This will be a mundane post. Few observations, but many facts!
Oof. Today was a major oof day, but it ended on a positive note. It started on a positive note as well, I suppose, there was just an unfortunate middle bit that included lots of running, garbled phone calls, crappy communication (with a renter), and a shouting match between Ben and me. That only lasted a minute, but still. There was some serious frustration mixed in there.
At the mall, Mrs. Fields Brings you: Toastie Tastes of the World!!”
In case you couldn’t read that… here’s a closeup:
I think I’ll have… a Greek! No… an Italian! Actually, *pretty much anything* other than Australian.
Breakfast was lovely, we did some housing research and banking shenanigans, and took the dogs for another adventure walk (I’m going to stick pictures from the walk throughout this post because that’s most of what was interesting about today). Then we bused our way to a new mall to get groceries, when a housing contact called and said we could see a granny flat today. He said he’d text the address. We’d also been planning on seeing another place at 8 in a nearby suburb, so we booked it through the store, ran home, changed clothes (must look fancy for potential landlords. or solvent, at least), and booked it out again to catch another bus-then-train.
Duke looks on in confusion, but I’m all, “woooooo! buckin’ koala!”
And then crappy crap-storm started where the spur-of-the-moment renter didn’t text the address, so I called to request the address, he was somewhere rather noisy, I couldn’t hear the address, but I thought I heard the address, so we speed-walked to the wrong place, called, explained, found real address, ran to new address (long way off), saw address, saw renter, determined renter was full of shit and had been texting wrong number, or rather, several wrong numbers, bitch, were depressed by flat (broken, smoky, ad said no smoke, wtf), and at that point were miles (ok, but more than a kilometer, anyway) from the place we were really interested in seeing. See: brief shouting match over hypothetical destination of a bus that didn’t come. Frustration, anyone?
But, there was a happy ending! We did catch a bus to the correct place, then a train to the correct place, and managed to make it to the flat we wanted to see on time, and it was amazing!
I think of Australia as dry. Sydney *feels* dry. But there are snails! In trees!
It’s at the top of our price range, and unfurnished, but it’s in an optimal location for my please-please-actually-come-through research job. And the renters who own the property were fantastically nice. And it has TWO rooms, one for a bedroom, one for an office, plus a kitchen, a bathroom (with door!), and huge beautiful windows to let in lots of Oz sunlight. It’s dreamy, really.
We have another place, this time not a granny flat, that we’re excited to see on Friday, but we’ve both agreed that we’ll probably decide between the two at that point, and forgo further searching. The Friday flat is cheaper and fully furnished with a fridge and a TV, looks lovely and modern, and has a balcony. However, it’s only one room and is much further away from my please-job in a sketchier location. It’s going to be hard to decide. If the pictures lie and it’s really a dump, that will make it easy, I suppose. I just really hope that the granny flat from tonight doesn’t get rented out from under us. I secretly already have my heart set on it, can you tell?
The positive from all of this is that we saw several terrible places before finding one that is awesome, so we recognize awesome and appreciate awesome when we see awesome.
We celebrated with a pizza and some juice on the train ride home, and now we can fall into bed after a hot shower happy and satisfied.
Tomorrow: a full day of research: taxes, banking, health insurance, and of course some housing search (there could always be another super awesome flat that appears, I suppose). And, obviously, an adventure dog walk.
Snails! In a tree!