Here I am in lovely scenic New Jersey. You know, the GARDEN STATE. I drove in on monday night — the better to find an apartment, my dear! — and planned to go to Lyndhurst yesterday, park the car, and walk around with the intentions of really getting to know the area. And then it SNOWED. it went from high 40s to the teens in 10 hours and it snowed and iced and the roads got nasty and tractor trailors jackknifed and my BRAND NEW windshield wipers got all icy and unable to keep my window nice and spotless. It was brutal!
I did see a couple of apartments,
one was too far south, and kind of small,
the other one was on the north side and has incredibly weirdly sized rooms, no counter space, and only a few small cabinets.
I have a couple more apartments to look at today.
I am also kind of unsure about the town I’ve been focusing on:
it is a town with a walkable downtown and a train station and stuff like that, but it doesn’t have any coffee shops. Like, not even a starbucks, which strikes me as very weird.
The next town up, Rutherford, is way more towny, more shops, beautiful. It even has a used book store!
but the train there doesn’t go in the right direction for me in the AM. So my new strategy is to look in S. Rutherford for a place that is close enough to Lyndhurst that I can ride my bike (They’re only about 1 1/2 miles apart) to the train in good weather, and take the bus in bad weather. This might be overly complicated. If that’s true I’ll probably go with the Weirdly Sized Room apartment.
I do think that maybe my feelings about lyndhurst yesterday had more to do with me being incredibly grouchy after driving around NJ for like 5 years in terrible, no good, very bad weather. And I had a long time to think about it while I went back to JC to pick up the mister for dinner, because traffic was DREADFUL and the roads were TERRIBLE and it’s a good time that 1. I’m not afraid of slipping around and 2. that I know how to drive in snow and ice because there was a lot of that. We had a nice dinner w. friends and I am full and feeling a lot happier now that the sun is out. It’s back to lyndhurst for a 2Pm appt., so I’ll see if the mood sticks!
