Writer's Block: No place like home
Jul. 14th, 2010 08:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badseed1980[Error: unknown template qotd]
Five things I love:
1. The SIZE. Our apartment is quite generously sized for what we pay, and has a separate dining room, and even a little nook that we use as an office.
2. The deck! Our huge deck allows us space for a nice container garden, a place to grill, and even somewhere we can set up a table on nice days and eat outside, if we so desire. Also, it's separate from the porch, which we use for storage.
3. It has laundry in the basement that's free and WORKS. Also, we have plenty of storage space in the basement.
4. The neighborhood is perfect: it's a quiet little residential oasis in the middle of a bustling city where public transportation is easily accessible.
5. Our landlord is generally responsive and responsible, fixing things himself in a professional way.
Five things I hate (even these aren't really so much "hate" as just "wish it were better"):
1. The landlord doesn't speak much English, and we don't speak ANY Mandarin, so it can be really hard to communicate problems to him. And he sometimes takes a while to fix stuff he says he'll fix, though he's never left us in an emergency situation for long.
2. The land around the house--not much of it--is crappy soil that's overgrown with weeds. I wish we had some nicer soil and a little garden or at least some attractive shrubs.
3. The basement floor really needs some repairing.
4. The bathtub is kind of a funky shape with these built in shelves. It looks pretty cute, but it's kind of a pain because it's hard for stuff to stay on the shelves, and they take away space.
5. Somerville parking laws SUCK.
This place is LIGHT YEARS AWAY from anywhere else I've lived since I left my parents' house. My first Brighton apartment, in grad school, was tiny. There were three of us in a tiny two-bedroom. My room had no windows but was next to a porch, which was explosively hot in summer and freezing in winter. My second Brighton apartment was tiny, ancient, and crumbling. I had mold problems, the windows didn't close properly and the sills were cracked and falling apart, so it was impossible to keep it warm or cool. We had no laundry, but we did have a couple roaches. My first Somerville apartment was in a basement level. While it was spacious enough, there were broken windows that never got fixed, all the windows were scratched or otherwise hard to see through, and the laundry in the basement didn't work. It flooded once while I was there, and once after I left. The landlady was a moron who did almost NOTHING to keep the place from falling apart. There was a rusting, ancient trailer next to the building. The backyard was a jungle with a rusting swingset. The ceiling in my roommate's room fell in because of water damage. Yeah. It SUCKED. Compared to all those places, the apartment we have now is HEAVEN. And I do love living here. I'll be happy to stay here until we buy a home.
Five things I love:
1. The SIZE. Our apartment is quite generously sized for what we pay, and has a separate dining room, and even a little nook that we use as an office.
2. The deck! Our huge deck allows us space for a nice container garden, a place to grill, and even somewhere we can set up a table on nice days and eat outside, if we so desire. Also, it's separate from the porch, which we use for storage.
3. It has laundry in the basement that's free and WORKS. Also, we have plenty of storage space in the basement.
4. The neighborhood is perfect: it's a quiet little residential oasis in the middle of a bustling city where public transportation is easily accessible.
5. Our landlord is generally responsive and responsible, fixing things himself in a professional way.
Five things I hate (even these aren't really so much "hate" as just "wish it were better"):
1. The landlord doesn't speak much English, and we don't speak ANY Mandarin, so it can be really hard to communicate problems to him. And he sometimes takes a while to fix stuff he says he'll fix, though he's never left us in an emergency situation for long.
2. The land around the house--not much of it--is crappy soil that's overgrown with weeds. I wish we had some nicer soil and a little garden or at least some attractive shrubs.
3. The basement floor really needs some repairing.
4. The bathtub is kind of a funky shape with these built in shelves. It looks pretty cute, but it's kind of a pain because it's hard for stuff to stay on the shelves, and they take away space.
5. Somerville parking laws SUCK.
This place is LIGHT YEARS AWAY from anywhere else I've lived since I left my parents' house. My first Brighton apartment, in grad school, was tiny. There were three of us in a tiny two-bedroom. My room had no windows but was next to a porch, which was explosively hot in summer and freezing in winter. My second Brighton apartment was tiny, ancient, and crumbling. I had mold problems, the windows didn't close properly and the sills were cracked and falling apart, so it was impossible to keep it warm or cool. We had no laundry, but we did have a couple roaches. My first Somerville apartment was in a basement level. While it was spacious enough, there were broken windows that never got fixed, all the windows were scratched or otherwise hard to see through, and the laundry in the basement didn't work. It flooded once while I was there, and once after I left. The landlady was a moron who did almost NOTHING to keep the place from falling apart. There was a rusting, ancient trailer next to the building. The backyard was a jungle with a rusting swingset. The ceiling in my roommate's room fell in because of water damage. Yeah. It SUCKED. Compared to all those places, the apartment we have now is HEAVEN. And I do love living here. I'll be happy to stay here until we buy a home.
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Date: 2010-07-14 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-07-14 09:29 pm (UTC)