A rambling update.
Oct. 16th, 2006 04:30 pmFirst off, I am getting a cold. I am FIGHTING the cold with lots of drugs, so beware: I'm a bit rambly. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rhiannonjk, it is not bird flu. Hardy har.
As of this weekend, la chica & I are, like, officially living together & everything. We signed a lease on a cozy little one-bedroom apartment in Astoria, just downstairs from Cousinkatieledge. On Saturday, we went futon shopping & on Sunday one new futon was delivered & assembled in our living room (color = Smashing Ruby. Ooooh!). chaosvizier drove me up to vulgarbarbarian's house to retrieve all of our suitcases (& some borrowed bedding). So la chica & I will be camping out in our apartment, sleeping on the futon, living out of assorted suitcases, until our containers arrive - in about two weeks. We're hoping to do a lot of cleaning before the furniture arrives, so we've bought a bunch of supplies & started scrubbing the floors, sinks, stove, windows, & basically all other surfaces. I doubt our apartment will ever be this clean again.
My first week at work was pretty good. This office is quite busy & I've got a lot of project managers who are eager to have my help. One of the coolest parts of working at this office is that so far I have been able to walk &/or take the subway to our job sites. There were some corporate-level paperwork screwups, but that sort of thing is to be expected. The big news from today is that URS has accepted my documentation that la chica is my domestic partner; therefore, she can now get medical/dental/vision coverage. This is a huge relief for both of us. I don't want her to ever do something, like, ohhhh, try to turn down a trip to the hospital after crashing her motorcycle, hitting her head, & losing consciousness for 15 minutes.
Overall, I think I'm going to like living here. It's horribly stressful right now - I'm tired a lot of the time & sorta cranky. But I think that's moving stress (& perhaps getting-sick stress) as much as any inherent stress of NYC. In a lot of ways, my lifestyle here is fairly similar to my lifestyle in San Francisco. I commute to work on mass transit (in fact, my subway line is the "N", which was my Muni line in SF). I work in a cube farm, sometimes going into the field. The big difference is that I come home every night to an apartment I share with my girlfriend, & that is really wonderful. I'm totally enjoying the process of putting together a household that's just hers & mine.
The food here is superb. La chica & I found a bakery (Martha's Country Bakery) that had an amazing range of pastries & pies & cakes & ZOMG yum!katieledge tipped us to the fantastic WAVE Thai, & we now have their take-out menu as the first addition to the Delivery Drawer - a crucial feature of every NYC kitchen. Our immediate neighborhood (i.e., five-minute walking radius) is a bit sparse for shops & cafes, but there are big shopping streets within easy 15 minutes' walking or two stops on the subway. And while there may not be a large number of shops, we do have all the basics covered & what is here is quite good.
We've located a gym, which is right next to our subway stop. All three of us (me, la chica, &katieledge) are planning to join.... soon. It doesn't have a pool, but the nearby Astoria Park has an Olympic-sized outdoor pool that's open Memorial Day to Labor Day. I will be all right with weights, Pilates, treadmills, & indoor & outdoor biking until then. Hooray triathlon-style cross training!
I hope to take advantage of living in such an amazing city. My unoffical goal is to do at least one thing a week - attend a lecture, see a show, visit a museum, etc. Last Friday's Indigo Girls show was a perfect start. This week, la chica is aiming to get us tickets to see the Blue Man Group (which she's seen a bazillion times at this point, but which I've yet to see). I also need to move on finding a church.
My one complaint is that everything is so expensive - but I knew that going in, so no use whining about it now. We will just have to practice frugality where we can.
rhiannonjk, it is not bird flu. Hardy har.As of this weekend, la chica & I are, like, officially living together & everything. We signed a lease on a cozy little one-bedroom apartment in Astoria, just downstairs from Cousin
katieledge. On Saturday, we went futon shopping & on Sunday one new futon was delivered & assembled in our living room (color = Smashing Ruby. Ooooh!). chaosvizier drove me up to vulgarbarbarian's house to retrieve all of our suitcases (& some borrowed bedding). So la chica & I will be camping out in our apartment, sleeping on the futon, living out of assorted suitcases, until our containers arrive - in about two weeks. We're hoping to do a lot of cleaning before the furniture arrives, so we've bought a bunch of supplies & started scrubbing the floors, sinks, stove, windows, & basically all other surfaces. I doubt our apartment will ever be this clean again. My first week at work was pretty good. This office is quite busy & I've got a lot of project managers who are eager to have my help. One of the coolest parts of working at this office is that so far I have been able to walk &/or take the subway to our job sites. There were some corporate-level paperwork screwups, but that sort of thing is to be expected. The big news from today is that URS has accepted my documentation that la chica is my domestic partner; therefore, she can now get medical/dental/vision coverage. This is a huge relief for both of us. I don't want her to ever do something, like, ohhhh, try to turn down a trip to the hospital after crashing her motorcycle, hitting her head, & losing consciousness for 15 minutes.
Overall, I think I'm going to like living here. It's horribly stressful right now - I'm tired a lot of the time & sorta cranky. But I think that's moving stress (& perhaps getting-sick stress) as much as any inherent stress of NYC. In a lot of ways, my lifestyle here is fairly similar to my lifestyle in San Francisco. I commute to work on mass transit (in fact, my subway line is the "N", which was my Muni line in SF). I work in a cube farm, sometimes going into the field. The big difference is that I come home every night to an apartment I share with my girlfriend, & that is really wonderful. I'm totally enjoying the process of putting together a household that's just hers & mine.
The food here is superb. La chica & I found a bakery (Martha's Country Bakery) that had an amazing range of pastries & pies & cakes & ZOMG yum!
katieledge tipped us to the fantastic WAVE Thai, & we now have their take-out menu as the first addition to the Delivery Drawer - a crucial feature of every NYC kitchen. Our immediate neighborhood (i.e., five-minute walking radius) is a bit sparse for shops & cafes, but there are big shopping streets within easy 15 minutes' walking or two stops on the subway. And while there may not be a large number of shops, we do have all the basics covered & what is here is quite good.We've located a gym, which is right next to our subway stop. All three of us (me, la chica, &
katieledge) are planning to join.... soon. It doesn't have a pool, but the nearby Astoria Park has an Olympic-sized outdoor pool that's open Memorial Day to Labor Day. I will be all right with weights, Pilates, treadmills, & indoor & outdoor biking until then. Hooray triathlon-style cross training!I hope to take advantage of living in such an amazing city. My unoffical goal is to do at least one thing a week - attend a lecture, see a show, visit a museum, etc. Last Friday's Indigo Girls show was a perfect start. This week, la chica is aiming to get us tickets to see the Blue Man Group (which she's seen a bazillion times at this point, but which I've yet to see). I also need to move on finding a church.
My one complaint is that everything is so expensive - but I knew that going in, so no use whining about it now. We will just have to practice frugality where we can.
