New Digs

I knew it was a long drive to MDA from where we, well at least I, hang my hat (Lisa doesn't do hats as often) but I hadn't really done the math before Katie commented that round trip it was 52 miles. The more I thought about it the more that number seemed rather large. Combined with the information I already had in my head about how much time it took to drive that distance (on a good day 40 minutes, on a bad day more than an hour and a half) it became a more and more weighty equation.

Then we got a notice from our current property managers saying that we had to let them know by the end of August if we were moving out or not. As our August is going to be pretty busy we had to decide before August even started.

I made mention of the fact that we'd been kicking around moving different places and people had asked us, and then a friend of ours suggested their complex and how great it was. (This from folks who have lived twice as many places as us in about the same amount of time being married) And they even mentioned they were looking to renew this next year. Well that spoke volumes to us and we looked at where they were living. It was still over 14 miles to the medical center, but the same management company had a complex closer to MDA.

On Monday this past week (shortly after I had my face drilled into) we made the drive over to the complex to take a look around and see if they had anything available. We toured the demo unit, saw the grounds, talked to the staff, drove around the area, saw the location of one of the units available, talked about it... and signed up as soon as we got home.

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It's a good chunk more money than we are paying now (not nearly the double we were paying when we had the townhouse in Colorado and we living here though) however we are getting a 2nd bedroom out of the deal, AND (here's the kicker) it's 1.5 miles from MDA, which makes the commute 3 miles round trip. Which, if the weather and my health ever permitted it, I could walk! Also, the complex has a shuttle that runs to MDA in the morning and in the afternoon. I wouldn't even need to get Lisa to drive me to things like blood draws. I could hop on the shuttle and be back before long. At 3 bucks a mile a taxi trip (there are hundreds of them outside MDA) wouldn't even be that much!

It's on the 3rd floor again, so no one over our heads, and I will still get my stair exercise on a daily basis. It even has a fire place... yeah I know. We were thinking the same thing. A Fireplace in Houston? The kitchen is a bit smaller than anything we've had before, but honestly finding a large kitchen in an apartment setting is rather difficult. And with the extra room it will allow us to actually host people without making them sleep on the couch or something.

While we're not instantly saving in money, we will be saving in time, and gas, and wear on the car... and sanity? Plus we're within a mile of the light rail so if we wanted to go into down town for any reason it'd be pretty easy. (Or get to the Zoo, or a ton of museums) We'll be changing from West-siders to South-siders. I would say "That's how we roll!" but, honestly we'll be doing a whole lot less rolling after we move! (Late October)

Thanks for praying about this with us, the choice happened pretty quickly, and we got notice on Friday that our application had been approved, so we're officially "in". Thanks for praying!


~B.
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