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newnumber6And in honor of that, let's start with my impressions of the place after a week of living here:
Overall, it's a step up. More room, cheaper. But all that I knew before moving in. Some discoveries I've made since moving in:
Let's start with the positives.
We have a laundry room here, so instead of going out to a laundromat, we just go downstairs. This is especially convenient in winter. Also, it's cheaper than the laundromat. So there's a bit more unexpected savings of money at the new place.
It's relatively warm - except for the first day, we've had our heaters turned off completely and haven't turned them on again. Our utilities are included in the rent so this doesn't specifically help us per se, but at least it gives us hope they won't decide we need to start paying more (our old place kept threatening to make us pay utilities because we were using too much, despite the fact that the heaters were broken so they were always on full blast if they were on at all, and the landlords refused to fix them). Don't know yet how bad it'll be come summer though.
We can get a video feed of the lobby through out TV. This may be old hat to many others, but I've never lived in an apartment building before, so it's sort of cool. I often find myself checking it out when nothing is on TV. Plus, this means I can potentially get an early warning of ninja attacks.
Onto the negatives:
Thus far, we have no buzzer. The super's a little hard to get a hold of so we're unsure if this is a permanent condition, or if we just don't know how its supposed to work. This normally isn't a huge problem because we're generally antisocial and nobody would want to visit us, except when the cable came to hook up the rest of our stuff. He couldn't buzz us and our phone (which we get through cable) wasn't connected, so we almost missed him - we only noticed him on the camera and even then only when I realized he was carrying cable wire did I know it was him. I had to run downstairs and only barely caught him before he left.
The place is a little louder. We're actually in an almost ideal spot, too - we're at an end so we don't have any neighbors to the left or right of us to make noise (at least, not in our sleeping areas... we can hear them a bit if in the living room and such). However, we still have upstairs and downstairs neighbors, and the upstairs ones apparently have young kids who are prone to running around. So, there's some annoying noise there, at least during evenings. Luckily, it doesn't extend too late in the night. Otherwise my main source of noise is my roommates, who are actually farther away than before so it's a little quieter.
My room also doesn't get quite as dark as I'd like it to at night. It's still sleepable, but I prefer it a little darker. But, since most of the time I sleep with a pillow over my eyes anyway, it's only a minor problem. Also in the category of 'minor problems', it's a little hard to hear somebody knocking on the door from our rooms.
So yeah, the positives still outweigh the negatives. Sadly it doesn't seem we have hot single women for neighbors, but it was a pipe dream anyway. :)
TVwise, Heroes has of course been awesome these last two weeks (and has inspired me to start work on a couple heroes icons), it's just a shame we have to wait 5 more for the next new ep. Lots of other things have been in reruns, but I've seen all but the last episode of Stargate SG1 now. Also some thoughts on LOST, BSG Jericho, I'll try to be remarkably unspoilery behind the cut.
Okay, well, the penultimate episode was actually pretty good, but I really get the feeling that, if this _wasn't_ the last year, a certain plot element would have extended past this episode and into the next year of stories... and I really would have liked to see that.
The two episodes before that? Meh. Filler. They had a couple interesting points to them (I kinda liked that not-so-subtle dig at their cancellation), but overall I wish they did something else in both cases. Of course, I guess you need a Jaffa Revenge Episode on a regular basis for Teal'c, but there really was nothing exceptional about this one, and for the last few episodes I wanted something cooler. Anyway, hopefully the last episode will be decent.
LOST's been not bad these last few episodes... not as good as it used to be, but I didn't feel like it was a waste of an episode most times. I really think they need to give up on the idea of centering episodes on Jack and the Others, though. Oh, and Locke? Man, what happened to you? You used to be cool. Now you're just a chump. And an idiot. I hate to say it, but you should have been eaten by the monster instead of Eko.
As to BSG? I don't buy it.
Let's see, what else... because my non-writing-week was taken up mostly by moving stress, I've decided to make this week a writing amnesty week, with a little bit of intention to make it an editing week. I'll try to do some editing of the stuff I've already done.
Book Foo:
Finished: Stardoc, by S.L. Viehl
Started: Time's Eye, by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
Still Reading: The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons (reread, Friday and sunday)
Some thoughts behind the cut.
Stardoc wasn't bad. I do kinda like the 'medical SF' subgenre, with doctors treating alien patients and the like. This was a take on it that's a little more modern than the Sector General books by James White, but at the same time doesn't quite satisfy as much. I'm not sure what it is. I think it's that to a large extent, the conflicts seem artificial and the solutions a little too easy. The character's also a little too ubercompetent (which I suppose was also the case with Dr. Conway in Sector general), and at some times reading a little too much like a Mary Sue. But on the whole it's not bad. I'll probably read furthur books in the series at some point.
Time's Eye is about something happening which brings all sorts of historical eras into contact - sort of a jigsawing of the world with each little piece of the world dragged from a different historical period. This is one of my little pet subgenres of science fiction - sort of like Island in the Sea of Time and 1632, where whole communities must interact with a radically different time, for keeps. Even if the stories sometimes aren't the greatest I enjoy reading them and playing through the various scenarios in my head in a 'what I'd do in that situation' type way. I haven't gotten very far in the story yet though.
