie and I live in is accessible through a weird little hall way that does not seem to have been part of the original blue prints. The kitchen in nice and big, complete with a dishwasher and granite countertops. This complex is rather old, so none of the buildings have central air. By luck of the draw, we ended up getting a couple of window shakers that were installed by previous tenants, but by and large our temperature is maintained by leaving the windows open and letting L.A.'s extremely agreeable climate drift in. Unfortunately L.A. does not have the world's cleanest air supply, so after a while of not being cleaned, everything gets just a little bit dirty. And it looks like our apartment has gone for a good long while without a thorough cleaning, so that's what I will be doing over the next few days. The parquet floor has so much accumulation on it that it turns your feet black just to walk across it, and the grime in the kitchen, especially on top of the refrigerator and smoke hood is the consistency of stuff you would expect to find in a Kentucky Fried Chicken kitchen.

We got the green light to move in on Saturday, and that evening Katie and I, along with her two roommates went to Target to get some living essentials. Its amazing how much three girls can find to be "essential," among them a sno-cone maker shaped like Mickey Mouse and all manner of closet organization elements. The following day we all went to Bed Bath & Beyond, and I was exposed to the truly difficult decisions associated with buying new bedding. Problem 1 dealt with what size closest fits two twin beds pushed together. Problems 2 through 5,927 dealt with what color, thread count, pattern, etc., etc... We settled on a 'bed in a bag' set up that Katie insists are the "most masculine bedding" she has ever owned. Although I have been known to sleep on a tile floor and thus do not care what I sleep on, I am inwardly pleased that our sheets do not have a flowery pattern or Strawberry Shortcake design.

I must say I am somewhat disappointed with Park La Brea, despite the huge apartment they set us up with. Even though we had to wait an extra two weeks to move in, the place was no clean, and the cable was not set up. Although the cable has since been resolved, they botched our wireless Internet set up, so this blog installment is coming to you from a trendy Internet cafe in the park. But I am happy to say that come 11 PM Tuesday night, come hell or high water I will be able to watch The Daily Show, which I have been deprived of for the last 3 weeks. And our apartment is on the 5th floor, so that will have to be some very high water indeed. Also, as far as Park La Brea is concerned, I am not an actual resident, I am just Katie's shadow. Therefore, I have no keys to the apartment and no access to the pool or gym. This is a problem I will have to soon rectify, because as a guest I have to pay $7 to use the pool, which I did this morning so we could get some sun. In addition to sun, I was also privy to the conversation of two young ladies next to me, who were discussing with the utmost adamancy what they should have for dinner, excluding sushi, because they would be having sushi on Friday. This conversation took over 20 minutes, including their stroll into the pool to cool off, and continued after they returned. The urgency with which they felt that had to resolve this, keep in mind it was at 12:30 in the afternoon, was staggering. I suspect that they only applied this much forethought to what color nail polish they would get at a pedicure set to happen days in advance. L.A. is just full of such delightful ambient conversation!

Well, I am getting a look from the cafe owner that I should either buy something or stop mooching his Internet connection. Since a "reasonably priced smoothie" here is about as expensive as a "fully loaded Ferrari" anywhere else in the country, I will opt for the latter!