Adjustments

Some things i have had to adjust to in the new place:-

Ants in the kitchen
Less natural lighting
Older more worn apartment
Terribly laid out bathroom
No Thai delivery place close by
No easy parking

Positives:-

It's quieter - not on the bus route
I have a yard
I also have half a basement
It's warm!

The old apartment was on the top floor and had 2 skylights. In the winter, I froze all the time. The landlord didn't seem to believe me (or rather, he was too cheap) and we would get bursts of heat at 6am and 6pm and 11pm. The rest of the time was a fight to retain the heat from those long awaited bursts.

The Grays have the top floor now and are basically the reason why we are so cosy. They insist our heating system is 'defective' but they're just not used to living in Brooklyn in a 100 year old house on the top floor. And they don't have blinds either which don't help. Every other day, they are in our apartment tweaking with the thermostat. I'm just waiting for the realisation to sink in that the heating system isn't broken, it just isn't efficient! To make it worse for them, they used to control their own heat in their tiny 500 sq ft apartment in Chinatown and now they have double that space and no control. Mike and I have some adjustments to make to our new place, but I would say that the Grays have a bigger adjustment to make since they made a huge leap in location and size of their new digs.

We put our taking down the wall off for a bit until my job is done and Mike is back from Atlanta. We did buy a nice Douglas Fir Christmas tree and it's nice in the new dining room. Makes me happy every time I see it. Tomorrow, I will wrap some presents that I got for Mike and it will look complete.

Zohra might come to stay with us for a bit in the basement. If she takes this NYC job she's been offered she will be with us for 2 months. It would be nice pocket money (oil bill was $900!) but better than that, Zohra would be here!