Overall, it's a step up. More room, cheaper. But all that I knew before moving in. Some discoveries I've made since moving in:
Let's start with the positives.
We have a laundry room here, so instead of going out to a laundromat, we just go downstairs. This is especially convenient in winter. Also, it's cheaper than the laundromat. So there's a bit more unexpected savings of money at the new place.
It's relatively warm - except for the first day, we've had our heaters turned off completely and haven't turned them on again. Our utilities are included in the rent so this doesn't specifically help us per se, but at least it gives us hope they won't decide we need to start paying more (our old place kept threatening to make us pay utilities because we were using too much, despite the fact that the heaters were broken so they were always on full blast if they were on at all, and the landlords refused to fix them). Don't know yet how bad it'll be come summer though.
We can get a video feed of the lobby through out TV. This may be old hat to many others, but I've never lived in an apartment building before, so it's sort of cool. I often find myself checking it out when nothing is on TV. Plus, this means I can potentially get an early warning of ninja attacks.
Onto the negatives:
Thus far, we have no buzzer. The super's a little hard to get a hold of so we're unsure if this is a permanent condition, or if we just don't know how its supposed to work. This normally isn't a huge problem because we're generally antisocial and nobody would want to visit us, except when the cable came to hook up the rest of our stuff. He couldn't buzz us and our phone (which we get through cable) wasn't connected, so we almost missed him - we only noticed him on the camera and even then only when I realized he was carrying cable wire did I know it was him. I had to run downstairs and only barely caught him before he left.
The place is a little louder. We're actually in an almost ideal spot, too - we're at an end so we don't have any neighbors to the left or right of us to make noise (at least, not in our sleeping areas... we can hear them a bit if in the living room and such). However, we still have upstairs and downstairs neighbors, and the upstairs ones apparently have young kids who are prone to running around. So, there's some annoying noise there, at least during evenings. Luckily, it doesn't extend too late in the night. Otherwise my main source of noise is my roommates, who are actually farther away than before so it's a little quieter.
My room also doesn't get quite as dark as I'd like it to at night. It's still sleepable, but I prefer it a little darker. But, since most of the time I sleep with a pillow over my eyes anyway, it's only a minor problem. Also in the category of 'minor problems', it's a little hard to hear somebody knocking on the door from our rooms.
So yeah, the positives still outweigh the negatives. Sadly it doesn't seem we have hot single women for neighbors, but it was a pipe dream anyway. :)
TVwise, Heroes has of course been awesome these last two weeks (and has inspired me to start work on a couple heroes icons), it's just a shame we have to wait 5 more for the next new ep. Lots of other things have been in reruns, but I've seen all but the last episode of Stargate SG1 now. Also some thoughts on LOST, BSG Jericho, I'll try to be remarkably unspoilery behind the cut.
Okay, well, the penultimate episode was actually pretty good, but I really get the feeling that, if this _wasn't_ the last year, a certain plot element would have extended past this episode and into the next year of stories... and I really would have liked to see that.
The two episodes before that? Meh. Filler. They had a couple interesting points to them (I kinda liked that not-so-subtle dig at their cancellation), but overall I wish they did something else in both cases. Of course, I guess you need a Jaffa Revenge Episode on a regular basis for Teal'c, but there really was nothing exceptional about this one, and for the last few episodes I wanted something cooler. Anyway, hopefully the last episode will be decent.
LOST's been not bad these last few episodes... not as good as it used to be, but I didn't feel like it was a waste of an episode most times. I really think they need to give up on the idea of centering episodes on Jack and the Others, though. Oh, and Locke? Man, what happened to you? You used to be cool. Now you're just a chump. And an idiot. I hate to say it, but you should have been eaten by the monster instead of Eko.
As to BSG? I don't buy it.
Let's see, what else... because my non-writing-week was taken up mostly by moving stress, I've decided to make this week a writing amnesty week, with a little bit of intention to make it an editing week. I'll try to do some editing of the stuff I've already done.
Book Foo:
Finished: Stardoc, by S.L. Viehl
Started: Time's Eye, by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
Still Reading: The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons (reread, Friday and sunday)
Some thoughts behind the cut.
Stardoc wasn't bad. I do kinda like the 'medical SF' subgenre, with doctors treating alien patients and the like. This was a take on it that's a little more modern than the Sector General books by James White, but at the same time doesn't quite satisfy as much. I'm not sure what it is. I think it's that to a large extent, the conflicts seem artificial and the solutions a little too easy. The character's also a little too ubercompetent (which I suppose was also the case with Dr. Conway in Sector general), and at some times reading a little too much like a Mary Sue. But on the whole it's not bad. I'll probably read furthur books in the series at some point.
Time's Eye is about something happening which brings all sorts of historical eras into contact - sort of a jigsawing of the world with each little piece of the world dragged from a different historical period. This is one of my little pet subgenres of science fiction - sort of like Island in the Sea of Time and 1632, where whole communities must interact with a radically different time, for keeps. Even if the stories sometimes aren't the greatest I enjoy reading them and playing through the various scenarios in my head in a 'what I'd do in that situation' type way. I haven't gotten very far in the story yet though.
