Movin’ On Out

Well, the whole ‘movin’ on out’ project is moving along more quickly than I’d anticipated. The stbx found a roommate. Not a bad situation. Could be a whole lot worse. The roommate’s a middle-aged lady whom I’ve met on a couple of occasions. She’d like to move in by September. That might happen if she can come up with her portion of the rent, which would free up some of my funds to pay for the new place.

So I’ve been looking for a new place a little more seriously these last couple of days. The girlies and I drove around town just looking. I can’t believe how many apartment buildings there are in this town! The town we moved from in CA was overwhelmingly made up of single family homes. Here, I would not be surprised if the # of apartments was half again more than houses. And there are more than a few houses that have been converted into apartments. There are a couple of old timey mansions in the downtown area that are now apartment buildings.

I drove past a house near where we live now that had a for rent sign out front. It was older, probably built in the 50’s or earlier. Most of the houses of that era are very narrow and have basements. So I called the phone # and played a little phone tag with the landlady. The first message she left me stated that it was a 1 bed, 1 bath. That didn’t make a whole lot of sense, so I called back and finally found out that this little house had been broken up into 2 upstairs apartments and 1 down in the basement. Whoa. She said the downstairs tenant was a twenty-something guy and the other one was an older guy. Nah, I’ll pass. Doesn’t sound terribly kid-friendly.

And then there’s all the section-8 housing. Most of the new apartment complexes are section-41 (?) projects. They probably couldn’t afford to build the places without government grants for low-income housing. I make far too much to qualify. Which is kind of nice, I suppose, but when a non-section 8, yet comparable equipped apartment is $200-$300 more per month, it’s kind of frustrating!

We also drove past a fairly new apartment complex on the other side of town, yet much closer to work. Nice buildings with brick exteriors, even if they are very ‘cookie-cutter’. One indicator of section-8 housing is the type of cars parked in the lots. I don’t think I saw one rust bucket there, so that’s a hopeful sign. Can’t say the patios were all that well kept, but it seems people will a little money put it in their cars, rather than their cleaning habits. The website also lacked any mention of “Section 8 OK.” It doesn’t mention currently available units either. I’ll stop by there on Monday and get the scoop.

They have 5 different floor plans. This is the one I’d choose, if available:

It’s kind of annoying that they call it a “Townhome”. There other model is called the “Ranch Home”. It’s not a townhouse. It’s an apartment. And we all know it. I’d almost rather have 1 bathroom, just so I wouldn’t have to clean 2, but beggars can’t be choosers. It’s a little larger than a lot of the 2/2 apts around here too. The 2nd bedroom is probably big enough to handle the 3 girlies too. Could even give them the master bedroom. Another kind-of-nice thing is that the patio off the back has short lengths of privacy fence that open up to large community lawns. There’s also a sizeable playground and exercise room.

It’s also very close to the Cheyenne Greenway. The Greenway is quite an ambitious community project which consists of 28 miles of concrete running & bike path. It circles the city with plenty of twists, turns, and alternate routes. (The Greater Cheyenne Area is only about 6 miles across. The long way.)

So that’s been my weekend so far. Oh, and the local farmers market started up today too. That seems so weird to me. Back in CA, they’d have at least 1 every Saturday almost year round and 2 during the week in the summer. Here, the 1 only lasts about 3 months. So I took the girlies to that and got some really good salsa, peaches, cherries and corn on the cob. They don’t really appreciate the idea of purchasing locally grown yet. Yeah, the supermarket stuff is cheaper, but hey, it’s nice to help the smaller farms.

Hope you guys have a relaxing Sunday!