Kitchen

Today I will walk you through our kitchen, since it got cleaned up a little bit. This first shot is the main entryway. There are some built-in shelves on the left and the bathroom is on the right.


Once you enter the kitchen, the sink and counters are to your right. This picture looks back through the same hallway the first picture is taken from. We recently got a new faucet in the kitchen, that works very well.

On the other side of the doorway, you immediately find the fridge and stove. In this shot, you can see the call box for the front door.

Panning across that wall, here is the stove again. We had to get a new control knob installed so the oven would work, but it seems to be working really well now. Next to the stove, there are some blue shelves I built to hold more of our kitchen items. Behind the shelves is a small door that goes to somewhere (we have no idea where), but it is painted over.

Here is one last shot, showing the blue shelves again and one of the three windows in the kitchen. Our table is also in this shot.

Home updates

We continue to get things set up around the house. As part of that, we bought a few items of furniture this week. The first was a table to put our computers on. The table came with four chairs (I always like to have plenty of chairs around). here you can see our set-up. Brian's side of the desk has two monitors, while mine has the printer.

Here is the other item we purchased: a futon. It is a super useful piece of furniture, since it has storage space in the base for blankets/sheets, and it folds down into a bed for guests.

While I was in Michigan, the fix-it guy came over and fixed the oven. I am very happy to have a working oven now. Also when I was in Michigan, I found my cookie press (which I got as a gift several years ago--I think from D&R). Last night, I used the oven and the cookie press to make some cute bite-sized cookies. They are supposed to be flavored with vanilla, but I don't have any yet, so I put in cinnamon instead. They are tastey.

A few more pics from Michigan trip

Huge garden

Over the weekend, I visited my parents' garden patch, which is quite large in my opinion. It is a few minutes away by car, but the travel time is a decent trade-off for the amount of space they have to plant many delicious vegetables. This first picture shows the general size. Their plot is in the center (where they are both picking beans). Small portions of other people's plots show in the back on the left and right.




The first row in the garden is onions. I didn't have a really good idea of what onions look like in the ground, so that was interesting to see. They also have rows of carrots, beets, lettuce, green beans, zuchinni, summer squash, butternut squash, and tomatoes.

Dad with summer squash:

Mom picking tomatoes:

A few vegis picked during a short visit:

Columbia.

Yesterday I accepted at Columbia. It was a hard decision to make given the timing of Columbia's offer and the high quality of NYU's program, but I believe Columbia was the right way to go. I talked to five of my friends in faculty positions about it and the advice came down to 2 for Columbia, 1 for NYU, and 2 neutral. One of the two for Columbia was also very strongly for Columbia. For me, a deciding factor was also that a few people advised that Columbia had a stronger faculty-placement program and my own research supported that. And I am of course pursuing an LLM because I want to teach in the near future.

Columbia will be more expensive, involve more commute time, and I now have to get all my school stuff done all over again. Still, Columbia is the route I'm going. Classes start in September.

Pictures of the new place

Here are some photos of the new place, for the curious. First, here is the front of the building. Since we are in 2R, we are in the second floor (middle) on the right side (so closest to the peach colored building). It is a very long and skinny apartment. Our apartment runs to the back of the building in 5 rooms, starting the the nice front one with three windows, next the bedroom, new the office, next the living room, and finally the kitchen in the back.


When you enter the building, this is the view. You can see this long skinny building comes with a long skinny hallway and staircase. These are the stairs we lugged all our stuff up, and our door is just visible at the top of the stairs.

Here is another view of our door. The doors are kind of odd, in that they are set turned into each other, with a little less than a 90 degree angle between them (the doors open into the apartments, so they won't hit). This would be a difficult apartment to have if we were overweight, since everything is quite narrow. In this pic, the door on the right side is ours. The stairs continue up to the third floor (as you can see).

This final shot of the building shows the front door (from the inside looking out). I think it is a pretty door, with the decorative window. The tile floor has a colorful snowflake, which is kind of cool. Also, the building mailboxes are on the right. We have been getting our mail no problem--many thanks to those who have sent cards or letters.

So many things are still in boxes that I don't want to include inside shots yet, but I did want to put this photo up, to show the AC we picked up on our last adventure. Eve is also in this pic, but she is hard to find. If you see her, write her location in a comment. :)

The ferrets are very happy to have an AC, especially the last couple days, where the temps have climbed into the mid-90s. They also like to have all the boxes around. Here you can see Rex "helping" me unpack some clothing.

Adventures in mass transit: destination Long Island

Today we took our first trip using the local transit system. Here's why: Since we've been here, it has been relatively cool. Having the windows open to the breeze has been an effective way to keep the apt comfortable. But the weather predictions for tomorrow (Monday) show temps soaring into the mid-ninetys, with the heat index rising to over 100 degrees. We could handle this (although it will be hot!), but the ferrets don't handle hot weather well. So once we saw the forecast, we decided that we needed an AC unit stat. A couple of friends who live (relatively) nearby had an extra AC sitting in a closet. So today we ventured out to pick it up. Our destination? Long Island.

