Hello, Internet!

There are so many things I want to tell you. Like all the details about my adventure last month on the fastest vacation ever (Seattle to Sacramento and back, via train and truck, in less than 36 hours!), and my tentative steps toward getting back into the career field I belong in. I've written about half a post about why I am firmly pro-choice (after being raised among folks that revered people like Operation Rescue nutball Randall Terry as saints and angels), and why any talk about repealing Roe v. Wade is a direct threat to people's parenting choices above and beyond the question of abortion. I have stories about blandly quiet alcoholic vagrants down the street and the obnoxiously disruptive police force that came to roust them the other afternoon, and stories about the unintentionally hilarious bits of the SeaFair parade in downtown Seattle last weekend (with pictures!), and so many other things.

Alas, Internet, whenever we meet our time together is completely devoted to the things you have to say. You have so many things to say, Internet, that I can't bring myself to get a word in edgewise sometimes. So I'll just say this, for now: After two years and two months of living right above a tavern and a VFW hall (and of the two, the VFW hall has roused us cranky from our slumber at two a.m. far more times than the tavern has...it's not that the little old VFW men are loud, but they rent out their space to such very loud people on the weekends), along an arterial street which frequently hosts ambulances and firetrucks in full siren, as well as the occasional late-night impromptu drag racer along its perfectly straight length below us...Ah, as I say, after two years of this, we are finally in a place (financially and mentally speaking) where we are able to pursue Better Options. Not, that is to say, home ownership--not yet!--but at least finding more reasonably priced digs along a less aggravating street. Maybe a place where my car won't be broken into on an annual basis.

We looked at an apartment sort of place today. It comprised a small living space (kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom) above a spacious garage and unfinished storage space. It's connected to the house on the lot only through the laundry room between them; the two spaces share no walls. The apartment is in back, along the alley; the neighborhood is completely residential, but within walking distance of, say, the shopping district in Greenwood. And the rent is $100 less per month. The landlady seemed really nice, and I suspect we were the first ones to turn in an application for the place (she was showing it to several of us at once, but the other man left as soon as he saw the inside, saying it was too small for him, and the other couple hadn't shown up by the time we departed), so I have my fingers crossed for it.

One big bonus: Mr. Thel could set up his drums in the storage space off the garage and leave them set up there, instead of stacking them in a corner of the living space the way we do now. He was instantly smitten by this possibility (and I can't blame him); when I started thinking out loud afterward about how we might be able to fit our furniture into the smallish living space, he said, "You do whatever you want with the furniture as long as I can have that garage space."

It's a deal. I hope.