Once again, I’m in Manhattan, except this time for good. For the sake of my own records, I’m going to transcribe a needlessly detailed of the past three/four weeks here:

I came up on the 29th (of May) to start apartment hunting and managed to find an amazing apartment — that was within budget! — within the first 3 hours. Cool. However, because I was traveling with my mom, we ended up staying at the West Side YMCA for the next week until she left. Mostly we did a bunch of sightseeing, bought me a bed, scouted out some furniture, etc. The best part was that we did the cancellation line for Wicked and ended up with amazing seats! The show itself was wonderful, though I felt the first act was significantly better than the second, the latter seeming quite rushed actually. We tried our hand at the lotto for it, too, but didn’t win. A guy that we’d been talking to, Randy, DID win and that was good cause otherwise his friends wouldn’t have come with him. Long story, but he was a nice guy and we were happy for him.

Anyway, overall, it was a good start to my NYC trip, but by the time my mom left I still had three weeks left until my start-date for work…eeek. Okay, so my agenda was pretty simple: 1) Decide on first-day-of-work outfit and 2) Furnish apartment. Technically, I budgeted $1,000 to buy all furniture. Technically, I’ve stayed well within that budget. In actuality, however, I’ve had a lot of expenses that are not strictly furniture, but are for the room nonetheless. For example, buying a floor length mirror, over-the-door hooks, totes and cubbies, hangers, etc. Either way, the room looks great (if I may say so myself), but yes, I have overspent. I’m not all that upset, really. I’m waiting for my two most expensive furniture pieces to come in, and I’ll post pictures when they do.

So, moving on. After deciding on my furniture (and in-between checking the order status and tracking on everything constantly), I decided to focus on decorating, such as buying a Mint Potted Topiary from Crate and Barrel and buying my piece de resistance…a painting!

I love my painting! It’s a wonderful 62” x 26” print on canvas (it’s a canvas transfer with some textured gloss overcoat) of Last View of Tuscany by Philip Craig. It matches perfectly with my comforters and bedding. In a somewhat amusing (ahem) story, I actually got it off Craigslist, except the first time I went to go get it — note that I had to take an hour-and-fifteen-minute subway ride — it started raining like crazy the second I got out of the subway. I ended up having to buy a Times from a Starbucks nearby and run over to the guy’s apartment being completely soaked and ridiculous with my drenched newspaper flopping over my head — only to reschedule for later. At any rate, the guy I bought it from was really cute and when I went the next day to transport the painting back home, the cab driver was, like, the nicest cabbie in the whole of New York. I feel the painting and I were kismet. I think I’m going to name it Bartholomew after my ex-car.

Also, my birthday has managed to pass rather uneventfully in comparison to last year. However, no one’s in town so that’s not really unexpected. I ended up hanging out with Marek, and we just caught up on the past semester, went to Pinkberry, etc. I’m also going out with my roommates tomorrow (it was supposed to be today, but both roommates had bad days at work so we just got dinner and drinks at Yukka and left it at that) to party it up, haha. Anyway, I’ll hold off on talking about the roommates (who are pretty great, by the way) because I need to get to bed soon…

So, now I’m roughly three days away from starting work (OMFG!!), and I’m both freaked out and completely excited as well. I’m restless to become a productive member of society, haha. At any rate, I love New York. I have yet to meet any unpleasant people, which I realize is an anomaly. I’d write more, but I’m quite sleepy. More tomorrow!