I'm a New Yorker!

Note: I don't have cable/internet at my apartment yet, so this post was written in Notepad on Saturday night. Sorry for the delay.

It's official, I'm a New York resident. I've been here for about three and a half hours now, and already it seems like the kind of place you could explore forever.

But let's rewind, this needs some backstory.

I got to the gate at Columbus International Airport at about 3:45pm. My flight left at 5:10. So that means I got about an hour and a half of reading and talking to Lauren done before take-off.

The flight was good (my first ever solo flight, FYI). The plane was so small the seat I got was both a window seat and an aisle seat. Talk about living in the lap of luxury.

I brought out the camera as we made our descent into LaGuardia, and here are the results:




Once we landed I booked it to baggage claim, got my stuff and took a cab to my apartment. I met someone from the real estate agency to get my keys, and before I knew it I was here.

Unpacking, resting, unpacking some more, more resting, and after all that I'll be damned if I didn't start to get just a little bored. So I got some shoes on and went exploring.

I took a stroll down to 79th, then over to Lexington, then somewhat diagonally back up to my apartment. All in all an area measuring four blocks by four blocks, and I saw more pizza places, sushi restaurants, grocerys, bars and Chinese restaurants than I've ever seen in my entire life. And I only saw about a third of that area. This is going to be good.

I ended up getting a slice of pizza at the pizza place next door, called Pintaile's Pizza. Turns out not only is it a pizza restaurant, it's an organic/health pizza restaurant. So maybe there's hope for me not weighing 400 lbs when I come back to Ohio after all!

That's about it for me for tonight. Tomorrow I'm planning on doing a little more exploring, in the daytime this time. I'm sure you'll hear all about it. Til' then!

I spent 24 hours in NYC and all I got was an apartment

I went to New York City this past Thursday and Friday to find an apartment for the Summer. I met a broker through the SA Forums who worked for Citi Habitats in New York that helped get it all figured out.

I ended up getting a place on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, furnished, for four months, at (what I consider) a reasonable price. So that's good. Let's take a tour:



Here's the front door of the place. Completely unassuming, right? Who would think that an ultra-cool super-stud will soon live just upstairs from here?

Let's take a step inside, shall we?



This is the living room, from the door to the apartment. Keep in mind when we saw the place someone else was living there, so pretty much everything that isn't furniture won't be mine.

See that bed-looking thing in the bottom right corner? That's a bed. On the other side of the bed...



...is a kitchen! Also most of the rest of the bed. Off to the right is the bathroom, just in case you thought I was going to have to pee in the sink. Gross.

After we saw the apartment and got all the paperwork out of the way, dad and I took a short (40-minute) subway ride downtown to see where I'd really be living: the Google building.



Google occupies the 4th and 6th floor of this building. It's worth it to mention this building takes up an entire city block. So it's pretty big.

And that's a short photo tour of New York City. Expect more pictures once I get there for real. Or heck, stop by any time you want.