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Okay, I promised to say more so here it is. Saturday was a super emotional day for us. We had been told by at least three different people last week that the places we *just* saw in the newspaper were already rented, one landlord told us there’s another rush of would-be renters in late July (coming up!), we’re afraid that we’ll end up in a place much more expensive than we planned, and we’re getting really, really, I mean really tired of living out of suitcases.
Then we go to this apartment showing scheduled at 12:30. The landlord lives up in Chicagoland. He bought this place for his son to live in while going to school and has kept it since then as a rental. It’s a duplex, but the only walls shared by the two units are between their respective garages – bonus. It comes with a washer & dryer – another bonus. It’s two-bedrooms, hardwood-like floors, and has a nice big fenced-in backyard. To top it all off, it was completely within our budget. This was meant to be.
The landlord, however, played hardball with us. Said another couple had just looked at it that morning and were really interested but didn’t want to move in till the end of July. If we wanted to move in sooner, say next week, then he might consider… hmm… haw… . Well, this was by far the best place we’d seen. So we fill out the application then and there. With the pressure, we agree to the early move in (even though we’ve already paid July’s rent at our current sublet) and then we leave and wait. And wait. And wait.
We sat through dinner feeling kinda sorry for ourselves. Rehashing the whole thing over and over to get some clues from things he’d said about whether or not he would rent to us in the first place. See, we got a little bit of a conservative vibe from him (may or may not be true, don’t know) and we were worried that being an all-girl couple might have scared him off. And we’re pretty sure that the first couple looking at the place didn’t even turn in an application yet. Why is the world so unfair, yadda, yadda.
But then that evening he finally called and said we got it, did we want to pick up the garage door opener the next day, and he would bring the lease and keys this coming weekend. Yes, sure, great, thank you very much. Only then did we realize just how knotted up we had been inside all day. With the relief of having a place to go, we felt emotionally exhausted. Which is silly, isn’t it? It’s just a rental! I don’t know what kind of wave of anxiety we were caught up in, or how we got caught up in it, but it was over at least.
Last night we went to look over the place by ourselves. On the down side, we discovered that almost all of the windows are broken in one way or another – as far as being able to open. But it’s mainly the storm windows so that should be fairly easy to fix/replace. On the up side, we let the dogs off leash in the backyard – their first outdoor off-leash experience in a long, long time – and they were the happiest dogs you have ever seen. They raced each other around the yard over and over, jumped over each other, tackled each other, raced some more. When we finally brought them inside, Koa propped her snout on the kitchen windowsill, stared out into the backyard and whined, whined, whined. It was very cute and pathetic.
Oh, and please, dear readers, send me ideas and good vibes for covering/ignoring the mustard-colored paint in the living room and the bad wallpaper in the kitchen. Lori, don’t worry, it won’t bother me. I’m just constantly seeing all the things I would change if I were the owner. The kitchen is actually HUGE – with lots of cabinets and plenty of counter space and a great big area for a table & chairs. The biggest kitchen we’ve ever had. And the living room has a nice wide window looking out over the front yard. More pluses than minuses. I will get pictures on our next trip over there.
Originally uploaded by Librarienne.
Yesterday we finally found our place for August, but we’ll actually be moving in next week since the landlord was desperate to get it rented and we were getting desperate for a place. It’s a big relief and the place is both clean and affordable. We’re on the road now coming back home after a Trader Joe’s trip. To be honest, we didn’t think we were going to get the rental. More on that later.
I was in the local public library looking for some escapism and picked up something from a genre I almost never ever read – sci fi. The book is a classic, though – Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles.
