September 23, 2010 -- Day 382 -- Goodbye shared walls forever!

Today is the day that James and I say goodbye to sharing a wall with neighbors, stinky and otherwise.  Today, we're completely vacating the apartment (keep your fingers crossed that we get a deposit back).  The timing couldn't be better-3 new groups of renters just moved into the building.  The building is only 8 units and for the past 6 months or so, 3 of them have been empty.  This emptiness means less noise, less stenchiness, less chance that you'll want to use the clothes washing machine and it will be full.  Within a few days of new people moving in, we noticed a difference in the amount of smells that would waft around the building.  What it is about onions cooking that smells so nice at 7pm but so disgusting and gross at 7am?

This isn't to say that only rental apartments are stinky.  Many of you have heard my tales of my previous condo and my neighbors, "The Rasputins".  They smelled so much that one night the fire department was called!  When I went to the door to answer the knock of the firefighters, my neighbor, Rasputin, also answered his door.  The firefighter says, "There's been a report of a strange smell".  I'm guessing he was thinking of a gas leak, noxious fumes, toxic waste...something like that.  "Oh" says Mr. Rasputin, "that's us.  We had a stove incident."  Really?  A stove incident?  Like, you tried to cook something disgusting and it stenched up the complex?  S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E

Another stinky time, James and I came home to the condo and parked my car.  My parking spot was about 100 yards from my door.  Not close, but not too far.  We got out of the car and smelled mermaid.  Dead mermaid to be exact.  There was a smell in the air that smelled exactly like what a dead, old mermaid would smell like.  We kept walking and the mermaid smell got stronger.  We got to my front door and discovered that the smell was coming from The Rasputins condo-their door wide open for all to smell.  GROSS!!

No more shared walls for us!  Yahoo!!!!!

September 16 -- Day 377

Whew!  We've been living at the house for a couple weeks now.  Even though there is still work to be done, we're so grateful that we've moved in.  There are lots of boxes in the house and the garage but we're sorting through them to decide what to keep, what to sell, and what to throw away.  I decided that my volleyball trophy from 1992 was a throw-away, but I just can't part with the one from 1991.
James has had a great time being able to grill on our outdoor Weber grill again.  I look forward to getting out our new Kitchen-Aid stand mixer and making pasta and other baking jobs.
More pictures will come soon.