We started out walking to the local transit hub (Journal Square). We found a place to buy PATH tickets and found the right train. We rode that train to the end of the line--all the way to 33rd street & Broadway. From there, we needed to walk one block west to get to Penn Station. In Penn station, we found the LIRR (Long Island Railroad) and purchased round-trip tickets for the desired destination. Then we rode the LIRR for over an hour to reach our stop. Our friends were kind enough to pick us up from the station with their car. Overall, the trip went okay. It wasn't overly confusing, and now we know a lot more, which will make the next trip even easier. What made this trip complicated was that we were going to pick up a 50 lb AC unit. We discovered a handcart in the basement of our building, so we were able to use that, which made the trip possible. So the whole way there (and while we were trying to find the right station, locate the correct train, etc), Brian was lugging around a heavy handcart. (Yes, we walked through downtown NY with a handcart.) And the whole way back, Brian was managing a handcart with a 50 lb AC unit, while I was carrying a fan (also on loan). I never realized how many stairs are involved in mass transit until today!

The trip was long and tiring (and a bit expensive--I'm glad we didn't decide to move to Long Island and commute from there), but at the end of the day, we met our goal of having an window AC unit in time for the expected heat wave tomorrow. Since we were figuring everything out for the first time (and lugging an AC unit everywhere), the trip took a long time. We left at 12:20 PM and arrived back home around 7PM. We did stay at our friends' house for about 30 minutes, but still, it was a very long trip. We are all trained out for now! Brian did get a chance to preview part of his commute though, since the PATH train we took will be the one he will ride into the city (to either school).

Columbia and NYU

I haven't told everyone this yet, but over the weekend Columbia called and offered me a space in their LLM program. Columbia and NYU are very similarly-ranked programs, but Columbia has a somewhat better-known Ivy status. I have until tomorrow to decide what to do and it is a hard decision for me. I was looking forward to NYU and think well of its program. However, I also think very highly of Columbia and have been told particularly good things about their faculty placement efforts. I have been working to process all the information I can find (and reprocess some of the information I was looking at back when I was applying). I will make a decision of some sort very soon.

In other news, Jersey City is so far pretty good. We have some of the (presumably) usual trappings of a city: the roads are terrible, some people are jerks (others are not), and there is a lady living next to us who occassionally screams at the top of her lungs at ... someone. The apartment is much larger than we expected and we are optimistic about it working out, 2R vs. 2L mix-up not withstanding. We are also working on getting our bearings, which has been difficult given the rush of NYU/Columbia decision-making on top of the regular "we just moved" tasks and going to school tasks. In general, it makes me pretty on edge most of the time since there are a lot of balls to keep in the air and we are perpetually spending seemingly-insane amounts of money (truck rental, gas costs, food costs, tuition costs, furniture costs, etc., etc., etc.). And since Han will be doing school differently this year than last since she lives in NJ now, that means more costs there too. I think we will probably spend more money in this year than I made in the last two.

But, at the end of the day, this is all to pursue things important to both of us.

We have arrived

We have arrived in Jersey City. It has been a crazy couple of days, as we try to get settled in, get things unloaded and unpacked, and navigate a new place. When we arrived, we discovered that the apartment number given to us by our landlord was wrong. We are in 2R, not 2L as previously told. But there was someone there to give us the keys, so at least we had an apartment. This apartment, by the way, is a bit larger than we previously thought. There is a kitchen, living room, bedroom, and then two other spaces as well. None of these rooms are what I’d call large (and a couple are glorified closets), but it is still more space than we anticipated, which is great. This apartment is on the second floor, so we had a huge move-in job when we arrived. Luckily, a couple friends from the area agreed to meet us and help us unload. It was really great to have their help—these stairs are narrow and tall, and after several loads with heavy boxes, we all needed to take a break. It would have taken at least twice as long without their help, and my legs were protesting after just a couple hours. I’m not sure how other people move furniture into these apartments, since the doorways and stairs and extra narrow. Eventually we did get everything loaded into the apartment, which was great. Since we still had the truck for another day, we went out to look for furniture and groceries. After a few false starts and wrong turns, we finally found a Walmart. The furniture selection was not great, so we decided to wait on that. We did get some groceries and other items (we forgot to pack Brian’s pillows, we needed a trash can, etc). The NJ roads are really horrible—definitely the worse I’ve ever seen. It was a bumpy ride back to our new place. By the time we got back, it was past midnight and we were dead tired. We put away the groceries, ate some sandwiches, and headed to bed.

This morning, we walked to Goodwill to look for furniture. Their selection was very poor, so we did not decide to purchase any. Then we walked back to our truck, since we had to return it. (Last night, we couldn’t find a spot to park it for a while, so the truck was several blocks away from our apartment. I am happy we don’t have a car here.) The truck return location was difficult to find (there was an address, but the place we wanted was a couple blocks further down the road past the address?), but we made it and got the truck turned in on time. Then we walked back to our apartment. The walk was quite long (about 2.5 miles), but we don’t really have the bus system figured out yet. It was fine, just a hot day. We did some more organizing and unpacking today. We also spent some time switching our utilities over to the new address (since we set everything up at the wrong address). We still have some things to figure out (trash, mail), but we are starting to get our bearings. After several tries, I found a small corner market that sold onions (our only fresh produce thus far) and a fish monger, but there are still things to find. Tomorrow perhaps I will walk in the other direction and see what I can find in terms of produce (I seem to remember a fruit store). Our next major adventure will be to figure out public transportation, especially the PATH train into NYC.