It’s been exactly what I needed for a summer read. The setting is Mars, hot and burnt just like the weather here. Some of the characters are even from Illinois (only the wood is from Oregon, for some reason), looking for something familiar in their new landscape. Bradbury reminds me a lot of Borges in his love of books, nature, and puzzles. But the real candy came in the story “Usher II” in which an off-kilter rich man has the House of Usher built on Mars. When the architect – unfamiliar with Edgar Allan Poe – asks about the house, the rich man replies:
How could I expect you to know blessed Mr. Poe? He died a long while ago, before Lincoln. All of his books were burned in the Great Fire. That’s thirty years ago – 2006… Every man, they said, must face reality. All the beautiful literary lies and flights of fancy must be shot in mid-air! So they lined them up against a library wall one Sunday morning thirty years ago, in 2006; they lined them up, St. Nicholas and the Headless Horseman and Snow White and Rumpelstiltskin and Mother Goose and shot them down and burned the paper castles and the fairy frogs and old kings and the people who lived happily ever after (for of course it was a fact that nobody lived happily ever after!)…*
So far there is a lot of unhappiness on Mars, so I suppose it’s only fitting that Poe makes his appearance. The first “explorers” to Mars met with hostility and the first “settlers” had to deal with the Loneliness. I feel like I’m reading a strange version of Paint Your Wagon, and I’m enjoying it. All the characters are homesick in one way or another. Homesick for places, homesick for people, homesick for smells, tastes, sounds. Even homesick for the graves of loved ones they would visit back home. It’s some comfort to read about these other (more drastic!) experiences of homesickness, and to be able to say to myself, “Well, I don’t have it that bad. At least I’m not killing people.”
* Bradbury started writing Fahrenheit 451 the year Martian Chronicles was published. Though I haven’t found anything that connects 451 to this mention of the Great Burning, wouldn’t it be cool if we were living through the year of Fahrenheit 451 right now? Think of all those stories and books written about the future, using dates that we’ve already lived through…
We watched the movie Adaptation a couple days ago. One of the little details that caught my attention was the Charlie Kaufman character using a typewriter. At first, I thought maybe the filmmakers were going after an 80s feel – what with Charlie's bad hair and flannel shirts. But no, his twin used a computer, the Susan Orlean character used a computer, and even strange LaRoche had his computer-porn business. Why give Charlie a typewriter? My interpretation was that his character does everything the hard way, makes everything harder for himself, so… naturally… he'll compose his screenplay on a typewriter. 'Course it could be even simpler than that – maybe it just seemed to suit the character in general.
Anyway, the point is I related to Charlie via his typewriter. I recognize that sometimes I do things the hard way, whether I mean to or not. But where Charlie must have been aware of the computer option, I'm usually using the "typewriter" because I don't realize there's an easier/better way (not to say anything against typewriters; I even have a pin made out of old "shift" and "tabular" keys).
P.S. Curious what the real Susan Orlean thought of the Meryl Streep Susan Orlean? Read here.
We finally have internet at home. We're finally on Illinois time, more or less. We're establishing routines, roughly.
And I'm finally catching up on about two weeks' worth of blog reading. Most of the people I read, I have never met, but I always find something in their posts to chew on for a good long time. It's like reading several short stories at once, and in some cases, the characters across the stories know each other – which is *really* interesting. In other cases, it's like the movie Magnolia and over time some of these people will meet and know each other – also interesting.
At random, I want to collect some of the really cool stuff I've been reading here since some of it is too old for comments to be left at the original blog.
Speaking of "at the original blog" … that makes for a good jumping place. D. Hawhee was discussing the significance of using "at" a blog vs. "in" a blog – such as "at" a place vs. "in" a journal. I'm not sure which one I use. Since I usually mention blogs online, I quote the blog/writer with an "according to" or "so-so says" and make the name a link. Maybe I think of blogs as conversations. But between the "at" vs. "in" options, I would probably use "at" because it carries over from how we mention websites. "At npr.org there's a great little article about…" I think websites in general started getting the "at" preposition because we tell each other to "go to" certain web addresses, we give URLs like they're street directions, and we don't have any sort of book or journal to look "in"… and I really like this analogy because, as a future librarian, I do think the reference part of my job will be more and more about navigation. On that note, I also followed the " OFL (our favorite librarian" string from one of Debbie's recent posts and found one about the UI library, that made me laugh and even feel better about my move here. I'm not the only one asking those questions!
Back in Oregon, good friend Michelle has a job interview! I hope she gets what she wants, whatever that might be. And I hope the cats at her workplace don't give her too much grief about it. 
