Happy Birthday Christian!

Can I just say that New York is awesome? It is by far the best place in the United States and I am going to live there now. This is so exciting! We got there Thursday and immediately got into New York mode. We stayed at a hostel on the Upper West Side not too far from Charlie and George's, so I was pretty familiar with the area already. There are some great little restaurants around there, plus we had this amazing bubble tea. I got so excited everytime it was time to eat because this meant that we could pick a different type of food. It was authentic too. We looked at several apartments Thursday too in Astoria, Queens and in Manhattan. There was this apartment in Soho that was smaller than anything I've ever seen, but the neighborhood is wonderful. I would have liked to live there but not unless I could afford bigger.

On Friday, we walked all over Manhattan looking at apartments in different areas and then back out in Astoria. I have never sweated that much before in my life. The city was friggin hot. You moved and you started to sweat. We looked at some real shitholes though. So at that point we knew that we couldnt afford Manhattan and had to look at Astoria. That was when we found our apartment. It's five blocks off the subway and completely renovated. The bedrooms seem huge compared to what we saw in Manhattan. Its a mostly Greek neighborhood but a lot of younger people live there too. We have these scary hoodlum neighbors who do nothing but sit on their bikes and in the doorways so I hope once the summer is over they actually have shit to do like not bother us. We told them we had to come back to Ohio to get our things and they were like, "Man, I would just forget it and start completely over here." Yeah, uh huh. We went right away to do a credit check and make a deposit so that we wouldnt lose the apartment. It was a huge relief knowing that we had a place to live and could enjoy the rest of the weekend. That night we went and walked around in the West Village. I had the best tiramisu I've ever eaten (sorry Little Italy) at a small dessert shop. That is the one thing I never get tired of. Great food.

We spent the rest of the weekend shopping (I LOVE Bloomingdale's), eating great food, and starting to get comfortable with the different areas. I went back on Saturday and took pictures of the apartment and made some measurements to make sure we could fit things around corners and such. Then we started talking about decorating. I can't wait to move. August 14th, yeah baby!