decidedlyodd

After a lovely complementary breakfast at the hotel (they had waffles!), I went back upstairs to my room to scour craigslist and the classifieds in the newspaper for apartments. I ended up calling probably about 10 places up, but I only spoke to one person (the other 9 were voice mails). I met the manager of the building at 11 and looked at the place. They were asking $1000 for a 2 bedroom, which is on the low side of my price range. The place was relatively small, on the ground floor and had bars on the windows (never a good sign). The neighborhood seemed nice though. Close to shopping and nightlife, but enough blocks off of it to be in a quiet place.

I then walked around a bit more, trying to find another place I was planning to check out at 1pm, when there was supposed to be an open house. After finding it, I wandered some more until I stopped for lunch at a Pho place (mmmm, pho) on Broadway. While in the restaurant, I realized I had a missed call from one of the places I had called this morning. I figured I’d go to my next planned showing and call the guy afterwards. I then headed back over to the place I had scouted out for the open house, but nobody was there. I waited around a bit and called the number (voice mail only).

Eventually, I gave up and called back the guy who left a voice mail for me while I was eating lunch. I convinced him to show me the place right away as opposed to waiting until tomorrow. I nearly ran over there, although it was a bit further than I thought. The place was pretty nice. I think I’d be willing to pay a little more for something nicer (rent would be $1095/mo + $65/mo for parking), but it was much better than the first place I saw. A big plus too is that it’s close (just a couple blocks) to the express bus stop over to Redmond.

Now that it’s the afternoon, there’s a whole slew of new listing on craigslist, so I’ll probably make some more calls (and call people I never heard back from again) to see a couple more places this afternoon and evening. Of course, it’s raining again, but I’m taking a break for the time being to dry off.

Some interesting things I experienced while walking all over Capitol Hill this morning: a couple crushed PBR beer cans in the gutter (there must be hipsters around), two women holding hands while walking down Pine Street, the REI flagship store (need to go visit that some time), a couple attractive guys with whom awkward eye contact was made (hmmm, were they gay or just hip?), lots of water laying on the ground and falling from the sky.