spryng | A new home, but far away

With three weeks and counting we finally have a place lined up to call home. Well, new home. We bopped down to Tucson over the weekend to look at apartments and really were done after the first afternoon, but we kept on trucking to see what all we had on our list and what was available. Although we'd been told that it was better to rent a house than an apartment, no one returned our calls for any of the house rentals, which was a bit of a disappoint. Whatever - their loss.

The second complex we looked at ended up being the one we went with despite looking at about five or six other complexes. Much like our foray to Seattle, actually. If this happens when we move for a third time, I'll know not to keep looking after the third one. :) Anyway, it's snazzy. It's a number of blocks north of the university but conveniently located to a straight-shot busline, a Trader Joe's (walking distance!), the Rillito Wash (which is like a river except without the water 362 days of the year), a weekend farmer's market (also within walking distance), and numerous main bike routes. The apartment itself is a one bedroom + den which is basically perfect, has w/d, a wide open kitchen, and a pretty open floorplan, too. Yeah!

I'm excited about it, which is a lot considering how awesome our current apartment is. Mostly excited about having my own workspace, although the terror of taking the first steps towards business-dom is setting in. I'm also excited because there was a brief bit where we weren't sure we would grab the apartment in time. When we looked for apts in Seattle we came more than two months before we'd be moving in, and apparently that was too early. But 3-4 weeks before moving in is too late when you're infringing upon school season. According to most of the apt people we spoke with, most of what we'd been interested in had been snatched up just the week before.

Thankfully the complex had one left. But we had visited Friday and were unable to commit at that time without seeing the other places and they in turn were going to be closed all weekend and Monday due to the 4th. So when we decided on them and had to turn in our deposit in order to hold the last apartment, we hit a conundrum. We didn't want to just leave it there when no one was going to be there to confirm receipt and we also were leaving Monday. Thankfully

the_verb volunteered to transport app and fees for us and (despite running into some snafus) managed to secure it (ZOMG THANK YOU). In the meantime it was a nerve-wracking two days where we half expected the complex to call up and tell us someone else had shown up to grab the apt with actual money in hand.

BUT ANYWAY. I'm sure that was exciting. One of the other (of many) exciting points of the trip was waking up at 5am to watch the sunrise from the back porch of

the_verb's in-laws' home. They have a gorgeous view of Tucson and the mountains. I couldn't help but notice, as indicated in the above photo, that at 5:38, right as the sun was peaking over the top of the Catalinas, it was already 88 degrees.