The Unemployed and Homeless go Apartment Hunting

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New Haven was again really just a stop over with a chance to get the local food and see my family, and, hopefully, catch up with some friends. It was also a nice little opportunity to relax and reset myself for the upcoming 7-week road trip with Bethany around America.

Tuesday, June 3rd:
I guess I was still on European time, because despite the little sleep I got, I was up early and talked to mom before she was off to the office. Just caught up about life and everything, nothing special. I spent most of today down in front of the computer, updating the blog and checking emails and working of bank stuff. I also tried to get a hold of a few friends, but no one was available tonight, so it will have to be next time I’m in town. Eventually, around 2 or so, I decided I was hungry and headed on down to Louie’s Lunch for a burger and a bit of conversation. Then back home until dad and Dave got home from work and the gym so we could head downtown to pick up mom at the office and get some Pepe’s.
As we waited in line for only about 2 minutes, there was an Irish guy a year younger than me sitting on his own, and after a minute of conversation, mom invited him to eat with us. It was his first time there, that can’t be on your own. Great guy, turns out his name is Bronson and he was originally a Yale class of 2007, so he is very good friends with some good friends of mine, but had dropped out to play music in Florida for a while and was back to finish up. He and Dave traded phone numbers and should hopefully hang out this summer. We headed home, I talked to Gallo for a minute and said we’d get together next time I’m in town, then I had another long conversation with Bethany and I crashed for my early train to DC in the morning.

Wednesday, June 4th:
Up, said the goodbyes to the family and to the train in a timely fashion to find the train had died somewhere in Rhode Island. After an absolute cluster-fuck of errors in getting a train for us and the people bussed down from Hartford (the tracks there were closed because, according to the rumor mill, there was a hostage situation next to the tracks and they didn’t want anybody to get hurt), we left New Haven about 2.5hrs late and made it to New York. There, we had to change trains and slowly made it down to DC into what was a torrential downpour. It had knocked out power for hundreds of thousands in Northern Virginia and West Virginia, and it was significantly delaying flights into and out of BWI - fortunately, Bethany was flying into Dulles tonight.
I made it to the hotel, getting drenched in the process, and hung out there for a while, writing, and checking email before getting a hold of Aaron. The hotel is a nice place at the corner of Connecticut and Wyoming, so nice that they don’t even deign to give you parking or breakfast for free, as is always the case with expensive hotels. While there, I was able to contact the realtor I had lined up for Friday and everything seemed to be lining up just right. Aaron was generous enough to let me borrow his car to pick up Bethany, so I went down to Eastern Market to grab the keys. At about this time, he was knocked out of the Hold ‘Em tournament he was playing in, so I dropped him off at home and headed off to the airport.
We were very lucky in that there was no problem with Bethany’s flight from Jackson via Chicago, particularly because the weather had been so bad so close to here. But she got in just a few minutes late. I met her as close to the gate as I could and our long-distance relationship was finally over. We were now going to be together for as long as either of us could figure on.

Thursday, June 5th:
And we’re off on the house hunt. After a quick stop by Starbucks, we headed down to Ballston to start the search from the western end and work east - today at least. We had lots of apartments, lots of misses and a few hits. Because of the cost, we were looking at large 1-bedrooms, but did see a few 2-bedroooms. Interestingly, all the places that we like were run by Archstone. It’s funny, the best places often tend to hire the best people to work there and show the units, and it is clear who invests in their people and their properties. Bethany was very cute about it, she drew little hearts above the places she really liked.
We ended the hunt just a bit early and headed back to the hotel so that Bethany could change for her interview at Adas Israel, a very large Conservative synagogue on Connecticut Ave, as she plans to work part-time while she’s in class for the next two years. As we were running late, she went up to the room and I grabbed the car to drive her up, and after dropping her off, I went back to the room to wait and confirmed all the details with Aaron Margolis for the Nationals’ game tonight.
Bethany lost her metro card, so she had to walk all the way back and absolutely tore up her toe, but the interview went very well. They practically offered her the job, pending her schedule working with them. Gave her a chance to change and we headed off down to the stadium. It was Bethany’s first Nationals’ game and my first at the new stadium, so neither of us had ever been to that metro stop, which was a mob scene getting off. Despite being a bit late, we met up with Aaron at will call and grabbed the tickets Ed and Deb Cohen were kind enough to leave for us. Being late, though, we missed the Ryan Zimmerman bobble-head giveaways.
Not surprisingly, the Cohens left us great seats: about 15 rows up behind the visitors’ bench on the 3rd base line. We were just enjoying the night and the game - the Nats jumped out to a 7-0 lead - until Aaron called Deb to say thanks for the seats. She said that she wouldn’t be able to make it to the game, but that Ed and their eldest daughter, Jaclyn, were arriving late and would love to see us. Around this time, the Cardinals started making a comeback and the Nats’ bats cooled off, but Aaron spoke to Ed and we were invited up to the owner’s box. We, of course, went up and got to see the box in the new stadium. Absolutely glorious; it has indoor and outdoor spaces with everything you could want when watching the game - even TV’s inside so you can see the game when getting food. Bethany and I settled in after saying hello to Ed, Jaclyn, Ted and Annette (basically the whole ownership group) and got back to the game. St Louis tied the game up and it went into extra innings, and as I have never seen the home team win here, I leaned to Aaron and said that I may be bad luck, as the last time I was in the owners’ box, the Nationals also had a come-from-ahead loss. We were all very worried as the Cards went up 1 in the top of the 10th, but in the bottom of the frame the Nationals won on a walk-off 2-run homer. That is how to see a baseball game, with a walk-off homer seen from the owners’ box. We said our goodbyes and thank you’s and grabbed a Zimmerman bobble head from the pile in room and made our way home exhausted.