In other news, Mel is finally back in her own element and writing great stuff about books (1, 2). I love reading about people who love reading. Warms that library heart of mine.
I've remembered some other things that have stood out for us:
- in most of Oregon, the restaurants/bars have no smoking inside. Nada, nothing, no section. So being asked "Smoking or Non?" every time we go out still throws us off on this, the one week marker from our arrival. Champaign-Urbana is in the midst of considering a smoking ban for its restuarants, which has opened an unbelievable can of worms for people around here. We heard a rumor that the abundance of outdoor seating in downtown Champaign is a direct result of the impending decision. The outdoor seating is definitely appreciated, and the smoking debate is quite amusing.
- even though Illinois borders Wisconsin, the great state of cheese, any varieties outside of cheddar are, like, $15 to $20 a pound! Surely, we're looking in the wrong places.
- along those same lines, we're missing the selection of microbrew beers we had in Oregon. Well, we're homesick all around.
- Lori has noticed (and I concur) that none of the businesses here have toilet seat covers in the restrooms. We could always count on those in Oregon restrooms, but haven't seen a one since east of Idaho. The details, you know.
We're in a hotel room in St Louis right now visiting a good ol' Oregon friend so I'm distracted at the moment, but I'll be back!
First of all – our internet connection is going to be limited to cafe access for the next few days while we wait for our home connection to get up and running.
Secondly – mm… where to begin. There are so many impressions from the past few days here that I want to capture now, while we're still newbies and these differences are still noticeable to us. I'll try to run through a quick list of Illinois qualities that only an Oregonian would think of as weird:
- widespread easy-access recycling? uh, no.
- you knew you'd have a sales tax now, but you might not have known that the tax would vary according to the type of item, the city you're in, and other details we're still learning about.
- hope you like meat. Lots of meat. Red meat.
- everything Oregonians told you about the drastic weather only applies once every other week… in other words, it's actually been quite lovely here.
- without mountains on the horizon, the setting sun has an additional two hours to be in your face while you're driving; but when you're not driving, this additional sun time is wonderful.
So those are some beginning impressions of the land. The apartment… well, there was a whole fiasco with that which I won't get into here. Suffice it to say we are settled into it now and loving it TOO much. It's just a sublet. A sublet place shouldn't be so perfect. It used to be a grocery store back in the day, and it's still a big, high-ceilinged open space with just slight changes in the floor to distinguish the living room area from the kitchen area from the bedroom area. All open. Only the bathroom has separate walls and a door. I love it. I love having the whole place connected and open like that.
Speaking of sublets – this is the first sublet for both Lori and I. I had very different expectations from what actually happened. I expected that the tenant would pack up all his stuff, put it in storage somewhere and we would walk into a nice empty place. But instead… most of his furniture is still in place, all his kitchen stuff is still out and he even left food in the fridge and freezer. Is this how sublets normally work?
The cafe visit is almost over. More moving impressions to come.
Originally uploaded by Librarienne.
I can’t tell how well this photo came out, but we’re here! Just waiting for the landlady to come with the keys. Welcome to Urbana, everyone.
Originally uploaded by Librarienne.
“you know, I’ve never had a way with women, but the hills of Iowa make me wish that I could.” We’ll be leaving the hills of Iowa soon and entering Illinois. Only 5 hours left till we see our new town.
Originally uploaded by Librarienne.
Stop & go traffic in Omaha – but tonight we finally take showers again! Next stop: Des Moines.
Originally uploaded by Librarienne.
We’re in the big city of Cheyenne (Lori says Cayenne) Wyoming. Having our first real non-road-trip food meal in two days. Giddy up.
Originally uploaded by Librarienne.
We’ve passed Salt Lake City, now approaching Wyoming. Our moving truck has already arrived in Champaign. Have I ever mentioned on this blog how much I hate driving? Let me just say that I should have streaks of grey hair showing up soon. Meanwhile Lori is contemplating how much the transportation of bread limits the height of the bread loaves.
