Monthly Archives: May 2011

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Things I Will NOT Miss About Arlington

And now, a follow up to the previous post… because I feel like I should make something clear.

I love Arlington, it is awesome, I affectionately call it the People’s Republic of Arlington.

BUT.

There are things that I will not miss about living in my current apartment. Not one bit. Such as…

  • The apartment complex maintenance crew which half the time seems unable to fix anything.
  • That horrible ice cream truck that plays a song over and over again involving animal noises and a creepy child voice saying, “Hello!” at the end. I am pretty sure if I ever end up in Hell it will involve this song.
  • Caught in Traffic [365portraits: 099]Rosslyn during rush hour, and inching through traffic to go not even half a mile. (It’s great for the purpose of self-portraits, but other than that…)
  • The thirty-seven thousand Irish-themed bars (which is a shame because Ireland’s Four Courts is great, but the Irish invasion has been a bit much).
  • The narrow streets that often make me back up half a block so a car coming in the other direction can pass.
  • The perpetual, never-ending construction.
  • Route 50. Doubly so with the road work that took over a year to finish just outside my apartment, and the next phase which is beginning shortly.
  • That one kid who plays outside my kitchen window that shrieks so loudly that it makes my ear drums want to explode and die.
  • Having a first-floor bedroom window next to a courtyard where people think nothing twice about standing outside of it at 2am and talking extremely loudly.
  • Seeing another cute business getting torn down for multi-million dollar condos. (Full disclosure: if I could afford a multi-million dollar condo I might not be so down on this.)

Not going to miss any of those things one bit. Especially the ice cream truck. I am pretty sure almost six years of that horrible ice cream truck song is punishment for something I did a long time ago. And whatever it was, it must have been particularly dreadful.

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Things I Will Miss About Arlington

Obviously I am super-excited about moving into the Takoma neighborhood of DC, and more importantly moving in with Charlie, and I’m looking forward to it a great deal.

But there are things I will miss about Arlington. Namely…

  • Carvel’s amazing soft serve ice cream
  • Pio Pio’s Peruvian style chicken and rice (and just around the corner, El Pollo Rico with their chicken, fries, and cole slaw deal)
  • Whitlow’s brunch buffet, especially the fried chicken and waffles (although the mac and cheese is a close second)
  • TJ Rec Center’s amazing Wednesday night spin class (but I do have a few more months, and I’m going to see if I can still continue it beyond that!)
  • All of the cosy and cute houses I see on my jog down Pershing Street
  • Container Store! Container Store! Container Store!
  • Ten-Barton Community Garden next to my apartment complex
  • Two great bike stores just around the corner (Revolution and Conte’s)
  • The annual Arlington Tour des Bibliothéques
  • Living around the corner from Karon, Steve, and Britt
  • A ridiculously short commute to work
  • Living somewhere that offers FiOS for my television/internet
  • Guajillo’s chocolate flan
  • Ray’s Hell Burger being just a short walk away

Now with all that in mind? I’m dying to find all the things around the corner in our new home that I’ll learn to love, too. And I’ll still see the friends that won’t be quite so near, of course. Knock on wood, closing in one month!

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Taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaakoma!

It’s been a busy May. An intensive project at work (not bad, just really busy!), helping someone out after their surgery, multiple trips up to Pennsylvania (including for my grandmother’s funeral), not feeling well for about a week and a half (and having to scratch a planned triathlon), that sort of thing.

Oh yeah, and Charlie and I put an offer on a home.

We’ve been talking for years now about buying a place together, when we found the right one. We’ve talked about different neighborhoods in DC as possibilities (Downtown, Logan Circle, U Street, Atlas District, Southwest Waterfront, Brookland, Brightwood Park, you name it) and casually checked out open houses and such. But nothing jumped out at us. So we continued to bide our time and figured it was still a ways off, until we saw a listing for a condo in Takoma that just screamed, “You must buy me.”

The listing was too good to be true, so we went to see it at an open house… that turned out to be a glitch in the system and there was no open house. (Fortunately one of the owners was home and graciously let us in to look around.) Ten minutes later, we were in love. Two days later, we’d gotten a pre-approval letter from the bank and put an offer in. And the next evening, we heard our offer was accepted.

Now obviously until every last paper is signed things could still go south. We just had the home inspection, which went well. But the bank still has to do their appraisal, and of course this is the age of nervous banks. So even though all our ducks are in order something could go wrong with the appraisal, or perhaps Venus will eclipse Mercury and the bank will freak out and decide to grant no one their mortgages for the next two months. But, knock on wood, so far so good.

It’s funny because while we both love the Takoma neighborhood of DC (and the neighboring Takoma Park, Maryland), neither of us figured we’d find anything there. But sometimes a winner just drops into your lap. We’ve got great restaurants, retail, grocery stores, the pool, a farmer’s market, a library, the metro station, and yoga studios just a short walk away. It’s in many ways the perfect mix of small town and big city all in one.

So, more updates to eventually come. In the meanwhile I am playing the game of starting to sort, pack, and discard books. It’s going to be a busy June as well, it seems!