Spring Cleaning

Posted on by Jordan

It is still spring right?

Because we just got around to the first major cleaning this apartment has ever had.

We weren’t exactly living squalor, but somehow being on the run most of the time had gradually let us get farther and farther behind in general upkeep. Much of the past weekend was spent cleaning, with the additional touch here and there after work, things are starting to look darn good around here!

We have a second bedroom. As much as we tried to avoid it, that room became the “everything room” catching odds and ends from the first day we moved in. It has a bed in it, and I think in prior post I may have implied that it was just minutes from being ready to host a guest. Well, it may have taken a little more than just minutes, and it might not be 100% ready yet….

One of the things we discovered while attacking the remaining tasks in said room: Not only were things un-dealt with since the move in there, the prickly disagreement that contributed to them being dropped in there instead of being dealt with properly somehow was still attached! That isn’t to say we had a horrible weekend full of not getting along, it just means we discovered that many of the tasks were far more complicated than we could have ever imagined. Heather and I can both be rather… insistent when we know how something should be done. Sad to think we can discover that much when just cleaning a room, I am sure we will get to put everything we learn now to use a few times throughout the coming years.

In a less personal note, I cleaned out the freezer and found some frozen shrimp. The first half of the bag I had used to make this salad: Asparagus and Shrimp Salad. I forgot to take any pictures, but mine ended up looking about the same. Sadly neither Heather nor I were particularly taken with it, so I wanted to try something else with the remaining shrimp. We also had a number or cups of Greek Yogurt pushing their expiration date, so I pulled together a remarkably convincing Shrimp Alfredo that was at least close to healthy enough to be eating on our last week of this workout challenge! 🙂

Check back soon for my chance to work through the backlog of recipes that weren’t healthy enough for the challenge 😉

Also, I have no idea how this is turning into a 40/60 split between things we do and things I cook… but I guess it gives me something to talk about.

-Jordan

We Finally Got To Show Off The Apartment!

Posted on by Jordan

I should really be in bed at this point, but I wanted to throw up a quick note to highlight the passing of an important milestone.

Heather and I entertained dinner guests at our humble abode. Calling it dinner makes it sound fancier than it really was. Trying to have guest friendly food sort of conflicts with our ultra-healthy eating plan for this workout challenge we are doing, but I think we managed ok. 🙂

And now I must sleep!

-Jordan

Looking For Housing In Des Moines

Posted on by Jordan

So, the big news that sets up the post for today is that I have a job in Des Moines.  It will cut a few *hundred* miles out of the daily drive Heather and I were doing. The only catch is we have to find a place to move into before our drive actually improves.

To that end I spent yesterday looking into options in Des Moines. There are a lot of potential places we could live. After having my “we don’t have that much stuff” illusions shattered during the move to Atlantic, we definitely want to  find options that have plenty of room.

People often assume we will be buying a house and, while that option would certainly provide a lot of room, we aren’t going to do that right now. We hope to move into a house at some point, but right now we don’t even know how long we will be in Des Moines.  I realized that I am on track to move once a year, every year, from the day I left college.  That is kind of a sad fact.

Given the fact we don’t think buying house is an option right now, but apartments seem kind of small, we started looking into other rental options. There aren’t a lot of rental houses in the area we wanted to live (West Des Moines). There were a few duplexes that looked interesting. I should mention that Craigslist seems to be a pretty solid resource for finding houses and duplexes that aren’t listed in the apartment finder books.

What we found was that staying inside our price/location goals didn’t leave that many options beyond apartments even then. I took some time to visit the few we thought might work. I hate to be so down on the people doing the actual showing, but when your basically going to be doing business with an individual instead of a housing company… That first impression matters a lot to me. I went away from everything I looked at thinking “this place isn’t quite what we are looking for, and I don’t know about that guy as a landlord”

As our last option, the plan is to get an apartment and save like crazy towards a house down the road. I looked at a few apartments, and they were, well apartments. As a tangent to that, my last visit of the day (after five so Heather could come too) was to look at a condo an owner wanted to rent out.

The place was amazing! Really nicely done, two bedroom two bathroom unit. It basically had everything we were looking for, and the price was way cheaper than we expected to be paying for anything that big. We did not however decide to go with this option. Maybe you are wondering why. I am going to explain this in the form of a bulleted list addressed to the seller, who no doubt has the same question.

Why Heather and Jordan chose not to rent your condo:

  • Craigslist posting lacked essential things such as the location of the listing, and properly spelled words
  • Seller sounded disoriented on phone, gave rambling answers that lacked any content.
  • Touring a unit where the power has been turned off, while at dusk does not improve the presentation.
  • Seller said “I don’t want to live here!”, then declined to answer the follow up “why?”
  • Seller gave the impression he was going to be forced to move soon.

I don’t quite know how to put into words the general strangeness of the whole thing, but suffice to say we are still looking.

-Jordan

A Pefect Circle…

Posted on by Jordan

…Of buck passing.

I have been vaguely aware of the dumb rules surrounding grilling at apartments in Omaha for a while now, but I finally realized how dumb they are a few days ago. The rules have been the same at every apartment I have lived in, and known of in Omaha.

  • The apartment notes on grills says “We do not allow charcoal grills, but you are free to use propane grills on your balcony”
  • The Omaha fire code allows for charcoal grills near apartment buildings, and propane grills, but your not allowed to have or to store the 20lb propane bottles within 50 feet of the apartment.

What hit me is that its such a perfect dodging of being the final authority. Both the OFD and the apartments neatly avoid banning people from grilling / having grills in apartments, but combined there is no way your actually allowed to have a grill.

There is one detail I left out, is that the little lantern sized propane bottles are ok by every one’s standards, so the little ultra-portable grill we have is fine.

Every spring, you start hearing rumors of Omaha Fire Marshal inspections handing out fines to people with grills, but always from a friend of a friend. I don’t know of anyone who has actually had to pay a fine.

-Jordan

Didn’t Make It to Oz Last Night

Posted on by Jordan

The weather forecast was pretty dire yesterday afternoon. As the evening progressed, the sky to the west started to look rather dire too. Heather and I were setting on our bed, looking out the window while keeping one eye on the weather maps via. the laptop. We have a rather good view looking west, there is basically nothing blocking our line of sight for miles.

At some point during the more exciting part of the storm, I started pondering the fact that our apartment was rather exposed. The complex is named “Whispering Hills” I started thinking of new, more accurate names:

  • Wind-Raked Hills
  • Wind Buffeted Hills
  • Roaring Hills

I am sure there are more, but I can’t seem to think of them right now. In the end, the storm didn’t amount to much more than some wind and rain. I was thinking the entire time that I should take pictures, but the lighting wouldn’t have been great, and wind is remarkably hard to photograph. It would have been ideal to have some sort of web-cam rig doing a picture every five seconds, then I could have stitched together a video showing how quickly it got dark, then light again once things blew over.

-Jordan