Our Apartment!

This past weekend, JJ and I ventured into Beantown to walk the Freedom Trail, take the T, and eat good pizza. I took tons of pictures. I had every intention of posting those pictures today, but I can't seem to find the linky thingy for the camera to computer, so I guess that TOTALLY AWESOME POST will just have to wait.

But you know, we did tons of other cool stuff this weekend. Namely, WE FOUND AN APARTMENT! Huzzah!

Let me preface this by saying JJ and I did a ton of freaking research on Boston suburbs before we got here. JJ is working in Burlington (which is just north of Boston), so it wasn't necessary for us to have a Boston address. However, for some unknown reason, Burlington is very, very expensive. I don't really know why. There's no good public transit system here, and it just seems to be chalk-full of freeway intersections and big corporations. The only recreation here is their very expensive designer mall. And the Dunkin' Donuts. Which, by the way, totally owns Massachusetts. There is literally one on every corner...they are more abundant than Starbucks in Arizona. (There were even two separate DD franchises in one train station!) These people really love their donuts. I have lovingly started referring to it as "Dunkies," but only in private, because JJ thinks the Massachusans will jump me if they hear me call it that.

Anyway, back to the apartment hunt. We had narrowed down our choices to Lowell, Billerica, and Bedford. Lowell apparently used to be a very industrial area, but now they have converted many of the old mills along the Merrimack River into funky loft apartments. Well, last Friday we took a drive up to Lowell (about 20 minutes north of Burlington, all on the freeway), and looked at two places that we had researched online. And you know, we both really though there would be more indecision. More, "Oh, I like this place better, but I don't want to give my first born child just to have exposed brick and a washer and dryer in the unit." More, "Oh, this place is cheap, but we'll probably spend the winter months fighting off hoards of rats because the only available unit is in the basement" sort of thing. But no.

We walked into Massachusetts Mills, the CHEAPEST (while still not a shit-hole) place we could find, to find out they had one apartment. And it so happens to be a two-bedroom, two-bath corner unit on the top floor, with huge vaulted ceilings, tons of windows, and a view of the river. It was currently getting new paint and carpet when we saw it, so we weren't allowed to take pictures (the lady wasn't even supposed to show us the unit), but we both instantly fell in love. And it was well under our budget. That was it! We were sold. Our lease starts on Sept. 1st.

In other news, we are looking at buying a couch, because right now we have nothing to sit on except JJ's Very Unconfortable Bean Bag Chair (the VUBB.)  We have sat on a lot of couches since we got here, and have discovered we are both very picky. JJ is weird about fabric, and I am weird about the squishy-ness factor. We both love this one from Crate & Barrel:

You have no idea how comfy this couch is. ::sigh::

Okay, I promise to get pictures up soon-ish. As soon as I find that camera-computer-connecty-thingy, that is.