Child's Play?

Elise knows how to have fun in a new space, and we’re about to start taking a few more of our cues from her. Apartment hunting has proven a bit more of a challenge than we’d hoped, but not than we’d expected.

San Jose has a lot of interesting neighborhoods, and we’ve driven around a lot of ‘em. There are many ticky tacky style apartment complexes, and we’ve looked at our share of those too. When it comes right down to it, real estate here is wildly more expensive than Chicago.

Once you get over the fact that comparable space is about $1000 more per month, some of the tradeoffs come more clearly into focus. Distance from work vs. distance from parks. Outdoor space vs. sheer square footage. Square footage vs. quality. Neighborhood vs. “community.” Proximity to anything vs. (gasp) buying a second car. We’re definitely holding off on another car, but everything else is pretty up in the air.

So, we put a deposit on a townhome in a giant apartment complex. They gave us 3 days to change our minds penalty free, and that ends tomorrow. One more place to see and we’ll have it figured out.

After 4 months of veritable wandering, we’re really looking forward to settling down again, sleeping in our own beds, eating off of our own dishes, etc. The biggest allure of the aforementioned townhome is that it’s available now, which means the movers can come Wednesday and we could be settled in by this time next week...