New Place

     This past Sunday, me and Lee-Anne got the keys to our new place. However, because I still have the lease at my old apartment, and because my Internet hookup is still here, I still have to work at my old place for a bit. That means it hasn't caused too much change to our living conditions yet.

I brought over a queen-sized air mattress, a blanket and a pillow, just so I could pretend I could sleep over. It turned out to be useful for planning where to put the bed though, because it's so easy to move an air mattress. My entire life, I've always put my bed in the corner of the room furthest from the door. I assumed this was some kind of ancient human instinct, as it would give a small amount of time to defend yoursef in the instance of an intruder. I'm being asked to question that logic and design choice, because it's harder to change bedsheets in a corner, and it blocks one person from getting out of bed without disturbing the other.

In a social psychology course I took, we were taught that people are more likely to be interested in cooking in places that have open concept kitchens. This is because you're still in a shared space with other people in your household, which turns it into a social activity. I got really fixated with this idea, because while I think most modern kitchens are open-concept, the one at my old place isn't.

And we have a double sink! My old place only has one sink, so this is an upgrade.

Here is the living space.

Two sinks in the bathroom, so each of us gets one. The shower is a little low for me, but I've lived in basement apartments before, so I should be able to get used to it.

We have a second bedroom!

And we have an on-site washer and dryer. This is big for me, because the laundromat at my old complex has four washers and dryers for 48 units, and usually two of them are broken because someone smashed them open to collect change. I've got to hike half an hour with a bundle of laundry to another laundromat and with my schedule and their hours, I often only have one day per week to get it done, with my ability to access it being weather-dependant. We share with the upstairs neighbours, but it's still a massive improvement.

We have central air conditioning here too, although the upstairs neighbours have control of it, and I can already guess our temperature preferances aren't going to be the same as theirs

 This year, Halloween was on a Blue Moon (when a full moon happens twice in one month), and it was also the time of year when it's bright orange. Despite Halloween being really minimal, it was the perfect Halloween moon. Lee-Anne's parents made some candy packs that I handed out to neighbourhood children. In the COVID hot spots, trick-or-treating was canceled. In Waterloo Region it wasn't, but lots of people chose not to, anyway. In my complex, lots of people were exchanging loot bags while staying distanced, like I did. Some households left out bags of candy for kids to pick up without having to come close to anybody.