So here's a brief visual tour of my apartment, now that its in livable nice shape:
This is the view as you come in my front door- small foyer space to the left, where my bedroom door is, and if you do a 180 around the corner to the left, you enter the bedroom. Down the hall on the left is the bathroom, straight ahead is the dining room which is our "study" (where our desks are), and the door farther ahead is Josh's bedroom in the back. Through the dining room is the kitchen. We retained the "Hall of Flags" from our last apartment but in a more tasteful manner- I folded each flag in half but its still apparent what they are. They are who Josh and I are- Americans, Germans, Italians, Indiana-ans, and then our adopted selves- Chicagoans (blue and white flag with stars) and Mexicans (given to Josh by work friends- he's basically the only white person there).
I put up the coat rack. There's a closet next to it.
So if you come in the front door and turn left and left, this is what you see- the living room, with bay window in the back looking down three floors to the street. Tapestry on the left is my pride and joy, one of two, and Tiffany hates them both :) The stand lamp in the back is thanks to Chris, the small bookshelf from Paul Kowalski when we moved out Senior Year, and the hanging lamp you might recognize from my Niles house- I put it up here cause there was a blank electrical box in the ceiling. Nice touch is that its not connected to any switch, so I hafta unscrew the bulb to turn it off. Awesome. There's blue Riesling bottles from Sam's Club, plants from Josh's parents and Grandma's funeral, a couch from First Response that is grrrrrreat, and a recliner in the foreground from Grandma that was waiting for me in the basement in Niles (its weird to me to say "my parents' house, cause its MY house!).
Yeah dis gonna be long post. Anyway as you can see this is the same room (judging by the couch). We have a nice (looking) entertainment center and some ND Nat'l Championship banners up on the exposed brick, waiting for another date to be added to them... Charlie! The coffee table is something my friend Monica Go's sister made, and I made the top, and all my friends in college (and some girl cousins on holidays) used Paint Pens to paint things on it. And I used a White-Out pen to write song lyrics on the frame. Thanks to my parents for giant TV we now have! Its only fallen and dinged the hell out of the crappy-wood coffee table ONCE so far.
Next up is my bedroom- tapestry #2 on the wall. You can't see my nice full size platform bed much, but I like it. Its low, no box spring. Has attached end tables that look like they're floating. The window was covered because it was bright outside and stays covered cause my windows are WORTHLESS and its freezing outside. But I like it dark anyway for sleeping. The little shelf-y things are teak and from Chris from a fire job from First Response. The chair is from my cousin Michelle and although kind of a crappy color with radiator burns on the back, survived college and is still comfy. Its companion was lost to a friend who needed a chair. The dresser is from my dad. Box on the wall is a light box, purported *usually* for tripping out on LSD, and was made, unrelatedly to previous facts, by Uncle Paul in high school. I also have guitar plans on the wall, and to the right is a large-ish walk-in closet. Large especially compared to the two closets I never HAD in my old bedrooms.
The latest place to make me happy, down the hallway, is the bathroom. As you may have read, the floors were finally done, and I got new bathmats including a huge plush one for the shower, and decorated with some ND stuff on the walls, including an old water color of the dome that was my dad's, as were the ND basketball posters from the 70s that get a little saggy when I hypothetically take a long hot shower uh last night. But they dried and tightened up just fine.
I'm skipping Josh's room in case he doesn't want people to see clothes all over the floor uh I mean his meticulously decorated room. Its carpeted and about as big as mine with a small closet and big windows and a nice bed and a blue chair in the corner from my parents, as well as more Chris/First Response shelf-y things.
This is my desk in the "study"/dining room. Recently decorated wall. Pictures of Tiffany, pictures from Tiffany, from her mom, Lou Holtz signed picture from Grandpa, Escher framed drawings (Originals!!- no not really) from Chris one Christmas, and some other miscellaneous memories- photo of me from SB Tribune waiting in line for U2 tickets, framed by my dad, as well as a Rattlenhum Bar coaster from Australia from Grandma who had no idea what my email name meant, also framed by my dad. Two pictures of Thad, a grainy framed picture of ND 25 Mich 23. A new free printer on the desk and other misc. things. Love that desk. Especially the glass top. I can write on it with dry-erase!
Last room- the kitchen. We just got a table for $20 on Craig's List and three random colored chairs for $30 also. So now my kitchen is in proper living order. Got a nice Italy poster above the table, called Vini d'Italia, with the wines of Italy labeled all over the map. Kinda cool. Nathan's old iPod stereo provides tunes and the big wooden bowl on the sill from my parents holds my stash of bananas. The rest of the kitchen is just to the left of the first picture, so its small-ish, but big enough. As you can see, the floor is nice now. Huge crappy window does actually open- I think if there wasn't so much paint around the frame, the top window would just fall and break. The stove, cabinets, and fridge on the right side are all propped up by about an inch or so of wood and cardboard under the front so they stand up level- so stuff doesn't slide right out of the fridge onto the floor.
Here's a closeup of the side of our fridge, so people can see their Christmas cards on the side :) And that is all I have left to say for now.
