Tuesday, June 21, 2011

June 21

  Dreams do come true, in the form of a tall, Irish, Ph.D.-holding man.

  No, not those dreams -- those are never coming true, to be honest -- but the dreams of an affordable yet tolerable living situation.

  I fled the house of hippie horrors this morning, leaving LL's pipe smoke and last words "Do you want to trade those carrots for some lettuce?" in the dust behind me. Went to work, explained what had happened, and it was like they just found out my house was destroyed by a hurricane. One of my bosses offered me her house when I told her I was currently between places. But no, I had lined it up with a guy on couchsurfing, which has turned out to be the best decision I ever made.

  I liked White Plains immediately when I drove in, because it's so normal. Nice parts, rundown parts, people of every color instead of just white dudes with arm length dreadlocks, a downtown that is sufficiently city-ish.

  I saw a Wal-mart with a parking garage on top today. I am officially at the end of the universe.



  I got to the guy's apartment and we talk for a bit. It had the potential to go awkward but, as we learned in various car rides across the Illionois plains, the key is to just keep talking. Eventually we go out to get dinner and find out where to hide my car overnight. There's no free overnight parking in the entire town of WP (what?), so we went to the next town (conveniently located a 20 minute walk from the apartment) and parked it at a baseball field.  We come back home and hang out for awhile, and before going to bed he mentions that I could rent his extra room for the same as what I'd be paying at my prospective new place in Newburgh.

  PROS: much closer to work, normal roomie, great apartment, nice town, shockingly cheap rent (he works for a huge computer something company and makes bookoo bucks which he apparently doesn't know what to do with)

 CONS: ... I guess sometimes it gets a little hot in here, I can't figure out how to turn the shower off

  The last one was a really scary experience. Here I was, after enjoying my first real shower in who knows how long and sanitizing all these terrible and possibly infected bug bites, flipping out in the bathroom because no combination of the three knobs would make the water turn off. I could make it blistering hot, I could make it freezing cold, I could make the faucet come on instead -- but never just off. I started getting dressed for the inevitable embarrassing event of waking my host and showing him what heinous acts I had committed, when finally I turned it off, in a move never to be replicated, I'm sure.

  And now I'm sitting here clean, fed, not creeped out, about to get a good night's rest in a bug and chicken-free zone.

  Why wouldn't I stay?

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