bingshui.org

the Life of Zim

29th September
2009
written by dzimney

I can’t be believe how long it’s been since my last post. Nearly a month! I honestly couldn’t say if it’s been because I’ve been that busy or that boring for the past month. So, here I’ll try a little recap.

First off, this past weekend Laura and I signed a lease for a new place here in Portland. We’ll be moving at the end of October. We’re pretty excited about having a new location, but will definitely be sad to leave this house and of course our awesome landlord Erin. This house has really been awesome to live in and it still amazes me how much we lucked out finding it on craigslist. So why are we leaving?

Reason #1, because this neighborhood sucks. I’m sorry to all the die hard St John’s lovers out there, but I’ve gotta be honest here. St John’s has a lot of good qualities and it’s totally improving all the time, but as of right now it kind of sucks to live here. It’s a little on the ghetto side, and were Laura and I are right now, it’s kind of on the edge of the ghetto side of the ghetto. Then there was the “we got robbed” factor. It’s far as hell from anything exciting going on. We’re 4 miles from a decent grocery store. And for working from home and wanting to get out during the day once in a while, there’s nothing to do around here. There are about 2 coffee shops, one of which is never open. To sum up, St John’s is not why we moved to Portland.

Reason #2 is that we want to explore the city while we’re here. I think even if we loved it here in St John’s it would be good for us to move around a bit to get to know Portland better. If we’re here, I want to be here and experience this place to the fullest. We’ve done North Portland, now it’s time for Northeast Portland, and after that maybe Southeast, who knows.

And of course Reason #3, is we’re kind of getting a sweet deal. Kind of. We’re moving to a really nice place in a really really nice part of town (at least compared to our current location). It’s right around the corner from coffee shops and restaurants, which will be awesome for me working from home. The house a little bigger, nice yard, and a garage. No landlord living downstairs — although, we haven’t had much to complain about having a landlord living downstairs here. This place is just going to be a better fit. It’s much more in line with what we wanted to move here for.

The downside of course is that it’s more expensive. Fortunately though, part of our deal is first that it’s “month to month”… basically if bills are getting tight, we have the option to give a 60 day notice and get out of our lease early. 60 days is a lot, but at least it’s there. So it’s more expensive, but pretty well priced for what we’re getting, and there’s a lot more flexibility. Of course we have a ton of flexibility now, but we just need to get out of this neighborhood.

It’s such an odd feeling moving. We’re both really excited for our new place for so many reasons; and we’re so excited to get out of St John’s for so many reasons; but we’re really going to miss this house for so many reasons. It’s just a really great house, in a not so awesome neighborhood. And I don’t say that just because of the robbery. There’s sirens often, cars speeding down the street, meth dealers in the house across the street — exaggeration Mom. It’s just not a sweet place to live. But this house, this house is awesome. We’ll miss it.

I’m sure there’ll be more on the move in later posts. I just need to make sure I’m making posts. :)

BTW: I’m really exhausted as I’m writing this, so if there are a ton of typos or if it just plain doesn’t make sense, my apologies.

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