apartments

[shirou]

I've been spending a lot of time lately looking at apartments online. We'll be moving to Arlington in the first week of December. It's tough to choose a place just from the websites. In a couple of weeks we will be driving up to look at places in person, but we still have to narrow things down before we go. I've made appointments for us at the apartment complexes that look best. Here are the three that I think look most promising:

1. The Palatine Apartments
2. The Madison at Ballston Station
3. Liberty Tower Apartments

I'm still suffering somewhat from sticker shock. In Durham, we pay $1050/mo for a townhouse with 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a large kitchen and a very large, open living room. In Arlington, we will pay at least twice that for an apartment with 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, a small den, a small kitchen and a medium sized living room. Plus, we'll have to pay extra fees for our cats, and an extra fee for parking! There are cheaper apartments, but we want something that is conveniently located and not ghetto.

The price is a downside, but I'm going to be pulling a good salary, so we will be able to afford it. There are also many upsides: primarily, we will be close to everything. We will be able to walk to the metro, to nice grocery stores and other good places to shop, and to lots of restaurants, bars and coffee shops. We'll be a short train ride from a wealth of museums, theaters, concert halls and the like. I'm really looking forward to living in the middle of a bustling city.

The current plan is that we stay in Durham through the beginning of December. Our health insurance will last through the end of the month in which Laura leaves her job, so if she leaves on 29 Nov it will terminate on 30 Nov; if she leaves on 1 Dec it will terminate on 31 Dec. So we'll probably move around 5 Dec, and we'll have a couple of weeks in the DC area to acquaint ourselves with the neighborhood. We'll probably go to New York for Christmas, and I'll start my new job on 4 Jan.

So if you're familiar with the DC area, suggest to me wonderful places that we should go!

ps. If you're still following me on livejournal, please consider looking at my dreamwidth page and commenting there. I am intentionally leaving this entry public (on dw, not on lj), so you should be able to see it.

Comments

[marius_silverwolf]

Every time I've visited D.C. recently I've loved staying in the Arlington area. The convenience for everything is especially nice for me, since it means I can leave the car parked at the hotel instead of having to drive around everywhere.

I'm excited for the both of you. ^_^

On the DW note, if I could figure out how to allow everybody on LJ to comment on DW (and DW only) so I could switch entirely, I would. As it is, I have 3 active friends on DW and the other dozen or so are still LJ only. *sigh*

[shirou]

Laura intends to use the public transit and never drive. I will have to drive to work, but I'll still use the metro for other things. I can't want.

LJ users can comment on DW using OpenID. I think you can even add their OpenID usernames to your access list so that they can view protected entries. Of course, this requires that they generate their OpenID usernames first. You certainly can disable commenting on LJ so that everyone who wants to comment will have to do so on DW. I've considered doing that, but I don't want to put out anybody who really just doesn't want to use DW.

[bestljnameever.livejournal.com]

Andrew here. Sorry for not having anything to say, but I wanted to see how this OpenID works with commenting on Dreamwidth since I don't have an entry code or purchased account.

[shirou]

I have two invite codes; you're welcome to one if you would use it.

[nanila]

I read that as the Palpatine Apartments and thought, "Noooo!"