Okay, wow, time has flown! I may have to change the title of my blog, because life has been actually pretty exciting lately. Here's a quick rundown of our non-boring lives lately:
1. We are moving! Only one mile, mind you, but we are moving! Our landlords decided to raise the rent for this fall, and while we don't hate our current place, it just seemed like we could get a much better value elsewhere. So we started apartment hunting. It wasn't easy, because we were looking for a place with *more* space and most of the1 bedroom apartments around here are tiny (college town). In fact, a lot of the 2 bedrooom apartments around here are tiny too! We started feeling like maybe our apartment wasn't so overpriced after all and maybe we would just stay...
Then we found an apartment that was *really* nice--newly remodeled, had a dishwasher, nice tile floors, granite counter in the bathroom, etc. It was smaller than our current place, but it had a carport and the lady was going to let us store some of our stuff in the basement. And it was cheaper than our current place (so definitely cheaper than our current place would be in the fall). The only problem: she was trying to lease it *now*, not in August. We started considering subletting our apartment and moving right away. I put our apartment up on craigslist to see if we'd get any response. We got one guy who was pretty interested, so we told the lady we wanted to sign the lease. "Oh," she said. "Someone else just signed it today." Doh. (So, Amers, I can empathasize with a small part of your recent house-hunting frustrations!)
We were back to square one. We thought we'd probably just stay here after all. Then, Kevin got really interested in a duplex up on craigslist. This one was also trying to lease in April and not August, but since we previously had opened our minds to the possibility of subletting, we decided to look into it. We went and saw it, and we LOVED it. It has 2 bedrooms, a FULL (unfinished) basement with a washer/dryer (heaven!!) and a nice little yard with a garden. The price is very reasonable--higher than we would be paying in the fall, but we felt like it was a much better value. So we did it! We signed the lease. And, we found a subletter too! She's signed her sublease. So now, all we have to do is move, which we're doing in less than 2 weeks. Craziness!
2. My little brother is going to take my family (parents, siblings, and spouses) on a trip to Mexico (Cozumel, which is close to Cancun.) He works for Epic games and just got a giant, humongous bonus for this game he worked on (Gears of War 2), and he insisted he wanted to spend some of it in this way. It turns out direct flight tickets from Chicago to Cancun cost less than $300!! That's cheaper than flying home to New Mexico usually. We're all going to stay in this big beachhouse that Matthew's renting. We leave at the end of May--awesome!!
3. And...I'm going to Ireland in June! I know, I know--it's right after Mexico. I'm going to be a world-class traveler! Kevin got a paper accepted into this prestigious conference in Ireland, and I decided to come with him. My reasons were the same as when I went with him to Germany--the hotel and Kevin's plane ticket are already paid for by Purdue, so it will cost a lot less for me to tag along than it would if we just both up and went for fun. We don't have any kids yet and that probably won't be the case for much longer (I said that 2 years ago too...hmm....hopefully it's much truer this time), so it was the chance of a lifetime. Well, twice in a lifetime apparently. I'm way excited about it, but I actually feel kind of guilty about it too. I mean, I have been so blessed to go on so many amazing trips lately--Germany, Hawaii, now Mexico and Ireland. It's really not fair that I get to do this many and lots of people haven't been on any. And even though it's a great deal to go to Ireland without having to foot the whole bill, it still will cost a good chunk of money for the part I do have to pay for. It's not that we can't afford it, but it somehow feels...frivilous maybe? But then again, we really won't have these opportunities forever. And I really have treasured the memories of our previous trips. I never ever would have ever imagined myself going to these places--when I was younger I just never saw myself as the traveling type. But when opportunity knocks, how can I not answer?