Friday, June 6th:
Up again for one more day of looking, starting at Clarendon this time and working our way west to Virginia Square and George Mason Law School. Again, really just saw one place that we really liked, just about 4 blocks from Mason. Today we met with the realtor - a replacement, unfortunately, as the one I had corresponded with had fallen ill. Mary, the replacement, only had 4 options to look at and only 2 were in a location that was acceptable to us, and both of those were in the same building, and smaller and more expensive than the 2 1-bedrooms we found that we really liked. She also seemed a bit over her head, so it was a waste. However, we decided to give her another shot at it tomorrow afternoon. After we parted ways, we found one last place we liked and called it a day as the leasing offices were closing.
After a long day of looking, we hoofed it on over the Key Bridge to Georgetown and Bethany’s grandfather, Dan’s, place. We caught up with him a bit and the three of us walked down to Clyde’s for dinner. Once we finished up with a great meal and surprisingly talkative Dan Zwick, we headed on over to Aaron’s place, as he was kind enough to give us some floor and an air-mattress for 3 nights. It really is wonderfully nice to have good friends who will give help you out when you need it.

Saturday, June 7th:
Today was marked by a little more looking on our own and a few more misses with Mary the realtor, though this time she did give more, better options. We also hit the two places we liked the best again, and, as one was taken earlier today, our minds were made up. I called Aaron, and as he had plans tonight, Bethany and I headed on over to Zorba’s, a Greek Place just north of Dupont, and then on to Gallery Place where we caught the new Indian Jones movie, as I hadn’t seen it and Bethany was willing to go again. While we waited, we checked out Linens ‘N Things for some things for the new place. I liked the movie, thought it was a bit weird, especially the parts in New Haven. After the movie, it was back to Aaron’s and to bed.

Sunday, June 8th:
Got right up and went off to the leasing office at the new complex we had decided on and got the leasing paperwork started. Since we were new to the neighborhood, we decided to check the place out by walking on over to the Giant (which has a great fresh produce section, but nothing Kosher to speak of) and found a BBQ joint we’ll need to try out.
After getting the neighborhood down, we made our way back to Aaron’s where he had gone out to grab some burger patties which we grilled up. While at Aaron’s we got the rest of the paperwork for the application finished online. Aaron, Bethany, Aaron’s roommate, Sean, and I ate and chatted and just hung out for the rest on the night before heading to bed for our last night in DC until we move into the new place in July.

Monday, June 9th:
Last day in DC. Bethany and I got up after Aaron and Sean had gone off to work, so we grabbed out stuff and headed off to Union Station to throw our bags in a locker until our train to BWI for the flight to Houston and the start of the road trip. Tomorrow is also my cousin Berkeley’s 3rd birthday, so we knew we had to get her a present from DC. I spoke with my aunt about what she likes and I settled on little dinosaur teddy bears from the Natural History Museum. After our quick run there to grab the gifts (I got 2 and a bouncy-ball), we went down to the Museum of the American Indian because we had a few hours to kill, it was close, and since lunch was terrible, the fact that their café let us stay there getting refills and killing time was also a bonus.
When it was time to get back to the station for the MARK train to BWI, we grabbed our bags and my US rail troubles continued. The train before us had died, then ours was overloaded with people, so we were told that Amtrak had room for 200 of us, when they really only had 100 at most. We ran over there and couldn’t get on that train. Groups of us were herded back into the station waiting areas against our will - with the high heat and yelling, tempers soon flared amongst many of our fellow passengers - and eventually got onto a later train with tons of other people who should have all been on earlier trips.
We eventually made it to BWI, checked in and went through security. It was soon discovered that I did have my little Swiss Army Knife that I had bought in Brasov, except it was not where I was looking for it, and it was taken (eh, it only cost $4, no big loss). We ate and went down to the gate, where we found that the flight was delayed. This delay ended up taking 2 hours, so we got to Bethany’s dad’s place at about 1am after the Super Shuttle ride. We packed and did some laundry before crashing at 3, knowing we would have to be up in 4 hours to start the drive to Albuquerque.

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Photos

Us
I know I look like a complete goon here, but whatever, we're in the Owners' Box